Putting on the New Man

In Ephesians 4:15-16 Paul talks about the body of Christ maturing over time and growing up into Christ.

It’s the supernatural working of the individual giftings that join us together in one body. We are stuck together by that which each one supplies. I need what you have, and you need what I have. The body edifies itself when we walk together in love and unity.

In The early part of Ephesians, chapter 4, Paul has just talked about the growth process of the body of Christ that happens as the individual grace gifts operate and the body edifies itself in love. Then he says “therefore I say” in verse 17.

Therefore I’m saying that from now on don’t walk like other Gentiles who walk in the perverseness and depravity of their mind. The condition of our mind affects our conduct.

It was their ignorance and blindness of heart that kept them alienated from the life of God. And it’s our ignorance and blindness of heart that will keep us alienated from the life of God.

Their understanding was darkened and they were alienated from the life of God because of their ignorance and the blindness of their heart. And Paul has just said to the Ephesian church he didn’t want them to be like that. Think about it, if it were not possible for Christians to walk in ignorance and blindness of heart then Paul would not have told them not to do it.

Let’s read verse 17 and then skip to verse 22, to keep the flow of thought.

Paul tells the Ephesian church not to walk like other Gentiles. Then he tells them three things to do to accomplish that.

Put off the former conduct of the old man.

Be renewed in the spirit of your mind.

And put on the new man.

It looks like an ordered process. Stop the behavior of the old man, get your mind renewed, and then put on the new man, who is created in rightness of thinking and acting, and in true, not pretended, but true holiness.

So the first thing to do is to put off the old man, in regard to his conduct. We change our behavior. But old habits die hard. It takes some time to put off bad behavior, but the Lord is faithful to give us the grace that we need.

Here are a few of the more obvious characteristics of the old or former man:

And the list goes on. This is only a sample of the former man’s behavior. So by the grace of God we begin to put off those things we know are wrong.

Notice verse 10.

The new man is renewed in knowledge.

The Greek word translated “renewed” in this passage means to cause to grow up. The new man is caused to grow up by knowledge. It takes knowledge to change behavior. That’s where the second step of the process comes in.

Romans 12:1-2 is very similar.

Don’t be conformed to the ways of the world, but be transformed by the renewing of the mind. We’re transformed by the renewing of the mind.

Paul says to be renewed in the spirit of your mind. Does your mind have a spirit? Well, no, not really. But our mind does not think independently from what we believe. In fact the mind thinks directly in accordance with what we believe. So if our mind does have a spirit, a force that gives it life, then it’s what we believe, or what we could call our core belief system.

The spirit of our mind is our core belief system, and everybody has one. We think based on what we believe at our deepest level.

We initially received our belief system from our parents, who shaped us to think and be like them. Then much of what we believe came by way of our experiences. Innocent minds accept things from authority figures, like parents and teachers. We are taught to believe what everyone generally believes to be the truth. As children we stopped believing certain things we thought to be true when we discovered they weren’t true. A greater reality won out over our wrong belief.

The spirit of our mind is renewed [made to grow up] by the discovery of truth. One of the primary jobs of the Holy Spirit in our life is to help us to renovate our belief system by guiding us into all truth.

The toughest thing for us to do is to recognize that much of what we believe is probably incorrect; humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God, receive with meekness the engrafted word, and allow the Lord to guide us into truth. And truth is what we need more than anything else.

This is what Matthew 5:6 is talking about.

The righteousness He’s talking about here is the understanding of God’s thoughts and His way of doing things. It speaks of receiving the knowledge of God. Remember, the new man is renewed in knowledge, the knowledge of God. He says that those who hunger and thirst after it are blessed, that is happy, for they shall be filled.

What shall they be filled with? We are filled with the knowledge of God, the revealed truth of His word. But this knowledge does not just come automatically. It must be searched out.

This knowledge of God is referred to in Proverbs chapter two.

Receiving the word and inclining your ear are mental activities, hiding the word and applying your heart to understand it are spiritual activities. That spiritual activity is called meditation.<

Verse 3 speaks of the hunger for this knowledge.

Cry after knowledge. Lift up your voice for understanding. This sounds like a person who really wants it, you might say a desperate person.

Hunger and thirst after righteousness, the understanding of God’s thoughts and ways. We should cry after knowledge, lift up our voice for wisdom, seek God’s wisdom as silver, and search for that wisdom as for hidden treasure.

Are we doing that or have we lost our hunger? Perhaps we’ve lost our hunger and our desire to seek the truth of God’s word. But hunger does come back if we start eating. Sometimes we don’t feel hungry until we get in front of food.

You may be wondering why we should even do this anyway. After all, it sounds like work, all this crying out for knowledge, seeking for it as for silver, and searching for it as for hidden treasure. What are the benefits? What can I hope to gain? Proverbs 2:6-11 gives the answer.

So then feeding on the word and seeking wisdom as for hidden treasure affects our thinking in a positive way. Matthew 13:44 gives an example of what the kingdom of God is like.

Treasure has to have some value in our thinking or it’s not treasure. Do we value the knowledge of God? Are we searching after the word or have we lost our hunger? If we want to begin to change our lives drastically the way to do it is to start seeking God’s wisdom through meditation in His word. Revelation of the word will change the way we think. The spirit of our mind will be renewed, or that is, it will be caused to grow in maturity.

Use a journal (notebook) for meditation in the word.

It is helpful many times to journal our meditations, that is, to write down a scripture, and then write down what the scripture means to us, write down questions that come up as we’re thinking, and then write more as we get answers to our questions. By writing these meditations down we create a record that we can refer back to later when meditating further. When we write our meditations we are able to look at the word in an analytical manner, and the Lord leads us by His Spirit into the discovery of truth.

A good place to start meditating is the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5, 6, and 7. This is Jesus explaining how the kingdom of God works, and much of it we haven’t yet really understood. Take some time, especially in the morning, before all the activity of the day gets started and spend some time in the word. You’ll be amazed at what the Lord will give you in the way of understanding of His truth.