Ephesians

The Secret

The Christian is to put off the old self because he has discovered a secret. He still feels these old urges as strongly as he did before he became a Christian. He feels them as strongly as the worldling does—but the secret he has learned is this: Those desires and urges are part of the old life, the old self, which was judged on the cross of Christ.

Jesus did an amazing thing on the cross. As 2 Corinthians 5:21 tells us, the One who never knew sin actually became sin for us. Jesus became our old life, our old egocentric self. Jesus became all of that on the cross. If the Word of God didn’t tell us that, we would never be able to understand the depths of the mystery of the cross.

Why did God place such terrible judgment on this innocent, holy man? Why did this terrible convulsion of moral, spiritual, and physical nature take place? Why these impenetrable mysteries? It comes down to one truth: Jesus became sin for us. When He became sin, He was put to death. The sentence of death was executed upon Him. This is God’s eloquent way of saying to us that all those urges that arise from the old self are futile and valueless. They are deceitful. They promise much, but they deliver nothing.

The Christian is not told to put the old self to death. He is told that the old self has already been put to death in Christ upon the cross! What we are doing here is claiming, in personal experience, what God has already done in the reality of the cross and the resurrection. So the process of putting off and putting on is based upon what Christ has already accomplished for us. The old self is dead already. It remains only for us to claim that truth and make it real in our own daily experience. Our prayer should not be, “Lord, slay the old self within me,” but, “Lord, help me to live by the truth that the old self is already nailed to the cross!”

So the first step in experiencing what God intends for us is to put off the old self—throw it off, lay it aside, give it no more place in our lives. But that is only the first step.

There is another half to the picture, and that is to recognize the wonderful possibilities of the new life, the new self. Paul says—and I will translate it differently here to get at what I believe to be a truer understanding of Paul’s meaning— “having been renewed in the spirit of your minds, put on the new nature, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians 4:23-24, author’s translation). Here we see the fundamental difference between a Christian and a non-Christian.

While it is true, of course, that non-Christians sometimes realize that things are wrong in their lives, that their attitudes and actions are sometimes wrong or destructive, they don’t have the means to completely put off the old self and put on the new. They can only change from one expression of the old self to another. They can alter the outer form, but the inner problem remains the same.

But Christians—and only Christians—have the capacity to transcend the old and put on the new. That is the testimony of Scripture. When we believe in Jesus Christ and receive Him as Lord, we are renewed in the depths of our spirit. Christ is our life now, and a radical transformation has taken place. The new self is in the likeness of God, the image of Jesus. You are now identified with Him.

If you are a Christian, the life of Christ lives in you. The new urges that come with the new self are urges to love, to understand, to forgive, to accept difficult people, to endure difficult situations, to gently correct those who need correction, to be faithful at all times. The new self is real and genuine. It is love unfeigned. It is not something put on for a moment, not a painted-on smile masking a hostile heart. It is righteous. It is true. It is holy.

Now, I know that the word “holy” makes some people squirm. We usually think of some pious Joe who looks like he has been soaked in embalming fluid. But that’s not holiness—that’s sanctimoniousness. Holiness really means wholeness, being fully and completely what God designed us to be. Holiness results from having the life of the Lord Jesus living within us. How do we achieve that kind of wholeness and holiness? We achieve it through the twofold process of putting off and putting on.

Our problem is that we are afraid to put off the old self, for fear we will be left with an empty husk of a life. We fail to understand that we must put off before we can put on. The Holy Spirit is waiting for us to put off the old self so that He can rush in and fill us—with the holiness that God intends for us in Christ.

Putting off the old self is like squeezing the water out of a half-drowned man’s lungs. You do this not to empty his lungs, but to enable his lungs to fill with air, the breath of life. The Scriptures tell us that the old egocentric life, the old self, has been asphyxiating us, killing us. The only air we were designed to breathe is God.

It all comes down to an appeal to the will. Put off, put on—that is the choice we must make. Reject the old; accept the new. Throw out the clutter of old urges and desires, and make way for the Spirit to come in and set up housekeeping.