The Apostle Paul then exhorted the believers to no longer live like those who do not know God. The lives of such ones are lived in ignorance, darkened in understanding, with the hardening of their hearts, and given over to sensuality.
The believers, on the other hand, should live as those who are taught by Christ in accordance with the truth in Him. Paul then went on to list the negative ways of living which ought not to be for believers, and the positive and godly ways which should characterize the people of God.
What is noteworthy is that Paul was addressing believers, telling them that what they were before conversion and what they ought to be after believing in Jesus. The reality is that Christians may at times still live like non-believers and behave like them; Christians may not always live out a life worthy of their calling in Christ.
Hence the exhortation: “You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness” (4:22-24).
One aspect of reality is that there are many who profess to be believers but have actually not been regenerated. They may have made ‘decisions’ for Christ, perhaps an intellectual assent to what was shared with them or a mental and emotional response of the moment when they are moved by the logic of the message or the emotional charged-up environment.
This is illustrated in the parable of the sowing of the seed. Some seed sown did not bear fruit but had been swept away by the evil one. Other seed died because it was choked by the weeds, be it worldly desires and concerns or a lack of commitment and understanding of what it means to follow Jesus. There may also be believers like the Corinthian Christians who allow fleshly desires and allow their immature disposition to affect their proper outworking. But those who continue to live a life that is constantly immoral and ungodly should evaluate whether they are truly born again spiritually. This is starkly demonstrated in Ephesians 5:5, “For this you can be sure: no immoral, impure or greedy person – such a person is an idolater – has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God”.
The necessity of repentance may seem a very simple truth but it is deeply connected with the right views of God, of human nature, of sin, of Christ, of holiness and of heaven. Beginning with the gospel, all must be brought to a sense of their sins, to a sorrow for them, to a willingness to give them up, and to hunger and thirst after the pardon from God. We must bid men repent, and when they have repented, we must bid them repent more and more to their last day. Faith and repentance continue to operate throughout our Christian lives.
But how is it that Christians, who are born again and are a new creation or recreation in Christ, still live like non-believers? What Paul was emphasizing is that we must now throw off all conduct which belonged to our old life. Our new behaviour must be completely consistent with the kind of persons we have become. Paul was not saying that we can now live a perfect life, free from sins and moral failures. We may fail God in our weakness but there is forgiveness in Christ when we repent and come back to Him and to the light (1 John 1:9). In other words, re-creation (effected by God) and repentance (what we do by His grace) belong together and cannot be separated. We must put off the old standards and cultivate the new standards in Christ.
Although regeneration (being made alive spiritually) is exclusively the work of God, all other aspects of the process of salvation distinct from regeneration involve both God and the believers. We can say that it is both God’s work and our task. Sometimes, these various aspects of salvation – repentance, faith, sanctification, perseverance and the like – are described as work of God in which believers cooperate. However, putting it this way will imply that God and we each do part of the work. It would be better and more accurate to say that in these aspects of salvation which are distinct from regeneration, God works and we work. We must note that the human being is both a creature totally dependent on a sovereign God and a person who makes responsible decisions.
Likewise for the Christians, God must sanctify us wholly, but we must work out our salvation and sanctification by perfecting our holiness. It is difficult to harmonize these two apparent contradictory thoughts that God is totally sovereign over our lives and yet we are required to make our own decisions and are held responsible for them. The Bible teaches both and we must accept this, believing that what we cannot square with our finite minds is somehow harmonized in the mind of God.
The call to continually put off the old self and put on the new self like changing our clothes is a task we are expected to do as working out our salvation and sanctification. We have noted that as God works in our lives, we are to work. But this is an area many believers find daunting. Although we apply ourselves to this task, we still find ourselves failing again and again.
To address this issue, we must recapitulate what happened at the cross and the implications
for our lives as believers. On the cross, evil did its worst. What happened to Jesus on the cross seemed like the greatest victory for Satan and evil; yet, in reality, everything that the evil of the world could produce, everything that evil powers on earth and in the heavenly realms could accomplish, was let loose at Jesus and all these were exhausted and defeated at the cross, and victory was won at the point of Jesus’ death. It was a victory of love over hatred, a victory that consisted in Jesus’ allowing evil to do its worst to Him and He still was not defeated by it. He actually bore the weight of all this evil and sin to the end, and He outlasted it and achieved a victory of weakness over strength. The cross shows the terrible nature of evil and the even more radical measures God had to take to deal with it once and for all. The ultimate outcome of this victory will only be seen and achieved at the second coming of the Lord Jesus when the presence of sin will be abolished and a new humanity is established fully in the new heavens and new earth.
In the meantime, much has already been achieved at the cross. Our understanding of this will help us tremendously to put off the ‘old self’ and to put on the ‘new self’, living a life worthy of our calling. The penalty of sin and the guilt of sin has been dealt with at the cross. In Christ, we have the forgiveness of sins and redemption through His blood, which means we are rescued from the dominion of darkness into the kingdom of the Son. Furthermore, our sinful nature was put off when we were buried with Him in baptism, in which we were also raised with Him through faith in the working of God. The charge of our legal indebtedness has been taken away and nailed to the cross.
Paul put it this way in Romans 6:8-11: “Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, He cannot die again, death no longer has mastery over Him. The death He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life He lives, He lives to God. In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus”. Paul is not saying that we will die to sin only if we believe we have died to sin. He is saying that, if you are a Christian, this is the truth about you. You have died to sin. Therefore, count on it; live in the light of it.
One problem that believers have in connection with sin is the difficulty of persuading them that they are no longer under the dominion or mastery of sin because of what Christ did at the cross! Although the deliverance from the presence of sin is still forthcoming, the decisive breach with sin has already been accomplished. The nature of sin remains unchanged but the status of sin in the believer is dramatically altered.
It is important to know that we are no longer under the rule of Satan; we have a new master in our Lord Jesus Christ. We are no longer under the dominion of sin; the power of sin has been broken. Although the conflict with the power of indwelling sin continues here on earth, the believer must know that he is no longer under its dominion. We need not obey the devil; we need not surrender to the influence of the world. We must know the power of death to sin in the death of Christ. The Apostle Paul puts it this way: “Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires (Gal. 5:24)”; “The world has been crucified to me, and I to the world”. Paul considered the ‘old Paul’ as dead, crucified with Christ; the ‘new Paul’ lives under a new Master, Christ, who lives in him through the Holy Spirit. The ‘new Paul’, born again and being a new creation, now lives by faith in the Son of God who loves him and died for him (Gal. 2:20).
It is very significant to know that if we are born again, we are placed in Christ, in union with Him. What happened to Him at the cross happened to us in view of our union with Him; we died to the old life and we are a new creation in Christ with the seed of regeneration planted in us. This means that we now have the potential to grow, to develop and to be transformed into the image of our Lord Jesus. It is still a seed and not a full grown and fruitful plant. Nonetheless as a new creation in Christ, we are now under His rule and lordship. We are free from the dominion of sin and the negative influence of the world; we are no longer obligated to listen to the evil one. We are now called to live a new life because we arose with Christ and share His resurrection life with Him (Ephesians 2:4-6). We died with Him to sin and arose with Him to new life. Now we belong to Christ, to, incorporated as citizens of heaven although we are still in the fallen world and the conflict with Satan and indwelling sin still continues. We can say that the ‘war’ is over. Nevertheless, the battles with the forces of evil, worldly values, and our flesh continue to harass us until Christ comes again and completely defeats the remnant of evil and establishes His new kingdom and humanity. It is however very important that we know we are fighting on ‘victory ground’, from a position of strength. We are in a position to say “yes” to God and “no” to all the temptations and pressures of the enemy. We may lose some ground now and then, because of our lack of alertness, our ignorance and our indwelling sin but we need to know that Christ has already secured the victory. As long as we return to the light and maintain our proper union with Him, we can stand our ground and remain victorious in Christ.
The evil one, however, wants us to believe that we are still under his control. He will try all means including deception, temptations and persecution to cause us to doubt God and the promises of God has revealed in His Word. Satan has limited time and he seeks to use it intensely to damage God’s kingdom and to lead God’s people astray. Remember that the evil one works tirelessly and continually to hamper the purpose of God and he does it especially well by casting doubts, distorting the Scriptures and polluting the church of God. He is not afraid of activities, even apparent spiritual ones, but he is especially concerned when God’s people make spiritual headway and cause damage to his kingdom and concerns.
Going back to ‘putting off the old self and putting on the new self’, we have seen that God expects us to work at this: “- continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfil His good purpose (Philippians 2:12(b)-13). God works in us through His Holy Spirit. By faith we grasp the power of the Holy Spirit which enables us to overcome sin and live for God. Through faith we must appropriate the encouraging truth that by the Spirit we are able to put to death the misdeeds of the body (Romans 8:13) and that if we live by the Spirit we will receive strength to cease gratifying the desires of the sinful nature and to bring forth the Spirit’s fruit (Galatians 5:12,6:22-23).
Since you have come to know Christ, Paul is saying to the believers in Ephesus, you have been taught once and for all to put off your old self (or “old man”), to be continually made new in the attitude of your minds, and once and for all to put on the new self (or “new man”). A once and for all change of direction is to be accompanied by daily, progressive renewal. The Christian is a new person, but he or she still has a lot of growing to do. To be sure, the renewal is primarily the work of God, but the renewal into greater conformity to God is also, at the same time, the responsibility of man. All Christians are called to increasingly be conformed to the image of Christ who is the perfect image of God. This is our task, our responsibility – a responsibility we can fulfil only as God enables us to do so, but our responsibility nonetheless. We are not able to renew ourselves in our own strength. The image of God can be renewed in us only as we remain in union with Christ. This renewal is not completed during a person’s lifetime. It is a process as long as we live. In this present life, believers are genuinely new but not yet totally new. They are incomplete new persons. It is not until the time of the final glorification of man that the renewal of the image of God will be brought to completion. This final perfection of the image will be the culmination of God’s plan for His redeemed people, the new humanity in Christ. The perfection of the image of God in man is intimately connected with the glorification of Christ. Since Christ and His people are one, His people will also share in His glorification. The final perfection of the image, therefore, will not only be brought by Christ; it will also be patterned after Christ. In the life to come we shall “bear the likeness of the man from heaven (1 Cor. 15:49).
Living by the Spirit and walking by the Spirit means living by His guidance and strength. Living by His guidance means waiting on Him, asking what He would have us to do, and where He would have us go.This entails daily study of the Bible, since the Spirit does not lead us apart from the Word of God. The better we know the Scriptures, the better we shall know how to live by the Spirit. Negatively, living by the Spirit’s guidance means to silence the clamour of fleshly voices, to quell the energy of fleshly haste, to restrain every impulse until it has been proved to be of God. Positively, it means to be guided by Him, to listen to Him as He reveals Himself in His Word, and to yield to Him continually. Living by the Spirit’s strength means leaning on Him for the necessary spiritual power. It means believing that the Spirit can give us strength adequate for every need, asking for that power in prayer whenever we need it, and using that power by faith in meeting our daily problems. We have to be always ’plugged in’ to Him, to keep in constant touch with Him, for we need Him every hour.
Now what Paul encouraged the people of God to do and not to do makes sense. God works in us through His Spirit to work and to act, and we work through leaning on the Spirit for guidance, strength and enabling. We can work out our salvation because we are no longer under the rule of the evil one and the mastery of sin; we are a new creation, members of God’s family, citizens of heaven, bound for glory and honour in Christ Jesus at His second coming.
However, we are still living in a fallen world and we have not been raised with a new resurrected spiritual body; our earthly body is still a natural body subjected to illness, weakness and death. It is also subjected to the influence of indwelling sin (the flesh). Hence we need to put to death (mortify) the deeds of the body, by the Spirit (Rom. 8:13). The flesh must be mortified daily because indwelling sin always abides while we are in the world. It is our participation in the divine nature that gives us deliverance from the pollutions that are in the world. We need to ‘employ’ the Holy Spirit and our new nature in the battle for our souls. If we do not seek daily to mortify sin, we sin against the goodness, kindness, wisdom, grace and love of God, who has given us the weapons of our warfare. It is sad but true that there is in this generation a growing number of those who profess faith in Jesus Christ, generating a great noise of religion, religious duties in every corner, preaching in abundance, but with little evidence of the fruit of true mortification. Their lives give evidence of a miserable unmortified heart; if pride, envy, worldliness, selfishness and strife are the marks of Christians, we have them among us in abundance.
Let a man pretend what he will, little concern over sin is a serious offence to the grace and mercy of God. Such a life has an evil influence on others. Some may talk spiritually but live vainly; others, viewing their worldly and selfish lives, are stumbled. If mortification is a work of the Holy Spirit alone, how is it that we are exhorted to accomplish it? If only the Spirit of God can do it, why not leave the work wholly to Him? We must know that the Holy Spirit does not so work in us that it is not still an act of our obedience. The Holy Spirit so works in us and upon us, and yet He preserves our liberty and free obedience. He works upon our understandings, wills, consciences, and affections, agreeably to our own natures. He works in us and with us, not against us or without us, so that His assistance is an encouragement as to the accomplishing of the work.
Putting on the new self is equally important as putting off the old self. It is not just dealing with indwelling sin and applying mortification of the flesh in one’s Christian life. It is also about the pursuit of holiness and seeking to be more and more conformed to the image of our Lord Jesus Christ. In that light, we need to focus on the character of our Redeemer as the perfect exhibition of divinity. As we come before the Lord Jesus daily and moment by moment, beholding His glory and contemplating it, we are transformed into His image with ever-increasing glory, and this comes from the Holy Spirit (2 Corinthians 3:18). The human life of the God-man stands before us as pure demonstration of humility, obedience and love, as an ideal to be reproduced in us. As we contemplate this in the light of the Holy Spirit, and by the opening of our eyes of understanding, it exercises a sanctifying power beyond all other influences. It forms in us by the Spirit and through faith the very image of God which we behold in Him (2 Corinthians 4:6). It is an ideal which reproduces itself in the experience of the enlightened Christian. His example becomes, in the hands of the Spirit, a power used to change us into His image increasingly as we are conformed to His character and image in increasing proportions.
It is the first beginnings of a perfect obedience which will reach its full measure and degree in the celestial state in the new heaven and new earth. At present, it is more in aim and purpose and sincerity than in performance; there is no living perfection here on earth and none should claim it. In the meantime, there is an inner conflict in the life of every Christian, a conflict between the sinful nature and the Spirit, between an old and new nature; there is no perfection of holiness within. While the Christian presses toward the mark, he is never perfect; nor does he ever reach a stage when there is no more conflict, and when he attains performance of God’s will without the consciousness of inward opposition. In fact, this conflict is a sign of the Spirit’s work in the believer. God expects the Christian, as His child, with the example and intercession of our Lord Jesus and the enabling of the Holy Spirit, to continue to put on the new self (man) and to give glory to God by his life of holiness in increasing measures.
The work of holiness, initially, is like the seed thrown into the earth, being cherished and nourished. It is to take root, to spring up and to bring forth fruit. The seed of God, the principle of holiness, is small at first. It is received in hearts made fertile by the Spirit of God. This seed, nourished and cherished, will take root and produce fruit. The grace of love is capable of degrees and therefore of increase. But we must realise that it grows and thrives by exercise. If the work of holiness is a progressive thriving work, it is required that we give “all diligence” to the increase of grace (2 Peter 1:5), and that we “abound in all diligence” (2 Cor. 7:7), and not only so, but that we show “the same diligence even to the end” (Heb. 6:11). If we grow slack, or give over as to our duty, the work of sanctification will not be carried on in a way of grace.
The pursuit of holiness needs to be accompanied by a right view of God. The Bible tells us that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom and this aspect of the view of God must be nurtured if we desire to put on the new self and be transformed into the image of our Lord Jesus. The proper response to a glorious God is to fear Him, as the Old Testament and New Testament repeatedly command us. This response is often lacking in Christians as they seek to pursue holiness and this leads to failure in this quest. “Gracious fear causes the heart to stand in awe both of the mercies and judgements of God and keeps it in an attitude of reverence of the heavenly majesty” (John Bunyan in ‘A treatise of the fear of God’). Bunyan, the author of ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’, saw fear as an essential element of true godliness. Without “reverence and awe”, we cannot serve God acceptably (Heb. 12:28). Bunyan also taught that the majestic Lord is also the loving Saviour; he did not believe that Christians should live in bondage to fear. However, he realised that to know the Lord is to fear Him. He perceived that when we see God’s glory, we see ourselves as we truly are. John Calvin also wrote that we humans are self-confident and self-righteous until we begin to have some true thoughts of God. Then, as a man who looks at the sun is overwhelmed with its brightness (Calvin in Commentaries on the Prophet Isaiah, 6:2), so the knowledge of God’s perfect righteousness, wisdom, and power dazzles us, and in that light we see our own wickedness, foolishness and weakness. If we see this clearly, it will only lead to godly fear and reverence. Then, like the saints of old, like Daniel, we become stricken and weak in the presence of the holy almighty God. The Apostle Paul wrote, “Therefore, since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God” (2 Corinthians 7:1).