Why You Should Put Off the Old Life
You … have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. 11 Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all. Colossians 3:5-11
‘You have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self’ (3:9,10). The verbs are aorist indicating actions that are unique and unrepeatable. The old humanity is the family of Adam’s people. The new humanity is the family of those who are incorporated into and so patterned on, the Messiah who is the true man. This new humanity is therefore ‘renewed according to the image of the one who created it’ (what Paul literally wrote). In Christ, human beings can be what God intended them to be. This passage clearly looks back to 1:15-20. The intention of creation is fulfilled in redemption and redemption is understood as the new creation. As in 1:9ff, this renewal is put into effect not only in outward actions but also ‘in knowledge’ (3:10). The phrase literally means ‘into knowledge’ implying that the renewal spoken of is to result in the true knowledge of God – ‘in the image of its Creator’ (3:10).
It is not only the old sinful habits and attitudes that are done away in the new creation. The barriers that divided human beings from one another are done away with too. There were racial barriers like that between ‘Greek’ (Gentile) and ‘Jew.’ This was also a religious barrier; ‘circumcised’ and ‘uncircumcised.’ There were cultural barriers which divided ‘Greeks’ and ‘barbarians’ (a contemptuous word used by Greeks for anyone who did not speak their language). The ‘Scythians’ were from the then little known northern reaches of Asia and were thought of as the most extreme examples of barbarians. There were social barriers as between slaves and free. The ancient world, just like ours, was an elaborate network of prejudice, suspicion and arrogance, so ingrained as to be thought normal and natural.
In this new community the Colossians have joined, ‘there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free’ (3:11). The ‘powers of the world’ did hold the human race in their grip, as men and women allowed their habits of thought and action to be dominated by them. Paul’s counter-claim, set before the church as a still unfinished agenda, is that these barriers and habits are, in terms of God’s proper will for His human creatures, neither natural nor normal. They are ultimately a denial of the creation of humanity in the image of God. Differences of background, nationality, colour, language and social standing must be regarded as irrelevant to the question of love, honour and respect that are to be shown to individuals and to groups.
Instead ‘Christ is all, and is in all’ (3:11). On the one hand He is ‘all things’ (the literal meaning of ‘all’). He is the pre-existent image of God, the One whose being underlies all human nature of whatever category (Jew or Greek, civilised or uncivilised, high or low born). On the other hand, He is ‘in all,’ probably meaning ‘in all people.’ Jesus touched on a very similar theme in Matthew 25 when He spoke of our actions toward others being our actions toward Him (Matthew 25:31-46). No one must allow prejudices from their pre-Christian days to distort the new humanity which God has created in and through Christ.
A Christian is a ‘new creation; the old has gone, the new has come’ (2 Corinthians 5:17). God doesn’t call us to be what we’re not. He calls us to be who we really are, because He’s made us into a new person in Christ.