Reading: Rom. 5:12,15–19; Eph. 4:13,20–24; Col.
3:9–11.
Here the Word says we have put off the old man, or more
literally, that we have laid down or laid aside the old
man. The same word is found in Hebrews twelve, verse one—“therefore...
lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily
beset us....” We have laid down, or put off, the old
man. So often those words are used by us in a merely
personal connection. We speak of “our old man”;
by which we mean this sinful nature of ours which rises
up under provocation. That aspect, of course, is included
in the initial act of faith’s repudiation, but that
is not all that is meant by the statements before us. It
is included; but what we have here is something very much
more.The Significance of the Term “Old
Man”
Romans five explains
what is meant. The old man is a racial order, represented
by its racial head, Adam. It is an order. That corporate,
collective Adam, as apart from God, having departed from
God, is a kind of order which can no longer be accepted
by God, which has passed out of God’s thought and
God’s acceptance, and stands contrary to His mind.
That is the order into which we are born, and to which
all that we are by nature belongs, and it is spoken of as
a corporate, collective entity. It is important to
remember that, not only is the Body of Christ one, but
the Body of Adam is one; that is, that all in Adam are
also a corporate being. It is a man, a kind of man, a
type of man expressed world-wide; and we are said to have
put off that man, the old man; we have laid him aside,
laid him down. We have laid him in the grave in the same
way that we lay a corpse there. The body of one who has
departed this life is laid aside. It is no longer the
place in which he dwells. He has laid aside that body,
and we follow up and likewise lay it aside. Now as
believers we have put off, have laid aside the Adam type,
the Adam order, the Adam system, this one great
collective man of a certain kind, of a certain order.
The
New Man
Then it is further said
that in Christ we have put on the new man. That also is
often thought to be a merely personal affair, an
individual matter. That is to say, the new man in our
conception is a kind of new personal life and nature.
That is true, but it is far more than that. In the Letter
to the Ephesians, the Apostle is speaking of the new man
which is the Church, “the Christ” as it is
literally expressed in First Corinthians, chapter twelve
and verse twelve. Christ is one with all His members, as
the Head joined to the body, all the members making one
body, one new man. It is a collective, corporate man, a
man of a new order which is not Adam, but Christ: “where...
Christ is all, and in all” (Col. 3:11). Before it
was Adam who was all, and in all, but now in this new
creation it is Christ Who is seen to be all, and in all.
The Apostle well expresses what is meant when he writes:
“But ye did not so learn Christ; if so be that ye
heard Him, and were taught in Him, even as truth is
in Jesus” (Eph. 4:20, 21). It is a great
embodiment of Divine truth in a Person, and we are
represented as having divested ourselves of the one body,
of old Adam, and as having invested ourselves with this
body of Christ, with the new man.
(a)
The Primary Feature
That includes a good
many things. If you look at the context of this passage
you will observe some of them. It includes the nature of
Christ. That is why, after mention has been made of
putting on the new man, the Apostle proceeds almost
immediately with words like these, “Be ye therefore
imitators of God, as beloved children; and walk in love,
even as Christ...” (Eph. 5:1,2). The new corporate
man is the embodiment of the love of Christ. That is the
first thing. This love must have an individual
expression, for what is said to be true of the whole body
is only so in the degree in which it is found to be true
of the individual member. Let us recognize that, when we
speak of the Church, or the Body of Christ, or make use
of this alternative title, the “new man,” we
are speaking of that which is the embodiment of Christ’s
love; and when we say we are putting on, or have put on,
the new man, we mean that we have put on the love of
Christ.
To walk in love, then,
is one thing that is involved. The Body is built up in
love; the Body is constituted by love; the Body is the
means of the expression of Christ’s love. If you
take the figure and follow it, you will see how
impossible it is to escape the fact. Were you to find a
body without a head, it might be said that you had found
a body; but it would be a very mutilated body! It really
could not in the full sense be called a body. The Lord
Jesus has not such a Body. For a full expression of the
meaning of “body” you must have head and
members all together, properly adjusted and related. Now
Christ cannot be said to be love as the Head, and His
members be viewed apart from Him. The Body is one; Christ
in expression is inclusive of His members, and that
involves a nature. That nature is love: therefore “...as
beloved children... walk in love, even as Christ also
loved you....”
Love is not the only feature in this new nature. We use
it simply by way of indicating that this nature does
imply a new Body-disposition. You and I need to be more
before the Lord for a Body-disposition. The disposition
of this new man is the disposition of love. Let us ask
the Lord for the increase of this disposition in the Body
of Christ. All that is other than that is still the old
man, and he has to be put off. When anything that is not
of the love of Christ springs up amongst us as the Lord’s
people, in any form whatever—and there are many
forms of thoughts, and feelings, and words; words of
criticism, words of judgment—love has to put it off.
If you and I are found with such a thing as a spirit of
criticism one toward another, that is of the old man, the
old Adam, and he has to be put away. We have to recognize
that the Lord has put old Adam in the grave. Then we have
to follow up and say: To the grave you go; you belong
there! The new man, then, speaks of a new nature, and of
a new disposition. We all need more of this “new man”
disposition, that we may walk in love.
(b)
A Corporate Consciousness
Then this new man,
being corporate and collective, being related and
inter-related in this way, represents a life of
fellowship. It demands a corporate consciousness which is
one of the most important things. In the Lord’s
purpose everything depends upon this corporate life. The
Lord Himself can never reach His end by individuals, and
you and I can never reach that ultimate end as
individuals. While it is true that Adam, the old man, is
a corporate unity, the consciousness of the old man is
not a corporate consciousness; it is an independent
consciousness, a divisive consciousness. We must have a
corporate consciousness in order to reach God’s end.
There are quite a number of the Lord’s own dear
children who remain far too long in a state of spiritual
immaturity. They never grow much beyond childhood
spiritually. You may know such for years, and find them
to be just the same simple children today as when you
first knew them. Now, it will be said: It is very right
and proper to be a simple child of the Lord! Well, let us
always have a childlike spirit, let us always seek to be
of a pure, simple spirit before the Lord, but let us
remember that there is a difference between childlikeness
and childhood. There is all the difference between
keeping that simplicity, purity, openness, teachableness
of the child, and a delayed understanding, an overdue
ability to grasp spiritual things and to assimilate food
for those more advanced in years. The trouble with so
many people, or the cause of their delayed maturity, is
that they are merely going their own sweet way; that is,
they are butterflies, simply flitting from one thing to
another with no corporate life, no related life. A
butterfly is quite a pretty thing as it flits about, but
there is all the difference between a butterfly and a
bee. A bee too may go from one thing to another, but it
does so to very good purpose. The bee’s life is a
corporate life, the butterfly’s is not a corporate
life; it is an individual life.
Delayed maturity,
stunted spiritual growth, is very often due to this lack
of a corporate sense of life which is bound up with the
life of the Lord’s people in a definite and positive
way. That is the way of enlargement. That is the law of
the new man. We arrest our spiritual growth when we set
aside the necessity for a life that is linked with the
people of God in quite a definite way. That is a
background in Ephesians. The whole of the fourth chapter
is devoted to this vital matter. The new man is there set
forth as the Church, the Body of Christ, and this new man
is to grow unto the measure of the stature of the fulness
of Christ. It is the corporate man that grows to that
stature; individuals cannot do so. Only in relatedness do
we move into the fulnesses of Christ.
Beware, then, of missing that very important law of
spiritual enlargement. This is what is meant by putting
on the new man. We are right, then, in asking the
question, Have we really put on the new man? Have we
really put on a Body-consciousness, a
related-consciousness, a fellowship-consciousness that
belongs to the new man? It may not always be possible for
us to enjoy the immediate, local, geographical fellowship
of a large company of the Lord’s people, but that is
not the point; we are talking about a consciousness.
(c)
A Disposition
Again, it is a
disposition. It is the setting aside of everything
individual, personal, separate, as such, and putting on
that consciousness of relationship in which everything is
for the Body, and in the Body, and by the Body. It is by
this fellowship of spirit that the Lord gains His end and
we come to the Lord’s end.
It is very sad to see the results of failure to recognize
that. There are some, of whose devotion to the Lord we
have no question, but the thing that pains us is that
they have not grown one fraction of an inch since we
first knew them years ago. At least, there is no sign of
larger capacity. They are just exactly the same as they
were. Such as these are never to be found making a
supreme effort for a relatedness of a definite kind with
the Lord’s people. They flit about from one thing to
another, and they say: I am not going to settle down in
any one particular fellowship of the Lord’s people!
I am going to keep free! I am going to move about and
keep in touch with everything that there is! That may be
very good from one point of view; and you must not
misunderstand and suppose it to be said that we are not
to be in sympathetic touch with all that is of the Lord.
But there is something else which is necessary to
building up, and that is a concrete relationship with the
people of God. It is necessary to the Lord for fuller
revelation. What do we not owe in the matter of
revelation to this very thing! For revelation the Lord
must have the Body spiritually expressed. It is
tremendously important to know that. It is there that the
Lord’s ministry functions. Ephesians four is a great
ministry chapter. You lose all isolation and
departmentalism in ministry when you have the Body in
realized expression, when everyone is found occupying
some place of spiritual value in the work of the Lord;
not according to the technical terms that man is wont to
use with reference to such work, but where everyone
represents something of spiritual value, where everyone
is a minister before the Lord in some way. Whether you
recognize it or not, it is a fact, and unfortunately a
great deal of loss is suffered because it is not realized
how greatly obedience on the part of every one of us
affects the issue.
I will tell you how to test it. Is there going to be
something personal for the Lord by a corporate means, say
a conference? I venture to say that there are not many
people who are spiritually associated with that who do
not know some aspect of the Devil’s rage and
pressure in connection with it. You do not have to
provoke the Devil in any way. It is one conflict and not
only are the more evidently responsible individuals in
ministry affected, but the conflict reaches to those whom
we do not connect with ministry in that specific sense.
In our thought we so often limit the ministry to this one
expression of it. Those who have ordinary home and
domestic duties may haply think of them as something
quite other, and not as part of the ministry, but the
conflict finds its way in there. It gets into your
personal consciousness, into your business, apart from
your being in any more immediate way involved in what is
going on. It is because you are spiritually related to a
testimony, because you have come in a spiritual way into
the Body of Christ, recognizing what the Body of Christ
is. Whether you have understood the truth or not in any
large measure, you have put on the new man and you are
suffering as a part of one man.
Now that is not only a
fact which perhaps we recognize in a painful way, but it
is a privilege. Paul said, “I... fill up on my part
that which is lacking of the afflictions of Christ in my
flesh for His body’s sake, which is the Church”
(Col. 1:24). There in your homes, in your business, in
what you would call the back places, you meet with the
conflict. It is for the Body’s sake. Out there, far
away from others, you are meeting the impact. That is the
proof that every part of this Body is a partaker in this
ministry. The whole is being served by every part in a
spiritual way putting on the new man.
While it involves us in
the cost, in the suffering, it equally means that we come
into the good and the value; for no few members can come
into blessing without all who are in spiritual
relationship receiving benefit. If one member suffers,
all the members suffer; if one member rejoices, all the
members in some way rejoice, in some way come into the
good of it.
God’s
Quest is a Man
You will see that this
is very closely related to what the Lord is seeking to
bring to us in these days. We are still speaking of it in
very general terms, but the presentation of the Lord’s
mind ought to be very clear to us. It is a man that God
is after. That man is represented by His Son, and the
Church is His expression as His Body. This new man is the
universal manifestation of what Christ is—one Lord,
one Life, one Love. It is important, lest you should make
a mistake in interpretation, to recognize that there is a
difference between the word used in Ephesians and that in
Colossians. In Ephesians we read of putting on the new
man, in Colossians we read of having put on the new man.
In Ephesians the word kainos means something that never
was before, something altogether new. This Church never
was before; this corporate man according to Christ never
existed before, it is something new. In Colossians
another word is used which simply means “fresh,”
not necessarily altogether new. You will see the
significance of the different word if you look at the
context. There is a freshness of mind, a freshness of
spirit that is to be a mark of those who are in Christ.
But our word at this time has to do with the former word,
which is kainos, the new man, the man that never was
before. There is an old man who was before, and he has to
go. Here is another man that never was before, and he has
to be put on.
This new man is after
God. That takes us back to our previous meditation, God
thinking His thoughts, desiring His desires, and willing
His wills, all of which express His own nature, and all
of which are focused upon a created being called “man”:
“...which after God hath been created...” (Eph.
4:24). That is a marvellous expression. Now here is a new
man which after God is created in righteousness. The Lord
teach us the meaning more clearly of so learning Christ.