Put Off

March 12

Put Off

apotithēmi

In light of our studies of the last three days, Eph_4:22 adds an important exhortation, that we put off the old man. This expression is the Greek apotithēmi (G659), which is taken from the picture of taking off a garment and is in the aorist tense showing a once-for-all putting off of the old man. As we would take off old worthless clothes and never use them again, we take off the old man.

Commentator John Phillips recounts the time when he read the following words in the window of a dry-cleaning establishment: "If your clothes aren’t becoming to you, you should be coming to us." As Phillips recognized, while that was a clever slogan, it’s not what Paul is saying here. We don’t send our old garments out to be cleaned; they are not becoming to a Christian so we take them off forever. That is precisely what is the problem with so-called moral reform. You cannot change people’s lives until you first change their hearts. We cannot mend the old man; he must be transformed into the new man.

Some Christians have the mistaken idea that the old man is put off sometime during our Christian walk, but that is false. The old man was put off at salvation— the old garment was removed. The sobering application is that a person who claims to be a Christian, but whose life has not changed, is not truly born again.

A question arises here. As we’ve seen, Rom_6:6 declares that we are already dead to sin, that the old man, all that we were in Adam, was destroyed. So why does Paul now say to put off what has already been destroyed? The answer is simple: Rom_6:6 is positional, while Eph_4:22 is practical; the first is doctrinal, the second experiential. Paul is saying, "I want what has happened positionally to be true in your experience." Yes, we’re dead to sin because of what Jesus accomplished in the past, which is exactly why we now willfully no longer act like sinners. We are not the old man, so we must not act like we are. Daily we put off the "remnants" of the old man (Eph_4:22-29). In the next few days, we’ll examine those remnants.

Scriptures for Study: What is Paul’s similar exhortation in Rom_13:12? Likewise, what does Heb_12:1 encourage using the words lay aside (apotithēmi)?

 
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