We now come to the ordinary exhortation as to walk. He shows the state they were in—ignorance and sin. “As the truth is in Jesus;” it is not doctrine, though doctrine is contained in it. The truth as it is in Jesus is the having put off the old man and put on the new—this having been done by faith. Then he adds, “and being renewed in the spirit of your mind.” The putting off and the putting on are not in the present tense, whereas being renewed in the spirit of your mind is. The truth is, that you have put off the old man, but you do want renewing. In Colossians (chap. 3) it is distinct: “Lie not one to another, seeing ye have put off the old man with his deeds and have put on the new.”
In the epistle to the Ephesians he is not saying directly to them what they have done, but saying what the truth is in Jesus. So it is more abstract. The truth in Jesus is having put off and having put on. Being renewed is present—the renewing of the spirit of your mind is a thing that is always going on.
After this we get another immensely important principle in the new man which according to God, is created in “righteousness and holiness of truth.” That is the character of God Himself. The first man was innocent; he was not righteous but innocent. There was no evil in him. To be righteous and holy you must have the knowledge of good and evil. God is perfectly righteous and perfectly holy: He judges with authority what is evil and good; but innocence does not know good and evil. The new man is after God. You get another expression in the Colossians, which is of great importance— “renewed in knowledge according to the image of him that created him.” There is a positive knowledge of God. It is not merely that there is an absence of sin, but I have a positive knowledge of God Himself, and it is what God is that is the character and essence of my new man.
Peter speaks of being “made partakers of the divine nature.” It is not merely that a man is born again. It is the truth as it is in Jesus. Of course he is born again. Abraham had to be born again; but he did not know anything about putting off the old man and putting on the new. You never find this in the Old Testament. You find there the knowledge of sin working, but the Old Testament saints did not make a difference between the old man and the new. The moment that death came in and man took his place with God in Christ, I get the old man and the new.
We get here, I put on this new man created after God in righteousness and true holiness. I have put on this new man, but then I have put off the old. It is a totally new thing. It is Christ who has died so that the old thing is done with. For faith I have done with the flesh. I am not a debtor to the flesh; I am. crucified with Christ; the old man is done with. We are quickened together with Him. This is more than being born of God. Christ quickening as the Son of God, which He does—He quickeneth whom He will—is a different thing from being quickened with Christ as risen; because when I am quickened with Christ as risen I have left all that is the old thing behind me and have gone into a resurrection state. The old man is crucified with Christ. This is of all importance as being one of the two great elements of Christian walk. There are, first, the putting off the old man and the putting on the new; secondly, that the Holy Ghost dwells in us and we are not to grieve Him. These are the two grounds of Christian walk in Ephesians.
To be made partakers of the divine nature is the moral character of it. It is after God; it is the pattern of what God is. God is righteous and God is holy, and now it is not merely setting us up as innocent, but we being actually partakers of the divine nature, have a character according to what He is. It is after God, created in righteousness and holiness.
It is morally like God's nature, but still there might be rather a bold way of saying it. Morally it is the same: else you could not delight in Him. Morally speaking it is the same—it is “holy and without blame before him in love,” which is God's nature. He is holy, He is blameless, He is love. And so it is with Christ. If you look at Him down here, He was holy and blameless, and He was here in love. We get this, “he that sanctifieth,” that is Christ, “and they that are sanctified are all of one; for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren.”
But this putting off the old man we had better not pass over. The Christian, in virtue of Christ's death, and having Christ as his life, as a Christian does not own the flesh at all. The mind of the flesh is enmity against God, but he does not own it. He has not to die to sin but to reckon himself dead, Christ having died and all being available for him. What Christ has done lie reckons himself to have done in this respect. How can you be alive? I say I am not; Christ lives in me. “I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.” We have put off the old man (not are to put it off), that is, if we have heard Him and have been taught of Him. Then this new man is after God.
Observe the two in Rom. 8: “The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus:” that is, the new man “hath made me free from the law of sin and death, for what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh.” When Christ was on the cross, He not only bore our sins and put them away, but God condemned sin in the flesh there, so that I see it is all put off. Faith reckons it. Christ died to sin—He is the only person that died to sin; so God reckons us alive unto God, not in Adam, but in Jesus Christ our Lord. My life in which I live is not flesh— “ye are not in the flesh” but in Christ. When you come to realize it, you take the putting off first; you say I have put off the old man—I am not a child of Adam—and put on the new man, that is, Christ. It is that I believe in the testimony of 1 John 5 where it is said, “this is the record [or testimony] that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath life; he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.” It is entirely a new thing in Christ, and as a proof that eternal life is not in Adam but in Christ, he shows the Spirit, and the water, and the blood—what cleanses, what expiates, and what has living power—all coming consequent upon Christ's death. The water came out of His dead side, as did also the blood, while the Spirit came after He was glorified. These are all witnesses that eternal life is not in the first man but in the Second. I reckon myself dead, I am crucified with Christ. Thus it is a nature that is after God Himself. Then we get another element—the Holy Ghost dwells in me, and I am not to grieve Him.
The, putting off of the old and the putting on of the new occur at the same time, really; but practically when you come to details, you find you have the one first, and then you realize the other. In real truth I put on the new man first. When you come to practice, you have to treat the old thing as dead, and the other leaps free. In point of fact we must get the new man in order to treat the old man as dead. If the old man was treated as dead first, I would have no man at all. When I have got Christ as my life, I come to look at myself, and it is all over with the old man. There are many who own that they must be born again, but they do not recognize that they put off the old man. The moment I have got the death and resurrection of Christ, I say I am not a debtor to the old man. This is not merely the fact of being born again; it is not merely saying I am born again, but that the other thing I have put off, that is, to faith.
Of course the old man is part of the old creation. “If any man be in Christ, there is a new creation.” We are the first-fruits of His creatures. “He has begotten us that we might be a kind of first-fruits of his creatures.” When he speaks of dealing with the condition I am in, which you do not get here but in Colossians, which is a little lower, he does not say mortify the old man, but your members which are. upon earth. He does not allow any life but Christ— “Your life is hid with Christ in God.” “Ye are dead;” now mortify, that is put to death, your members. This implies power. It is, never dying to sin, but that I am dead to sin and alive to God in Christ, and therefore I can mortify.
Rom. 8:1313For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live. (Romans 8:13) ("ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body"), and Col. 3:55Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry: (Colossians 3:5) ("mortify your members") are but a different way of expressing the same thing. In Romans we are not viewed as risen with Christ, whereas in Colossians and Ephesians we are. In Romans we are presented as dead with Christ, because the object of Romans never is to take us out of our place in this world. It shows us that we are in Christ, but at the same time still here; whereas in Colossians the apostle will not let them be alive in the world. “Why,” he says,” as alive in the world are ye subject to ordinances?” All this ritualism flows from not knowing we are dead.
Then we get another immensely important element, namely, that God dwells in us—the Holy Ghost; for we are told, “Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God.” The Christian is to do nothing that displeases God that dwells in him. You have no mortifying the members here in Ephesians. It is a new creation and nothing else. Colossians does not go as far at] Ephesians. In the former you get us risen but not sitting in heavenly places as in the latter.
Romans puts us into Jordan, but it does not go on to the coming out of Jordan. Colossians puts us up on the bank; but Ephesians takes us and sets us down in Canaan to eat the old corn of the land where there is no manna any more. You cannot say they are a figure of that, it is going into details, which the figure does not. You get a figure of the whole thing that I have passed through Jordan. I am not in the wilderness but am in heavenly places, and seated there in Christ. And not till this do I get circumcised. You get this in Colossians. There are two things in the Romans: man is dealt with—looked at as alive in sin, and death is brought in—Christ's death. By Christ's death their guilt is gone, and by His death they died. They are in Christ, but they are looked at as persons that have died, though not risen with Him. In the Ephesians, although the fact is looked at, as to the doctrinal statement, they are not looked at as alive in sin; they are dead in sins, which is another aspect of it, but the same state. When I am alive in sins I am dead towards God—there is not a single movement of thought, heart, or feeling in that state towards God. God can create me over again spiritually. Ephesians looks at a man as dead in sins, and says we are created in Christ Jesus. It is not justifying sinners there.
The man is justified in Romans and a new creation entirely in Ephesians; while in Colossians you get both. In the latter there is death and the new creation, but not yet seated in heaven. They are looked at as on the earth, and there is a hope laid up for them in heaven— “ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.” In chapter 2 (vers. 11, 12) we read, “In whom also ye are circumcised, with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ; buried with him in baptism [there I get the doctrine of Romans] wherein also ye are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead [I have now got beyond the Romans]. And you being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh hath he quickened together with him.” There we get Colossian doctrine, but it does not take us up to heaven. When he speaks of that in Ephesians he says, “He hath quickened us together with Christ, and hath raised us up together and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” Colossians is as it were between Romans and Ephesians. Therefore in Colossians you get, instead of sitting in heavenly places, “set your affections on things above,” “the hope that is laid up for you in heaven,” and such like expressions. He does not talk of the Holy Ghost in Colossians. What we find in Colossians is life, and this is as important in its place as the Holy Ghost dwelling in us. In Ephesians you get the Holy Ghost dwelling in us, and therefore the body; whereas in Colossians you never get the Holy Ghost mentioned except in the expression “your love in the Spirit.” For example, in Ephesians we read, “Putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another,” whereas in Colossians he says, “Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds.” Instead of the Holy Ghost dwelling in us, it is God's nature the measure of how we are to behave ourselves.
The Holy Ghost works in the new nature, but is not said to dwell in it. It is said, that “Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith.” The Holy Ghost operates in the new nature. Still the dwelling is never spoken of as in it, but in the body; we need Christ to dwell in our hearts by faith.
I have got a new nature, and of course have not to pray to get one. The effect of this is most striking. In the Ephesians we are brought to sit in heavenly places, we have put off the old man and put on the new, and we have the Holy Spirit of God dwelling in us. In Ephesians it is, “As God in Christ hath forgiven you.” We have got the nature, the state that I am in to be able to walk; we have put off the old and put on the new; and the Holy Ghost dwelling in us, and then we are told to be imitators of God as dear children. Then if I say, How can I talk of imitating God (of course it is not Almighty power, it refers to moral things), how can poor worms such as we talk of imitating God? Well, is not Christ your pattern? You are to follow that. This shows the absurdity of making it merely the law as our rule of life. I am a dear child, and I am to have a sense of it in my soul and exhibit it in my walk; I am “to walk in love as Christ hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savor.” “Hereby know we love, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren;” we are to go and walk as He walked.