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Why Take Off the Old and Put On the New?
Ephesians 4:17-19
The Christian is a new creation because of what God has done (2 Cor. 5:17). The "putting off" and "putting on" here is not a description of salvation, but of Christian living. It is the daily practice of examining one's life and moving from old ways of thinking and behaving to being transformed by the renewing of the mind (4:23). Paul gives four reasons why the old man needs to be removed:
- The old man is in philosophical despair (4:17). A person who does not know Christ lives in the futility of his or her mind. The word translated "futility" means "vanity," living without purpose or in an aimless way.
- The old man is in mental darkness (4:18). The mind of an unbeliever is like a dark closet with no windows, closed off from the light of God by a door bolted by unbelief. Although unbelievers try, they cannot understand spiritual things (see 2 Tim. 3:7).
- The old man is in spiritual disconnectedness (4:18). Unbelievers are cut off from the life of God and spiritually disconnected. The blindness and hardness of their heart alienates them from God, and they have no personal relationship with Him. In fact, they have become determined not to relate to God.
- The old man is in moral deterioration (4:19). People alienated from God no longer feel any pain about the wicked things they do; they are "past feeling." Paul elsewhere describes it as a conscience so seared that it no longer works (1 Tim. 4:2). Money rules their life, to their own ruin.
