Walking Worthy of the Calling - Part II (10)

 

“…in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old man, 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 man, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.” Ephesians 4:22 – 24.

 

If you are following this passage in your personal Bible, you may find that instead of the word “man” above, that your translation uses the word “self.” I see that the NASB and ESV both use “self,” while the NKJ maintains the word “man.” Since I use the NASB on a daily basis, and I consider the ESV on a par with the NASB, I am at a loss as to why they have both succumbed to thinking that is normally associated with the NIV and similar “translations.”

 

If Paul had wanted to use a word for “self” he would have done so, but he used the word “man.” There is an “old man” and a “new man” and this is quite different from an “old self” and a “new self.” There is enough about “self” in our society and in church, we don’t need to feed that monster. Salvation is not just about the individual, it is about us as a people; it is about coming out of one man and coming into another Man. It is about leaving a fallen creation and entering a New Creation. It is about leaving Adam and coming into Christ. (See Romans 5:12 – 7:6; 2 Cor. 5:14 – 21; 1 Cor. 15:20 – 49; Gal. 2:20; 6:11 – 16).

 

Translating the Greek word for man into English as “man” allows us to maintain this perspective, using the word "self” does not. Consider that in the first part of Ephesians Chapter 4 that we see the Body of Christ, one Man, “a mature man,” a Body with many members – this is a context in which we see individuals and a unified Body – the word “self” robs us of this dual vision.

 

Therefore, when I read that I am to “lay aside the old man,” I am to put off both the old creation to which I once belonged, as well as my individual participation in that creation – for I have had an individual “old man” living in a collective “old man.” As Paul teaches in Romans 5:17, we are now to “reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ.” No longer do we trace our lineage back to Adam, to that “first man…from the earth,” but rather to “the Second Man [who] is from heaven” (1 Cor. 15:47).

 

In some measure this is as if we have gone from being citizens of one country to being citizens of another country, but not just citizens on paper; rather we have been given a replacement DNA – our old DNA has been put to death on the Cross and a new DNA has been given us in Jesus Christ; we are now “dead to sin and alive to God” (see Romans 6). We have been taken from being members of one people and made members of another people.

 

In Ephesians 2:1 – 10 we see that we have been individually brought from spiritual death to spiritual life (though I think there is also a corporate dimension here) in Jesus Christ, and then in 2:11 – 4:16 we see that we have also been brought into a new Temple, a New Man, a New Body. Then in 4:17ff we see how we are to live in this new Body, Man, Temple; how we are to relate to one another in Christ and in how we are to relate to the world-system around us, to that collective “old man” to which we once belonged. (See Colossians 3:1 – 17 for a similar trajectory).

 

How is it that God’s People do not know and live in these things? Salvation is so much more than being saved “from something,” it is being saved “to something,” to Jesus Christ and His Temple, His Bride, His Body, His People…for His glory. If we only knew the glory of the Gospel of Jesus Christ we would (hopefully) not have the preoccupation with ourselves that has become our center of gravity in the professing church. If we knew our Nature in Christ and actually learned to consider ourselves “dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 6:11) we would begin to taste and live in “the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Rom. 8:21; see also Gal. 3:15 – 5:1).

 

The partial Gospel that many of us preach and teach and consume, is akin to Moses leading the people through the Red Sea only to abandon them on the other side – this is a tragedy.

 

Isn’t it time to learn to put off the old man and put on the new man, created in the image of Jesus Christ? (Rom. 8:28 – 39).