old man new man

“ if so be that ye have heard him, and have been taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus: that ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; and be renewed in the spirit of your mind; and that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. ”

The Christian life has sometimes been reduced to a list of things that you'd better not do. I have heard that Christians don't fornicate, don't smoke, don't drink, don't gamble, don't watch movies, don't dance, don't swear, don't smile, don't laugh out loud, don't wear jewelry, don't wear long hair, don't show any skin, and don't have anything to do with the world. I've also heard that the sign of a real Christian is that he begins doing things that don't make logical sense. He speaks in languages that no one understands, stands shaking in intense emotion, arms reaching up, as in a trance. I've also heard Christians who adopt a certain flavor of the Christian life develop new accents in speech, reflecting the accent of the foreign nation from which their church first had its origin, or they start talking with a Southern accent, as from the Bible belt. And I've met Christians who fornicate, smoke, drink, gamble, watch X-rated movies, dance, swear, tell dirty jokes, wear showy clothing and jewels, and look for all the world just like all the non-Christians I've ever known. What does it mean to be a Christian?

St. Paul wrote the most on this subject, calling our former way of life the “old man.” Now here we don't mean old as in age, but previous . To the Roman church, Paul asks if God's forgiving grace allows us to continue in sin? No , he concludes: we're dead to sin now , having joined Christ by Baptism into His own death—our sins were nailed to His cross. Now if we are raised up with Him in His resurrection, we need to live new lives . Paul says the old man is crucified and its body destroyed. Being dead, the old man is free from sinning any more. “Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Romans 6:1-14

To the Colossians St. Paul writes that “ye have put off the old man with his deeds; And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him…” Col. 3:9-10 Or in a newer translation: “You have stripped off your old behavior with your old self, and you have put on a new self which will progress towards true knowledge the more it is renewed in the image of its Creator…” NJB In today's Epistle to the Ephesians, Paul describes the lifestyles of other Gentiles, “Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart: Who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.” Ephes. 4:18-19 That doesn't sound like the Christian life. He commends his church to life differently now, “that, in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit, and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.” Ephes. 4:22-24 NASB

Old man, new man . What is this talking about? First, please remember that “man” here means the entire species, not just guys. This applies to women and men—each having their old man and new man. When newer translations regard these states as behavior , we may miss the point. Paul talks of a death and resurrection . This isn't simply breaking a bad habit or two. Renewing our mind could be compared to brainwashing—literally changing the way we perceive reality, knowing what we never new before, motivated in ways we never thought real or possible. A new man is another person, a radical change in a great many ways. Are you all new men, or are you still walking in the old man's clothing, attitudes and manners?

Did you ever see the movie MIB , Men in Black? Weird film. It's a science fiction comedy about a secret government agency that controls all the aliens among us—aliens from space, who adopt human or animal forms and pass as terrestrial. The bad guy is an enormous alien bug who murders a man and then squeezes itself into the dead man's corpse, using it for a disguise. Why I thought of this movie is that many of us Christians have done a similar thing.

When we died in Baptism, we woke to new life. We weren't sure what that was, or how to live it. But we looked down and saw the corpse of our old man, having just killed him by taking oaths not to follow the world, the flesh and the devil, swearing allegiance to Christ, being washed of our sins and receiving the Holy Ghost. Embarrassed to be naked as new men, we may see our old man lying there and, when nobody's looking, crawl back inside his skin and use him as our new disguise. We actually walk around inside the corpse of our old man, trying to pass as an unredeemed sinner. Think that's unreal? I did it.

When my wife and I landed in a church, I was a backslidden Episcopalian newly reacquainted with Jesus. I also worked in the world of contracting and I reckoned that Christians were viewed with suspicion and ridicule. Giti wanted me to start wearing a cross. That made me nervous. I didn't want anyone to know, so I chose a cross with the longest chain I could find and tucked in way down my shirt. When it fell out in front of my friends, I was embarrassed to be wearing it. Today I'm ashamed to admit that, but there were many ways I tried to wear that old man over my new skin. And it took years and years for me to stop.

I was supported in this double life by other Christians I knew who justified their sins by assuming on grace, by calling a life of holiness presumption and hypocrisy . We've all been saved by grace: now who does he think he is, acting like he's better than anyone? For some carnal Christians, living a holy life is a sign of legalism and Phariseeism, denying the grace that saves us by God's gift of Jesus on the cross. How dare we resort to living holy lives, as though that saves us? Carrying the carcass around, of course, is humble. Living a new life is pride. See how insidious this is? When we finally, if ever, cut ourselves off from such friends, then we internalize the old man, hiding him within, ashamed to admit that we are still saddled with this stinking, rotted corpse.

When a snake sheds its skin, it leaves it behind. If you've ever run across a snakeskin like that, it can frighten you until you realize there's no snake inside—it's just left it behind so it can grow. The old skin is too tight and worn to carry around. Snakes have better sense than to wear the old skin any longer or try to hide it and keep it in its pockets. Do we have the wisdom of a snake?

I'm not asking you to become phonies. I've seen Christians who adopt a Christian smile, act stupidly happy, grate on your nerves with fractured English sounding like the pastor when he preaches. I don't mean that. God forbid you should ever start sounding like me. But put off the old man. It's not automatic. It's a decision. It is possible. You have a new life to live and it's about time you learn what that is, and have your mind transformed.

How does a mind get transformed? I talked of brainwashing , and I was only half serious. Brainwashing uses psychological means to force a subject's reality to change, to believe good is evil, and evil is good. Victims of brainwashing don't remember the old ways of thinking. But in Christ, we voluntarily choose to have our minds cleansed. We need to stop feeding them junk. We need to feed them good thoughts, read the Word of God, pray, seek God's face. We need to hear of people's lives who have experienced more of God than we may have, to start believing in miracles, to make room for God to come into our thoughts and hearts by many paths. To know God is to have a new mind. In truth, we were born with brainwashed minds, not knowing good from evil. It's time to deprogram the carnal mind and have it see with the eyes of the spirit the true and eternal things that cannot be seen except by faith.

What great advancement of truth, science, medicine, government, education, or any other sphere of human endeavor ever happened by limiting the mind to what it already has experienced and to what it already sees? Faith in something better spurs us on to improve ourselves and encourage others. But carrying around an old dead man can blind us to things beyond our familiar ways of seeing and thinking.

Zacharias saw an angel in the temple who told him he and Elizabeth would have a son, a prophet of the coming Messiah. Zacharias didn't believe the angel, but said: “Whereby shall I know this? for I am an old man, and my wife well stricken in years.” Luke 1:18 The angel, shining before him was not evidence enough that God was in this. So, Zacharias, whose mouth just got him in trouble, was made mute until John the Baptist was born. The old man got in the way of God's path, God's plan to save the world. The old man had to go. As old as Zacharias was, it was time to become a new man. At John's birth, he did and he proclaimed God's truth over his newborn son.

Old man, new man—which shall it be? Pray today that any vestigial remainder of your old man might go. Pray today that God might renew your mind, and make room in your life for the divine work He has long waited to do in you and through you. The entire world is waiting for a church fully involved in the work of God, not just sitting and watching the liturgical dance. Could miracles follow? Might new life mean an encounter with the living God? I have no doubt—it is not only possible, it is inevitable. Isn't it time to dump the stinking corpse? Isn't it time to dispel the lie that we need to live as we've always lived? Couldn't we at least give it a try?

What does it mean to be a Christian? Why don't we give the new man a chance to see?

PFH+