Romans 11 talks about two trees. One is a wild tree by nature and the other is a good olive tree. And the Bible says, we have been cut off from the wild tree and grafted into the good olive tree (Romans 11:24). We know the wild tree stands for Adam and the good olive tree stands for Christ. The scripture says these two trees are contrary in nature. When we were in the old tree, we had a different style of life, and the Bible describes it as ‘old man’. The distinguishing character of the ‘old man’ is that it wants to sin.
We have another condition in us called, ‘the flesh’. What does it mean to be called ‘the flesh’? It does not mean your skin tissue, as when we refer to a flesh wound. It is also not talking about your physical body as a whole. What it means by the flesh is man's sinful nature. New Testament regularly uses the word flesh to refer to man's fallenness, our natural rebellion against our Maker. This is our nature that we have inherited from the fall of Adam. I came across this definition that I thought defined the flesh well. “[The Flesh] is a compulsive inner force inherited from man’s fall, which expresses itself in general and specific rebellion against God and His righteousness.”
Let’s consider the ‘old man’ to be the gate keeper of the mind. When ‘the flesh’ wants to do things which are enmity with God’s will and rebellion against God’s commandments, the old man permits the mind to act in tune with the desire of the flesh. Bible says in James 1:15 “Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death”. The things of the flesh are the things that are against the will of God, they are things of sin. We are given a list of things of the flesh in Galatians 5:19-21, “Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies.”. So before the conversion, the old man and the flesh walked hand in hand with each other.
When we surrender our life to Christ, the first thing happens is our old man gets crucified with all it’s lust (Romans 6:6). Old man cannot be converted, neither it can be reformed or revived, it can only be replaced. Holy Spirit does a great work in us, that we are raised from our spiritual death (Ephesians 2:1). We were dead in our trespasses and transgressions that lead to the death of our spirit. But when we surrendered our life to Him, our spirit was resurrected from its deadness. Spiritual death is separation from God. The scriptures teach of two sources of spiritual death. The first source is the Fall of Adam, and the second is our own disobedience. Spiritual death can be overcome through the Atonement of Jesus Christ and by obedience to His gospel.
Now we need to define some terms here, because it’s very important. You’ll notice in Colossians 3:9 the term “the old man,” and in verse 10, the term “the new man;” the old man and the new man. Now these have provided a theological discussion that has run through the ages: What is the old man, and what is the new man? Do we still have the old man, or do we just have the new man? Are we a combination of the old man and the new man, and fighting along with each other, trying to give the more acquiescence to the new man? Just exactly how do these things come together in a simple theological sense?
Thomas Goodwin has a beautiful statement. He says this: “There are but two men, there are but two men seen standing before God: Adam and Jesus Christ. And these two men have all other men hanging at their belts.” End quote. These two men have all other men hanging at their belts. You’re either in Adam or you’re in Christ, right? You’re either an old man or a new man. You’re either unsaved or you’re saved. If you have a new man and an old man, then you have a regenerated part and an unregenerated part. In other words, you’re half saved, and half lost. That doesn’t make any sense, does it? Because it says in Colossians 2:10, “In Christ, you are complete.”
Is salvation whole? Is it total? Are you a new creation? Yes. So, you’re not half regenerated and half unregenerated. You’re not a new regenerate man and an old unregenerate man warring against each other. There’s a war in there, but it isn’t between the old creature and the new creature, because you’re just a new creature.
We need to understand the spiritual turn that takes place at the time of regeneration. When you became a Christian, you ceased to be an old man, and you became a new man. If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17). And the practices which were normal to the old man are suddenly abnormal to the new man; they just don’t fit, they’re incongruous, they are out of sync. And so, this passage of Colossians is simply saying this: since you are a new man, dress like one. You’re putting on clothes, or a lifestyle, to match the life that is in you. If you have the transformed life, as indicated in Colossians 3:1-4, if you possess eternal life, then there ought to be an outward manifestation, there ought to be a style of life that proves the reality of that internal life.
What do we see around in Christendom these days? We see the new men walking in old clothes, don’t we? We see Christians who are called to be new men, but who wear the rags of their former life, who go around doing the things they used to do. And those things are abnormal. Those things are to be put aside; those things are to be discarded. When you died – and by that, I mean the moment you believe in Christ by a divine miracle, your old life dies, and you rise to new life, and you become a new man. You then respond by throwing away the old clothes, putting on the new ones. So, you can see there is a negative and a positive. The negative is “get rid of the old,” the positive is “put on the new.” And that’s exactly what Paul is saying here.
“Get rid of the old” is what we saw in Colossians 3:5-9. “Kill the members that are on the earth such as fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil desire, covetousness,” and he goes on to talk about these kinds of things that characterize your former life. “Put away” – verse 8 – “anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, dirty talk out of your mouth, and stop lying to each other.” In other words, as a new man, there are some things you throw away, some things you junk, some things you kill, some things you discard. And then in the positive, beginning in verse 9, there are some things you put on. “Seeing that you have put off the old man, and put on the new man, then do this.” verse 12: “Put on therefore,” and he goes starting to list the things you need to put on.
And what we wear is important relative to what we are. And this is precisely Paul’s point in Colossians chapter 3. In the spiritual sense, you need to dress yourself spiritually to meet your identity spiritually. If you are a Christian, you ought to dress the part. A new man should wear new clothes, and he’s not talking about a Christian uniform, and he is not talking about a certain kind of a T-shirt that says “Jesus Saves” on the back, or bumper stickers; that is not the idea. But he is talking about the spiritual garments that you wear, the style of life, how to show of your identity. If you are a new creature in Christ, there are some clothes that go along with that.
Let me simplify the whole truth in a few words. When you were saved, when you gave your life to Jesus Christ, when you believed and He redeemed you, your old man died, and you were born again. You were born a new man, and the new man doesn’t want to wear the old man’s clothes, that’s the idea. You don’t want to put on the filthy rags that you used to wear; you want to put on the new robe.
I have read like this, when a believer was baptized in the early church, it was customary that he was baptized, his old clothes were thrown away, and he was given as a gift from the believing community a new white robe as a symbol of his new identity. And that kind of carries over here in Paul’s thinking as he sees us dying with Christ and rising in new life. He sees the discarding of the old clothes and the old garments, and the putting on of a brand-new kind of wardrobe, a brand-new lifestyle to accommodate our new life.
In Romans 5:12-17 Paul says this: “Wherefore” – and this is the contrast between that, Adam and Christ – “as by one man sin entered the world,” – and this is the one-man being Adam – “and death by sin; so death” – a spiritual death – “passed on all men, for all of sin.” Now here he says Adam brought sin: “From one man came sin.” And he talks about this through verse 14. And then he makes an interesting shift: “But not as the offense is the free gift.” And he begins to turn away from Adam. “For if through the offense of one many are dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man Jesus Christ, has abounded unto many.” Now notice just as because of one man we are all dead, because of one other man, we are all alive. And this is the tremendous distinction between Adam and Christ. In Adam there is death; in Christ there is life. In Adam is the old man; in Christ is the new man.
You may say, “But I’ve got a problem. My problem is that I may be a new man, and there might not be any old man around, but I got a lot of trouble, because I keep sinning. Where is it coming from?” Basically, it is coming because your new man relates to your flesh. And you must know the distinction between the flesh and the old man. Your flesh is just your humanness (human sinful nature), and it’s still around, and it bothers the new man. It just makes it difficult. Because you know what the flesh does. Flesh thinks of this world. Flesh is taken from beneath. It’s earthly centred. It’s something like, before your conversion, the old man was the gate keeper as we discussed earlier. He allowed the flesh to do anything and everything. But when he was killed, the new gate keeper (the new man) was put in charge. He must say ‘no’ to the flesh all the time. If the new man is weak, he may be defeated by the flesh. If we meditate on Galatians 5:16-18, we will understand that there is always a war happening within ourselves. The new man must depend completely on the Holy Spirit for power to subdue the fleshly desires. But you have just got to watch it, because the flesh is going to drag out all that garbage and try to get it on you. No wonder Paul says in 1 Corinthians 9:27, “I have to beat my body to bring it into subjection”. And he says again, “I would like to get out of this vile body” (2 Corinthians 5:8).
We are new; but it is possible that the flesh, which is still there, because we are in the flesh, in human flesh, is going to hang up those old habits in front of us and entice us and we must begin to conquer the flesh; and little by little, day by day as you live, there is a progression in the conquering of the flesh. The new life and the new man begin to grow. It is like a child that is born and begin to grow day by day, physically and mentally and later spiritually.
Same thing is true in the spiritual life. You were born again. You are a new life; you are a brand-new creation. But there is to be progress. There is to be growing. There is to be a growing into the likeness of Christ. You see it in Colossians 3:10, to the place where you are literally in the image of Him that made you, where you become like Jesus Christ in every sense. The growth involved, trusting in the power of the Holy Spirit moment by moment, meditation and obedience to the Word of God, and fellowship with other Christian believers.
Think this way, you were born, and you’ve got all your parts, and there’s a resemblance to Christ; but it matures and grows, and you become more like Him, and more like Him, and more like Him; and that’s the deepening of the divine image that’s been engraved in you. Becoming more and more like Christ is the progress of the new man. In 1 Corinthians 15:45-49 we read, So it is written: “The first man Adam became a living being”[a]; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. The first man was of the dust of the earth; the second man is of heaven. As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the heavenly man, so also are those who are of heaven. And just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, so shall we[b] bear the image of the heavenly man”.
My friend, that is an astounding statement, that God is going to make us to be like Christ inevitably. And I would like to say it again: inevitably, inescapably. If you are a believer, you will be made like Christ. That is God’s promise. The Bible says in Romans 8:29. “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters”. If you are saved, it is God’s plan to make you like the Son. It is God’s plan to make you to be like Jesus Christ. That is the promised progress. That is God’s fantastic, exciting, unbelievable, incomprehensible plan concerning each one of His children.
