Notes From Paul In Ephesians
The last set of passages that I want to address in relation to this topic are in Ephesians 4:17-26. Paul here writes:
This, therefore, I am saying and solemnly declaring in the Lord, that no longer are you to order your behavior as the Gentiles order their behavior in the futility of their mind, being those who have had their understanding darkened, who have been alienated from the life of God through the ignorance which is in them, through the hardening of their hearts, who, being of such a nature as to have become callous, abandoned themselves to wantonness, resulting in a performing of every uncleanness in the sphere of greediness.The Holman Christian Standard Bible and the The Darby Bible Translation similarly follow suit with the Wuest translation above; and the more current ESV version comes pretty close (esp. with regards to v. 25), but still leaves one a little wondering if the putting off of the old man and putting on the new man are something that we are still to do. So what you notice above, and what is not very apparent in the majority of translations of these passages here in Ephesians, is the fact that, similar to Rom. 6:6 and Col. 3:9, the putting off of the “old man” and the putting on of the “new man” are actions that have happened at a time in the past (“have” or “having put off”/“have put on”), and is not something that we are still to do.
But as for you, not in this manner did you learn Christ, since indeed, as is the case, you heard, and in Him were taught just as the truth is in Jesus, that you have put off [verb; aorist middle infinitive] once for all with reference to your former manner of life the old man which is being corrupted [verb; present passive participle] according to the passionate desires of deceit; moreover that you are being constantly renewed [verb; present passive infinitive] with reference to the sprit of your mind; and that you have put on [verb; aorist middle infinitive] once for all the new man which after God was created in righteousness and holiness of truth. Wherefore, having put off [verb; aorist middle participle] the lie once for all, be speaking truth each with his neighbor, because we are members belonging to one another. Be constantly angry with a righteous indignation, and stop sinning. (Kenneth Wuest Expanded Translation; words in brackets mine).
In agreement with Kenneth Wuest’s translation above, R. C. H. Lenski similarly notes,
The first and third infinitives are aorists: to put off the old man and put on the new are punctiliar actions, done once, done once for all….“That you put off or away from yourselves (middle) once for all the old man” refers to a definite and permanent break….Nor does the aorist indicate successive individual instances….The new man is put on as the old is put off, by one decisive act….At one time our nature, as it centered in the ego [ourselves], was “old,” like Adam since the fall, “flesh;” by grace this old man is replaced in us by the new man, in the very center of our being or ego. Not this or that part of us has become new, but our inward being which was once old.[1]All this takes us back to the verses earlier referred to in Ezekiel, whereby God said He would completely “remove” from us our hearts of stone, and “replace” them with brand new hearts of flesh; and that it would be one, new, undivided heart (11:19). This restoration is not some pie in the sky by and by idealism, but is here, in the here and now. The Word has become flesh, and dwells among us! Indeed, He is now in us. We being born-again by an incorruptible Seed that is within us. And we have this treasure in our earthen vessels. God has personally taken up residence in the tabernacles of these fleshly bodies of ours. It is no longer about the tabernacle of Moses and the temple of Solomon; it is about our bodies now being God’s very temple in which His Shekinah glory now lives and dwells within us with nothing unholy remaining in us. Praise God!
Remember John Murray’s statement at the beginning of this article, and what he said with regards to the misunderstanding of these two concepts of the “old man” verses “new man?” He stated with regards to those who believe the believer is both the old and new man simultaneously: “This interpretation does not find support in Paul’s teaching; Paul points to something different. And the concept which his teaching supports is of basic significance for the biblical ethic.” Indeed, it is! It is extremely important for our biblical ethic.
As you noticed, I used a translation above on Ephesians that takes note of the Greek verbs used in the “aorist middle” tense and voice that Wuest and Lenski affirm as a one-time event which has already occurred, and not something which is still to continually occur; because what we are talking about that has happened here is an event that, according to the parallel passages in Romans and Colossians, is a decisive act that happened once-and-for-all on the cross. In those two epistles, the aorist passive indicative was used in Romans, and the aorist middle participle was used in Colossians. And as Mounce had said before, unless the context and Scripture as a whole should lead us to think otherwise, “the aorist tense describes an undefined action that normally occurs in the past,” and not that which is to continually occur throughout our entire Christian life (which most translations seem to mistakenly infer); and it is in the “middle” voice, meaning, that the subject (us) initiates the action and participates in the results of the action (saying nothing of the fact of how in other places of Scripture it is said that it is God who also enables us to “participate” in all of this and to even initiate a response. But that’s another subject for another time). And by the way, maybe this is just one of the reasons that most of the translations see it as “us” who are still to do the putting off, since this verb here is not in the “passive” voice (John Stott sure did with regards to Gal. 5:24 in our earlier discussion in part 3). But neither is it in the "passive" voice in Colossians, and it is overwhelmingly translated by the majority of translations there as an action which in some sense is done by us no less, but as already having occurred in the past.
But there is another invalid contextual reason for this misunderstanding that we are still to do this here in Ephesians in many translations, as we will soon just see below. But before we talk about that, as we noticed previously in Romans 6:6, the verb “was crucified” was an aorist passive indicative; and is translated in most translations as “was,” “were,” “is” or “has” been crucified. It is an “aorist” verb, which has been determined by Mounce, as earlier noted, to “normally” be an event that occurred in the past, and it is “passive” in this particular case because it denotes an action that is done to us by someone other than ourselves. “Indicative” just means that it really occurred. And where most of the translations have translated the two aorist middle participles in Col. 3:9-10 as an event that has also already occurred in the past at the cross, in Ephesians 4:25 (also an aorist middle participle) many translations have chosen not to do so; again, making it sound like the action is something that we are still to continually do as opposed to it having already been done in us once-and-for-all in the past. So verse 25 is similarly saying along with these other aorist middle participles in Colossians that we have in the past “put off falsehood” (the deceit of the old man in v. 22), in order to “speak truth with his neighbor.” As John Murray noted earlier, a proper understanding of all this is of basic significance in moving us all forward to a proper “biblical ethic,” and for which many have only muddied the waters. And I would take it a step further by adding to Murray’s words that not only is it "of basic significance" to our biblical ethic, but “to an extremely radical and life-changing biblical ethic.” And it is even as Martyn Lloyd Jones has enthusiastically affirmed, “If only every true Christian in the world today realized that this new creation, this new man, this new being, was within him, the whole Church would be revolutionized! All our failures, all our sins, are ultimately to be traced to the fact that we do no realize as we should what God has done to us, and the character and the nature of the new man, the new life, that He has put within us.”[2] I could not agree with him any more.
Again, John Murray notes here,
…at no point is the emphasis of Scripture upon the radical breach with sin more patent and pointed than in connection with the relation which the believer sustains to the death and resurrection of Christ…we have erased the clear line of demarcation which Scripture defines. As a result we have lost our vision of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Our ethic has lost its dynamic and we have become conformed to this world. We know not the power of death to sin in the death of Christ….For when Paul is dealing with the newness of life…what is thrust into the foreground is not the fact that Christ died and rose again for believers…, but rather the fact that believers died and rose again with Christ….It is this abiding relationship to the death and resurrection of Christ…that constitutes the power, the dynamic, in virtue of which believers live the life of death to sin and of the newness of obedience….“We died to sin”—this is Paul’s thesis. He is dealing with death to sin as an actual and practical fact, shall we not say existential fact?….To suppose that the old man has been crucified and still lives or has been raised again from this death is to contradict the obvious force of the import of crucifixion. And to interject the idea that crucifixion is a slow death and therefore to be conceived of as a process by which the old man is progressively mortified until he is finally put to death is to go flatly counter to Paul’s terms. He says “our old man has been crucified” [Rom. 6:6], and not “our old man is in the process of being crucified.”[3]With regards to these infinitive verbs in Ephesians, it has all basically come down to one’s own private interpretation as to whether these are infinitives of result or infinitives of command (imperatives). Commands tell us to still do something; results are what they are: the result of something that has already happened.
[Additionally, I might add, it is our fleshly bodies that are “in the process” of mortification, not our “old man.” We don’t put to death what has already been put to death].
It is very crucial for us to realize and to take notice at this venture of the fact that these three infinitives in Ephesians of “to put off,” “being renewed,” and “to put on” (and also the present tense participle verb of the old man “advancing” in corruption), that Paul uses the aorist tense with regards to having “put off” and to having “put on,” but then switches tracks using the Greek present tense of the former old man continually advancing in corruption in juxtaposition to us now continually being renewed in the spirit of our mind after having already put on the new man. If Paul had in mind that we are to still “continually” put off the old man (who, by the way, Paul says in the Greek here only gets worse, not better) and that we are to still “continually” put on the new man, then Paul would have used the Greek present tense in both of these instances as well. But Paul doesn't, indicating to us that he has something entirely different in mind. What he is indicating to us is that both actions of “putting off” the old man and “putting on” the new man are actions that have occurred once-and-for-all in the past with each having their own “continually” resulting actions when once operative. At conversion, the old man becomes inoperative for service with his ever-advancing corruption that only gets worse; while the new man becomes operative for service to God with only a continual renewal to advance in all true righteousness and holiness. This is the antithesis that Paul is describing between the old man and the new man here in Ephesians, and in agreement with Col. 3:9-10 and Rom. 6:6-7. For one to overlook these differences in tenses that Paul places on these three infinitives is to cause one to misunderstand and misinterpret what it is that Paul is truly trying to tell us here. Two of these infinitives are purposefully used by Paul with the aorist tense verb in the sense of denoting what was once-and-for-all done as a result of us being in Christ, while the third infinitive is tactfully used by Paul in the present tense to denote what is the continual renewal of the one who is the new man in Christ. As one can very well see, these first two infinitives are aorists of result, not imperatives; while the third one is a present tense denoting something we are still to do as a result of us being a new man. We have put off the old man and have put on the new man as a result of what we were taught at conversion concerning the truth that is in Christ, with the resulting disposition of only continually advancing in corruption if still unregenerate as the old man; or, we are continually being renewed in the spirit of our minds if we are the regenerate new man. Why else would Paul purposefully refer to one of these infinitives using the present tense, while leaving the other two infinitives as the aorist tense? The answer, it seems to me, is quite obvious. Paul was speaking of having putting off the old man and having putting on the new man in the same way he had instructed the Colossians and the Romans―as a thing of the past! Paul would not be contradicting himself here in Ephesians, with what he has clearly already stated to us in Romans and Colossians.
With the “aorist” tense usage of these infinitive verbs here in Ephesians (as well as with its usage in Romans and Colossians), you would think that this would make the argument tip the scales in favor of the idea that we are talking about a past incident that has already happened, and not something that we are continually still to do. And this is even buttressed by the immediate third "aorist" tense used in Eph. 4:24 of the new man having been “created according to (or like) God.” Again, our new man here is not denoted as in the process of being created but has once-and-for-all in the past been created in God's image. The triple force and usage of this aorist tense in this immediate context will not allow for any other interpretation that sees any of this as commands for us still to do. And no one that I know of believes that this third aorist in verse 24 denotes that we are still in the process of being created in God’s image. Even the Greek expositor Alford in his Greek Testament, though not convinced we have once-and-for-all put off the old man, still believes here that we were created in God's image once-and-for-all in the past at our conversion: “mark the aorist, as historical fact, once for all, in Christ. In each individual case, it is not created again, but put on.” (Grk. Testament, vol. 3, p. 124). To force any other meaning upon the text here is reading into the Greek text what just isn’t there. To do so would be only for a priori doctrinal reasons and not for exegetical reasons based upon the immediate context. The image of God found in the believer at conversion in Christ is a far more exceedingly glorious thing than Adam ever had, or could have had at that time, which is now Christ (or God) in us, the hope of Glory. The doctrine of the restoration within us of the divine image of God in Christ, as implied in Paul’s words here in this Ephesians’ passage, is no small thing to be overlooked. It became immediate and final in us when we were born as the new man in Christ, just as the opposite became immediate and final in us when we were born as the old man in Adam. But then again, when one’s own theology about things starts to get into the mix of things here it begins to muddy up one’s ideas and thoughts of maybe what the text is really saying to us here, as it did for Alford above when Paul said “you” (Gk., humas) put off the old man and put on the new man. Like John Stott earlier, Alford stumbled over the fact that we actually have a part in doing this, as Col. 3:9-10 also denotes, unlike the passage in Rom. 6:6 which denotes our passive part in all of this through the hand of God. But both our active part and God’s passive part all have a play in this. So, in this particular case now before us it has all come down to whether we are speaking of the results of something that has already happened, or whether we are speaking of imperatives (or commands) that are still telling us to continually do something. But just as Paul in using the aorist tense is not commanding us to be created in God’s image, neither is he commanding us to put off the old man and put on the new man. All of this is a result of what happened to us when we were first taught about Christ and had faith in that message. In that instant we were given a new birth. In that instant we were born-again as a new man created in God’s image.
John Murray again notes here:
Though there is no reasonable question that the infinitive occurs with imperative force in the New Testament, Ephesians 4:22, 24 could scarcely be an instance. It is not cited as such by any of the above [Greek] authorities [and he lists F. Blass; E. DeWitt Burton; J. H. Moulton; G. B. Winer and A. T. Robertson as some of these leading authorities].[4]The “aorist” tense (in contradistinction to the "present" tense used for one of these infinitives) really settles the issue here, as it rightly should, and John Murray makes note of this in what he believes to be a proper translation of the text in agreement with Kenneth Wuest and the other translations as noted above, by again stating,
It would not be, however, in accord with the general (if not constant) characteristic of the aorist to interpret these aorist infinitives in this way [and he cites Burton, A. T. Robertson and Winer again in support of his conclusions].[5]Additionally, the two other passages mentioned in Colossians and Romans that are decisively translated as an event that has already occurred in the past in all major translations, lends tremendous support and weight to this idea that this is how these verses in Ephesians should likewise be translated. Far from being negated in affirming this belief, these verses in Romans and Colossians confirm what should be affirmed in Ephesians. Ephesians corroborates what Romans and Colossians emphatically substantiate. They really do lend force to answering and settling the question once-and-for-all on how we should translate the text here in Ephesians. This is truly comparing Scripture with Scripture.
In reality, the Ephesians text actually mirrors the Colossians text, though with a slight variation. For except for the dative plural as noted below in the Greek text of the Colossians text, in verses 9-10 in Colossians there is a similarity to Ephesians in the varying back and forth between the aorist and present tense verbs. Colossians says: “Do not lie (‘continually,’ present tense) to one another, since you have put off (aorist tense) the old man with his practices (dative plural) and have put on (aorist tense) the new man, who is being renewed (‘continually,’ present tense) in knowledge according to the image of his Creator” (HCSB). Thus we could paraphrase the verse as follows: “Do not keep lying to one another, since you have put off in the past the old man with his continual practices, and have put on in the past the new man which is continually being renewed in knowledge…”
Similarly in the Ephesians text (often called the “twin epistle” to Colossians), the verb tenses again vary back and forth from aorist tense to present tense: “you took off (aorist tense) your former way of life, the old man that is (‘continually,’ present tense) corrupted by deceitful desires; you are being renewed (‘continually,’ present tense) in the spirit of your minds; you put on (aorist tense) the new man, the one created (aorist tense) according to God’s likeness in righteousness and purity of the truth” (4:22-24, HCSB).
As in the Colossians text, we could paraphrase Ephesians as follows: “you put off in the past the old man with his continual corruption [the dative plural “practices” in Colossians]; and you are continually being renewed, having in the past put on the new man, and having in the past been created according to God’s likeness in all holiness and righteousness according to truth.” It is also extremely important to realize here that Paul is not saying to the Ephesians that the continual corruption of the old man continues to exist once we are saved, but that it was once what is part and parcel to the old man before being put off. Some have mistakenly supposed that the verse seems to read that this corruption is still ongoing in the believer, but it's not. Such a continual “corruption by deceitful desires” ended when the old man died and was put off and away from us in Christ on the cross. Again, that is what Rom. 6:6 specifically states. Don't take my word on it, take God's Word on it. Don't argue with me, argue with God!
So, what we see here between Colossians and Ephesians is a wonderful interplay between that which was and that which is; between that which is behind us as opposed to that which is now before us. When we became Christians we cast aside our old tattered garments and filthy rags of the flesh, exchanging them for the richness of the garments of Christ’s righteousness. What was formerly continuing and advancing in corruption, is now continually advancing in the renewal of our minds unto holiness in all righteousness and truth. Praise God! Do YOU see this? Oh, I hope you do.
And so, instead of running counter to Romans and Colossians, one would only expect that the Ephesians' passages to reflect and focus on the very same line of thought, which indeed they do! We cannot be told by Paul here in Ephesians to put off what he twice has said elsewhere has already been put off. Those who translate these Ephesians' passages here in the past tense are in good company with the entire context of Paul’s writings elsewhere and the normal usage of the aorist tense verb which, according to Mounce, “normally occurs in the past.”[6]
John MacArthur and The Expositor’s Greek NT similarly see it this way, and we will get to them shortly. But suffice it to say for now, John Murray translates Eph. 4:20-24 as such,
But ye have not so learned Christ, if so be ye have heard him and have been taught by him as the truth is in Jesus, so that ye have put off, according to the former manner of life, the old man who is corrupted according to the lusts of deceit, and are being renewed in the spirit of your mind, and have put on the new man who after God has been created in righteousness and holiness of truth.[7]So in reality, Ephesians 4:22-25a are statements of fact; and vv. 25b-32 are what we are still to do as result of these facts. And the parallel texts in Romans and Colossians reflect this same idea as well.
Now before moving on, we need to first of all reflect on the description here, “ye have put off, according to the former manner of life, the old man who is corrupted [present tense; lit., ‘continually corrupted’] according to the lusts of deceit.” Once more, John Murray is worth noting here:
Can we possibly think of a believer as answering to this description? To what characterization he must answer if he is still an old man as well as a new man?…The contrast which Paul institutes when he says “But ye have not so learned Christ” indicates that he conceives of his believing readers as answering to an entirely different identification. This former manner of life which is the old man’s pattern is no longer theirs; “ye have not so learned Christ”….But if the pattern of the believer’s life is so different it would be strange indeed for Paul to characterize him as an old man when the [continual] pattern of the old man is precisely that of the former manner of life. The antithesis between the past and the present, which is the burden of Paul’s message here, will not permit the incongruity of this construction…It is altogether consonant with the contrast introduced in verse 20—“ye have not so learned Christ”—to regard verse 22 as the consequence flowing from this “learning” of Christ.[8] Ye have learned Christ in such a way that ye have put off the old man.…The putting on of the new man, referred to in verse 24, is most suitably taken as the result [of having put off the old man]….The new man created after God (Ephesians 4:24) is surely the new creation (Ephesians 2:10). It is scarcely compatible with the concept of the new creation to think of it as that which we progressively become.[9]Before reading any further, I would also highly recommend reading the first footnote referenced above in Murray’s statement above. It states one more unwarranted reason why some would choose to say that these infinitives are imperatives (commands for us to still do) as opposed to an action that has already been done in the past. But like I said, the overwhelming testimony of Scripture argues for the idea that the “old man” is not someone that we are to still “put off,” but who we have already put off in the past!
So, simply put, sin has been entirely eradicated and is no longer party to the new man, and as Murray notes, “the antithesis between the past and the present, which is the burden of Paul’s message here, will not permit the incongruity of this construction” (ibid). This concept above of “having learned of Christ” as referring to what we learned of God in coming to Christ at conversion is aptly described for us by Christ Himself in John 6:45, “It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall be all taught of God. Every man therefore that has heard, and has learned of the Father, comes to Me’ ” (NKJV). Similarly, Paul reiterated this same idea again in Rom. 6:17, in the context of having put off the old man in verse 6 at our new birth: “But thanks be to God, that, whereas ye were servants of sin, ye became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching whereunto ye were delivered” (Rom. 6:17, ASV).
Dutch Reformed Pastor and theologian, Anthony Hoekema, concurs:
With John Murray (Principles of Conduct, pp. 214-19), I prefer to think of the verbs here as meaning “this is how you did learn Christ,” rather than “this is how you must learn Christ…”[10]Shouldn’t Paul’s comments in Rom. 6:17 above (in the context of having put off the old man), and as well as the comments of Christ above, drive this truth home to us of what it is we are to exactly understand by these words, “having learned of Christ”? I would sure hope to think so by now!
Additionally, the antithesis between the “ever advancing corruption” (Gk. present tense) of the old man “according to the lusts of deceit,” and the new man who “has been created in righteousness and holiness of truth,” reveals that from out of the one disposition of the “deceit” (from all liars and the father of liars) flows “ever advancing corruption.” Whereas, from the “truth” (the Father of all truth and those who live and walk in truth), flows all “righteousness and holiness” and being “continually renewed” in the spirit of our minds.
Bitter and sweet water cannot flow from the same well, my brethren. If a tree is made good, its fruit will be good; if it is bad, it’s fruit will be bad. And “people do not pick figs from thorn bushes, or grapes from briars” (cf. Mat. 12:33; Lke. 6:44).
The truth of the matter is, is that from this “old man” being described here in Ephesians, there proceeds continually “advancing corruption.” The one who is born of God does not “continually advance in corruption!” Most bible margins cross-reference this verse with Jeremiah 17:9, which reads: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and incurable; who can know it?” (DBT). And most Christians often quote this verse to validate their corrupt lifestyles and way of living; but Jeremiah is not saying that all hearts are “deceitful.” On the contrary, the man who trusts in the Lord, and whose confidence is in Him, is “like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit” (v. 8). The “deceitful” individual, on the other hand, “trusts in man” and “depends on the flesh for his strength;” he is “cursed….like a bush in the wastelands; he will not see prosperity when it comes. He will dwell in the parched places of the desert, in a salt land where no one lives” (vv. 5-6).
Matthew Henry thus concludes with these thoughts in Jer. 17:5-11:
He who puts confidence in man, shall be like the heath in a desert, a naked tree, a sorry shrub, the product of barren ground, useless and worthless. Those who trust to their own righteousness and strength, and think they can do without Christ, make flesh their arm, and their souls cannot prosper in graces or comforts. Those who make God their Hope, shall flourish like a tree always green, whose leaf does not wither. They shall be fixed in peace and satisfaction of mind; they shall not be anxious in a year of drought. Those who make God their Hope, have enough in Him to make up the want of all creature-comforts. They shall not cease from yielding fruit in holiness and good works. The heart, the conscience of man, in his corrupt and fallen state, is deceitful above all things. It calls evil good, and good evil; and cries peace to those to whom it does not belong. Herein the heart is desperately wicked; it is deadly, it is desperate. The case is bad indeed, if the conscience, which should set right the errors of other faculties, is a leader in the delusion (Matthew Henry’s Commentary).Now we could probably end this discussion right here based upon what has already just been stated with regards to Rom. 6:6, Col. 3:9-10, and Eph. 4:22-23, with the understanding and point being that we have all “put off” the old man and “have put on” the new man (both being experiences that have already occurred in the past); and that when we talk about dealing with present sin, it is not our old sinful nature that is any longer sinning but our fleshly body’s propensity to have its lusts and cravings satisfied. Such good news should give us great confidence of who we now are in Christ, as opposed to who we now no longer are in Adam. Truly, greater is He that is in us than he that is in the world, of the flesh and of the Devil. But before moving on, I would also like to discuss a couple of more verses that have been mistranslated and that lend further support to this idea of us “having put off” the old man with his evil ways and deeds.
The majority of translations, in similar fashion to Eph. 4:22-23, mistakenly translate Jam. 1:21; Heb. 12:1 and 1Pet. 2:1 as something that we are still to do, rather than something that has already been done in the past. In speaking pretty much for the rest of the translations, the NIV translates James 1:21,
Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you (NIV).The phrase “get rid of” is the old aorist tense verb that we have been talking about all along in this article, which, as has already been discussed, denotes an action that normally occurs in the past, unless the context would make us think otherwise. The Greek word, apothemenoi, for “get rid of” is used here and elsewhere of putting off “as a filthy garment” (J.F.B), and is the same verb usage found in Eph. 4:25 and Colossians 3:9-10 discussed earlier, of “having put off” [the aorist middle participle] all falsehood at our new birth. It is, interestingly, used again in two more places besides the one here in James. It's second occurrence is in Heb. 12:1, which literally translated reads, “having laid aside every weight and the sin which so easily entangles us, let us run with patience the race that is set before us.” The third occurrence is in 1Pet. 2:1-2, which also literally translated reads, “having put away therefore all wickedness, all deceit, hypocrisies, envies, and all evil speaking. As newborn babes desire the sincere milk of the word…” Paul, James, Peter and even the author of Hebrews are all talking about one and the selfsame thing. They are not talking about an action that is still to be done, but about an action that has already taken place in the past. The online Greek Interlinear Lexicon at Biblehub.com, along with Young’s Literal Translation of James 1:21, literally reads,
Wherefore having put aside [aorist middle participle again] all filthiness and superabundance of evil, in meekness be receiving the engrafted word, that is able to save your souls.Here James is talking about having put off as a garment the misdeeds of the flesh through the engrafted (or implanted) Word of God, which was the word of faith (or the gospel) that we believed in when we first got saved, similar to Paul’s idea in Eph. 4:20-24. And James says that we are to keep believing in that engrafted Word in order to save our souls from this untoward generation. It is what James later calls works of faith in his second chapter.
In 1Pet. 2:1-2, the online Greek Interlinear at Biblehub.com, and Young’s Literal Translation, literally reads,
Having put aside [aorist middle participle], then, all evil, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envyings, and all evil speakings; like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation.In chapter 1, verse 22, Peter seems to buttress this idea when he says, “Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth [i.e., the gospel],” and then continues this same line of thought in 2:1 of what it was we repented of.
Expositor’s Bible Commentary also notes here with regards to 1Pet. 2:1: “Rid yourselves represents the aorist participle apothemenoi, not an imperative [i.e. a command]…he [Peter] is reminding them of their baptism, which was the focal point of their commitment to Christ, when they stripped off the old life and made a new beginning in repentance and faith.”[11] Praise God! Are you now seeing all of this for what it really is saying to us. We are Christ’s freemen, and many haven’t even begun to comprehend the realization of all of this yet! What many Christians are erroneously envisioning in many places of Scripture that they are still to do, they have already done! This is not to discount what we are still to do, but just to say that in many places it is considered a done deal, and that we are to live and act accordingly. In light of this new-found revelation of who we now are in Christ, we can now start reckoning ourselves indeed dead unto sin and alive unto God. Do you see that?
And finally, of Heb. 12:1, The Greek Interlinear Lexicon at Biblehub.com, and in Young’s Literal Translation, again literally reads,
Therefore, we also having so great a cloud of witnesses set around us, every weight having put off [aorist middle participle], and the closely besetting sin, through endurance may we run the contest that is set before us.Similarly, the Greek expositor Kenneth Wuest acutely became aware of the aorist tense of the participle here in Hebrews, translating his English translation also with “having put off.”
Clearly, none of this is to deny that we never have to put off sin―we do! It is just that here in these above verses the apostles are talking about things that have already been done by the severing of our old sinful nature from our fleshly bodies when we died with Christ; so that we can now begin to reckon it as so in our mortal bodies and minds; this latter, for all practical intents and purposes, being based upon the former. Paul teaches us quite plainly that the way of our sanctification is in realizing this truth about who we are as Christians, and then putting such knowledge into practice. “Reckon it so!” says Paul. “Reckon yourselves dead to sin, but alive unto God.” It doesn’t get anymore clearer than that! And so the activity of the believer is the evidential reality of the Spirit’s presence and activity in our hearts and lives, and the activity of the Holy Spirit in us is the cause or the reason for our own activity in reckoning as good as dead the former lusts of the flesh.
And so by God having done all this for us, it gives us great confidence towards fighting the good fight of faith that lays ahead of us. By this “having put off” we have been made more than conquerors through Him that loved us. And we can now continue to “put off” the lusts of the flesh based upon this fact. We don’t have to “own-up to” these sins any longer! They are no longer ours to own up to.
This entire sanctification process began at salvation with the crucifixion of our old and sinful spirit-man; with the resulting new creation of the new man in the image of Christ in all righteousness and holiness. This initial process of our sanctification was finished at the cross and realized in all who come to faith in Christ. That unholy thing that use to reside in us is dead, being replaced with the new man created in all righteousness and holiness after God’s very own image and likeness according to Eph. 4:24. And this process continues in the renewing of our physical fleshly minds and ultimately in the mortification of the fleshly members of our bodies.
Dead Reckoning
For years, Watchmen Nee, after his conversion had been taught to reckon himself dead to sin. He says,
I reckoned from 1920 until 1927. The more I reckoned that I was dead to sin, the more alive I clearly was [to it]. I simply could not believe myself dead, and I could not produce the death. Whenever I sought help from others I was told to read Romans 6:11, and the more I read Romans 6:11 and tried to reckon, the further away death was: I could not get at it. I fully appreciated the teaching that I must reckon, but I could not make out why nothing resulted from it. I have to confess that for months I was troubled. I said to the Lord, “If this is not clear, if I cannot be brought to see this which is so very fundamental, I will cease to do anything. I will not preach anymore; I will not go out to serve thee anymore; I want first of all to get thoroughly clear here.” For months I was seeking, and at times I fasted, but nothing came through.Paul says, “Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that from now on we should not serve sin.” (Rom. 6:6, AKJV). Paul is telling us that this is what we need to “know” if we are going to amount to anything and be soldiers for Christ in His kingdom. It is in the realization of knowing that our old man is dead! Once we “know” this, what is to follow? “Likewise reckon you also yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (v. 11, AKJV). This is the natural sequence and order of events: It is “knowing…that our old man is crucified….Likewise reckoning…yourselves to be dead indeed to sin.” Or, knowing this…reckon it so! I reckon it so because I know―for my Bible tells me so! Understanding this sequence of events is so vital to us becoming overcomers in this life.
I remember one morning—that morning was a real morning and one that I will never forget—I was upstairs sitting at my desk reading the Word and praying, and I said, “Lord, open my eyes!” And then in a flash I saw it. I saw my oneness with Christ. I saw that I was in Him, and that when He died I died. I saw that the question of my death was a matter of the past and not of the future, and that I was just as truly dead as He was because I was in Him when He died. The whole thing had dawned upon me. I was carried away with such joy at this great discovery that I jumped from my chair and cried, “Praise the Lord, I am dead!” I ran downstairs and met one of the brothers helping in the kitchen and laid hold of him. “Brother,” I said, “do you know that I have died?” I must admit he looked puzzled. “What do you mean?” he said, so I went on: “Do you not know that Christ has died? Do you not know that I died with Him? Do you not know that my death is no less truly a fact than His?” Oh, it was so real to me! I longed to go through the streets of Shanghai shouting the news of my discovery. From that day to this I have never for one moment doubted the finality of that word: “I have been crucified with Christ.”[12]
As Michael Horton states on a more positive note this time,
Life in Christ by the power of the Spirit is not something to be attained by us but something that has already been given to us....This is why Paul now turns in Romans 6 from the indicative mood (announcing what is done) to the imperative mood (exhorting us to act as a result)....Sin cannot rule those who are baptized into Christ...because in truth they have passed out of death into life....We are called to obey now, not in order to enter into that liberty, but because God has already brought us into it! No one who is in Christ is still in Adam, defined by the reign of sin and death. It is simply a statement of fact.[13]So now what does it mean to “reckon”? Well, it is an accounting term. Accounting is a reckoning of some facts, not feelings. One plus one equals two, not three, four or five. It is a given. And because we are factually and indeed “dead” in Christ, Paul is now telling us to reckon it as so in our bodies! This new found wealth and resource of information for becoming overcomers has been placed into our account and we can now act upon it with the complete and full backing of the government and kingdom of our heavenly Father. In other words, "you can take that to the bank!"
Unfortunately, in presenting this truth of our union with Christ, the emphasis has been placed more on “reckoning” for something to be done from that point, rather than on something that has already happened to us in the past. Often, the “reckoning” becomes the starting point, when we are really to see ourselves as already dead and enabled to now be able to actually start mortifying the deeds of our flesh.
The problem with many Christians today is that they are attempting to “reckon” without “knowing” first. Paul is clear: “knowing” precedes the “reckoning.” Once we “know” something to be true, only then do we start to rise up in faith and begin to reckon it as so. Unless we understand that we are in fact dead to sin in Christ, the more we reckon, the less likely we will mortify our flesh. This was the problem that Watchman Nee was talking about earlier. We will never faithfully reckon something as so if we do not believe it to be true about ourselves in the first place! And this is the point in everything that we have been discussing so far! If we do not “know” something to be true about ourselves, how can we draw upon such an “account” and begin to start reckoning it as so about ourselves? The truth is, we can’t! Blind faith will not help us. Only a faith that comes by hearing a Word of knowledge from God will empower us to rise to the occasion from our weak and beggarly condition. And in this particular instance, it is faith in the fact that we are indeed dead in Christ with the resulting death-knell to sin that makes us realize as with Watchman Nee,
…in a flash I saw it. I saw my oneness with Christ. I saw that I was in Him, and that when He died I died. I saw that the question of my death was a matter of the past and not of the future, and that I was just as truly dead as He was because I was in Him when He died. The whole thing had dawned upon me. I was carried away with such joy at this great discovery that I jumped from my chair and cried, “Praise the Lord, I am dead!”[14]If one is blind, they cannot distinguish between colors; or, if one lacks the faculty of hearing they cannot enjoy music. Yet music and color are in “fact” very real things, and their reality is unaffected by whether or not we are able to appreciate them or not. As Heb. 11:1 in the Darby translation states, faith “substantiates” to us the things of Christ. Many thousands of Christians are reading Romans 6:6, “our old man is crucified,” in disbelief. To a heart that “substantiates” this fact by faith this all becomes true for them. But to a heart of doubt it is nothing more than mere mental assent separated from spiritual illumination. And unless one is “illuminated” by God of these truths upon their souls, it will just not become a reality in their lives. Mental assent gets us nowhere, but true faith generated by God’s Word gets us everywhere. “In a flash,” as Watchman Nee says, one begins to walk in the light as He is in the light, never looking back to the life that once was. A great gulf has been fixed between us (the new man) and our former way of life (the old man); and never again shall the twain ever meet. All we need to do now is simply start reckoning it as so in our bodies. Fact, plus faith, equals a totally radical life-changing experience.
This revelation of who we are in Christ, once understood, will lead us to spontaneously have faith in Him in order to live out His resurrection power and life in us. It becomes another letting go; another trusting in Christ; another leap and jump of faith to conquer another stretch of land. The strong man (our former old man under the rule and sway of Satan) is bound, and we can now possess our possessions. The “giants” of the flesh mean nothing to us anymore. What Adam lost at the fall we are now taking back what truly and rightfully belongs to us in Christ Jesus. It is the inheritance of the saints “in light” to walk in this “light,” even as He is in the light; no longer walking in darkness, and no longer being of the night!
When our spirits are renewed with such a knowledge of God, we become of such a mind which can now control our physical fleshly minds and bodies and bring them under the control of the Holy Spirit. “The mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace,” says Paul (cf. Rom. 8:6). Whereas the mind “controlled by the flesh [or as dominated by the old man or sinful nature] cannot please God” (v. 8). Those who are born of man and of sin, conceive sin. But those who are born of God and of the Holy Spirit conceive holiness. If there is still some “inkling” of sin or morbid “life” left in us from the old man, then this insidious leaven was never really eradicated from us completely in the first place, as the Scriptures attest to us that it has been! Therefore, this saying of Christ would be true of all such people: “The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thy eye be single, thy whole body will be full of light. But if thy eye be evil, thy whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee is darkness, how great is that darkness!” (Mat. 6:22-23, WBS). But perish such a thought brethren of the new man in Christ. There is no light in the new heart that is called, “darkness.” We are the light, so now walk as the children of light!
Consider also this for one moment: What did the OT priests see when they walked “inside” the sanctified temple of God 24/7? Nothing but pure, unadulterated light; and except for the holy of holies as symbolically enveloped in darkness at that point and time in history, there was no darkness to be found anywhere! That place was lit-up all the time! What else did they see in the holy place (and even the high priest in holy of holies)? Gold! Nothing but pure, unadulterated gold everywhere. So too now inside our temples (our bodies), which that OT temple typified, there is nothing but continual light and pure gold in the person and work of Christ―even in the very new inner man of the heart! Unlike then, it is a light that now even shines upon the very throne of our hearts as typified in Holy of Holies that was once darkened by sin and the veil of our flesh; a veil which has now been removed in Christ: “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made His light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2Cor. 4:6; see also 3:16-18; 4:3-4; 2Pet. 1:19; Heb. 6:18-19; 10:19-22). Our fleshly bodies propensity to sin is the only thing that needs to be killed, burned, and whose ashes need removing outside of the camp (cf. Lev. 6:11; cp. also Rom. 8:13; Col. 3:5; 1Cor. 9:27). The throne of our heart has been purified, atoned for, redeemed and made right by the sprinkling of the blood of the Lamb where Christ now resides over us as the Ruler of our hearts. And similar to the priests that communed and were illuminated by God in the Holy Place, we too as God’s royal priesthood can now “eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in its fatness” (Isa. 55:2); “as the slaves of Christ doing the will of God from the soul, with will service as to the Lord and not to men” (cf. Eph. 6:6-7, lit., trans.); with His Word also becoming a lamp unto our feet, and a light unto our path.
Martin Luther, in similar fashion spoke of these three areas of the temple as being analogous to our heart, soul, and body. He writes,
In the tabernacle fashioned by Moses there were three separate compartments. The...holy of holies...the holy place...[and] the outer court....In this tabernacle we have the figure of man. His spirit is the holy of holies, where God dwells in darkness of faith, where no light is; for he believes that which he neither sees nor feels nor comprehends. His soul is the holy place, with its seven lamps, that is, all manner of reason, discrimination, knowledge, and understanding of visible and bodily things. His body, is the forecourt open to all, so that men may see his works and manner of life.[15]Luther continued to draw this imagery from 1Thes. 5:23, by further stating,
When the spirit that possesses the whole inheritance is preserved, both soul and body are able to remain without error and evil works. On the other hand, when the spirit is without faith, the soul together with the whole life cannot but fall into wickedness and error....As a consequence of this error and false opinion of the soul, all the works of the body also become evil and damnable....It is necessary that God preserve first our spirit, then our soul and body, not only from overt sins but from false and apparent good works.[16]There is much to be appreciated in the words of Luther here, and I highly respect his keen analysis of the temple’s structure and layout and how it relates to our bodies as now being God’s temple. And while I would agree with most of his analysis, the fact that the Holy of Holies is no longer dark, as he claims, needs to be further addressed.
In the NT, Christ is now said to be the light that shines in darkness and that the darkness does not overcome it (Jhn. 1:5); and that the people sitting in darkness were to see a great light (Mat. 4:16; Lke. 1:79). In other words, Christ’s light was going to overcome their darkness. Christ said that those who would believe in Him and follow Him would not abide in or walk about in darkness (Jhn. 8:12; 12:46) as typified in the holy of holies of old. And Peter says He has called us out of darkness into His marvelous light (cf. 1Pet. 2:9). As 2Cor. 4:6 denoted above, we are standing right in the glory and light of “the face of Christ.” Paul similarly says that at one time we were darkness, but now are we light in the Lord (cf. Eph. 5:8). And St. John likewise affirms the darkness is past, and the true light now shines; and that he who says he is in the light, but hates his brother, is still in darkness (cf. 1Jhn. 2:8-9). The Scriptures also state that if we are in Christ, then we are to walk in the light even as He is in the light (cf. 1Jhn. 1:7). And, again, Paul writes, we are children of the light and of the day, no longer children of darkness nor of the night (cf. 1Ths. 5:5). And once more in Rev. 21:23 and 22:5 the Lord again speaks of their being no darkness (a metaphor for sin and evil which makes His presence unapproachable) in His spiritual temple and city which is comprised of all of His people that make up this supernatural structure, “There shall be no night there (round about His throne)...for the Lord himself gives them (His servants) light...the glory of the Lord lightens it (the city; i.e., us), and the Lamb is the light thereof.” These passages in Revelation affirm everything that was already denoted in the gospels and in all the epistles, that there is “no darkness” whatsoever in us and that we are in the light even as He is in the light. There is no natural, carnal, or worldly light needed as depicted by the metaphors of the candles in the OT and the sun in Rev. 22:5, but everyone is spiritually illuminated and enlightened by Christ. Like Jesus had said, “If your eye be single, your whole body shall be full of light.” This was not true of the unregenerate scribes and Pharisees, but it is now true of all of us who are in Him. The Holy of Holies and the Holy Place, which depicts both our heart and soul, is now inundated with the light of Christ. And after the analogy of the outer court, which typifies our physical bodies, we are to present our bodies as a living sacrifice, wholly and acceptable to God, which is our spiritual act of worship (Rom. 12:1-2; 15:16; 1Pet. 2:5d); similar to Jepthah offering up his daughter by a vow as a living burnt offering to God (Jdg. 11); and even similar to Samuel who was dedicated to the service of the Lord by Hannah.
And to use just another analogy in Revelation, we are told of the city being made of pure gold, transparent as glass before God. And this figure of a transparent city, John says, is Christ’s bride—IT’S US! (Rev. 21:2, 9-10). And the fact that it is “transparent” reveals that there is no guile or deceit to be found in us. There is a transparency about us that is both real and true to God’s Spirit and holiness. Like Nathaniel, we are Israelites indeed in whom there is no guile. And it is inside these temples of our bodies that we now fellowship with Him in sweet communion in the eating of the bread on the table (which all the true priests of God enjoy), and in the drinking of His sprinkled blood. Something that we just cannot partake of if there is still some sin in our life (cp. 1Cor. 11:27-32).
Another way to look at all of this in beginning to understand who it is we really are now in Christ is in the idea that we are, in fact, Christ’s very own body (spiritually speaking). Is Christ’s body full of sin? Not on your life! We as members together with Him and of His body are all in the same state or condition that He is in. Is that which is unholy and sinful “joined” (or jointed) to that which is holy and without sin? To a certain extent, all that is true of Christ, is now true of us! Christ and His body are not the ministers or servants of sin, but of all righteousness and true holiness before God as Paul in Ephesians 4:24 has told us.
First John 5:18 has said: “No one who is born of God sins; but He [Christ] who was [likewise] born of God keeps him, and the evil one does not touch him” (NASB). Have you come to the realization of what this verse is saying to us? It says that we are born (lit., “begotten”) of God, and that Christ is born or, literally, "begotten" of God. And as He is, so are we! As John Stott notes, “John deliberately uses almost identical expressions to portray Christ and the Christian…both are said to be born of God.”[17] He that sanctifies and they that are sanctified are all one. Christ in God, God in Christ and He in us that we may all be one (cf. Jhn. 17:21-23).
A. T. Robertson, Marvin Vincent, Expositor's Gk. NT, and all of the major translations of the Bible and many commentators overwhelmingly express what has been stated above concerning 1Jhn. 5:18. The translation “him” rather than “himself” (KJV/NKJV) is preferred from the best texts (A and B) with the overwhelming contextual evidence that it is Christ who “was” (Gk., aorist passive) begotten of God, and that keeps the believer safe who “is” (Gk., perfect passive) begotten of God. The changing of these verb tenses is significant to understanding that there is a difference in relation between the One (Christ) who “was” (at an indefinite time in the past) born of God as opposed to the one who “is” born of God (at a specific point and time in the past; see NAS, ASV, ERV, WEB). In addition, the phrase “keeps him safe” recalls Jesus' own words noted also by John in his gospel where Jesus, the only begotten Son of God, is said to keep the believer's safe and asks God to protect them from the evil one: “While I was with them, I protected them and kept them safe....None has been lost....My prayer is….that You protect them from the evil one” (Jhn. 17:12, 15). So there is no reason to believe that John in his epistle here is stating anything different than what he stated about what Christ himself had said in His high priestly prayer. Additionally, John has also told us that the one who lives in Him will not sin (1Jhn. 3:6), and that no one born of God possessing the divine life of God will fall victim to sin (v. 9). As He (Christ) is, so are we! We are even told by John to walk as Christ walked (1Jhn. 2:6).
Wow! When you really (and I say “really”) get a hold of who you are in Christ (like Watchman Nee did), there is no telling what we can do in Him. Our new man is no different than who Christ is because as He is, so are we! We are in a sense all one and the same! We have been created in His image! And Christ, as well as us, have all been “born of God!” If Christ who was born of God committed no sin, what does that say for what we can do? Of course, Christ was the “only begotten Son” in the sense that He was from God and is God, whereas we are created beings and adopted as sons. But that holy thing that has been created in us and that has been “born of God” no longer sins. That’s what John over and over again keeps telling us. But because many still don’t get it, they just keep scratching their heads in disbelief and weaken the force of John's words to say something other than what he is really saying to us. Those born of God no longer make it a practice of habitually sinning. He doesn’t say that we never sin this side of heaven (see 1Jhn. 1:9), but that we just don’t make it our daily practice to do so any longer. Peter says that this is the legacy and example that Christ left for us to follow in His footsteps: “For you have been called for this purpose, since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps, who committed no sin, nor was any deceit found in His mouth” (1Pet. 2:21-22, NASB). The “example” that Christ left for us to follow was: (1) suffering; (2) not sinning, and; (3) not being deceitful. Let’s start walking! Let’s start following! We can now (not hopefully sometime later) do all things through Christ which strengthens us!
I’ll say it again, and I will say it only one more time: “We are no longer our worst enemy, our flesh is! Our new man is not our problem, our flesh is our problem. It is what is still to die, to be mortified—not our new man.” To crucify our new man would be to crucify Christ all over again, because we are now in Him and He in us! His crucifixion, as well as ours of our old former self, is a thing of the past! And we are to no longer say in our heart, “who will descend into the deep? (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead).” It is a done deal, and our life is now hid with Christ in God seated with Him in heavenly places. Just start to have faith! Just start to reckon it so! Our former “old man” can no longer make us do what we use to do if he is dead and no longer around to tell us what to do! We have an absolutely new Master! Sin shall no longer have dominion over you, because you are no longer under the law, but under grace. And so if our former self can no longer make us do what we use to do, then what does this tell us about our new man and what he is now capable of making us do? Surely, it can no longer be to sin, can it!?! This fact of this new-found revelation and reality alone can produce great faith within us brethren, making us realize that we are all truly more than conquerors through Him who has loved us. He who is Mighty truly has done great things within us!
Note this fact, and note it well: The old man with his propensity to sin is dead, removed far away from us outside the camp and from the presence of God and His temple through our Scapegoat. That holy thing that has been created in us is a perfect sinless work of God, born not of sinful man (of the flesh), but born of a sinless God by the Holy Ghost! Praise God! He whom the Son has set free is truly free indeed. There are no longer any spiritual chains that bind us. We have been loosed from our sins in order to go and sin no more. The ties that use to bind us have been completely severed. Our houses have been swept clean from every foul spirit. From start to finish our God sanctifies us through and through: First in our spirit, then in our soul, and finally in our bodies. Can I get an “Amen?”
The Christian’s will alone in “reckoning” these things to be so in and of itself does not produce the holy and godly living described above. But it is the vehicle that gets the ball moving forward similar to the Levite priests setting their feet into the Jordan river before the waters could actually begin to start parting. Human passivity will never produce the holiness and lifestyle that we are talking about here, and neither will just passionate pleading with God.
As Martyn Lloyd Jones succinctly notes,
The New Testament calls upon us to take action; it does not tell us that the work of sanctification is going to be done for us. That is why it does not put us into a clinic or hospital where the patient is told “it will be done for you,” and “Allow the Lord to do it for you.” It calls upon us to take action, and exhorts us to do so. And it tells us and commands us to do so for this reason, that we have been given the ability to do it. If we had not been given the ability, if we had not received the new nature as the result of the new birth, if we had not been given the new life, if the Spirit was not in us, then, of course, we should need someone to do it for us. But as we have been given the power and the ability and the capacity, the New Testament quite logically, and in perfect consistency with itself, calls upon us to do it. “Do not let sin reign in your mortal body” it says. “Do not present your members as instruments unto sin or unrighteousness.” Do not do it! This is something you and I have to do; it is not going to be done for us.”[18]Notice also that Paul said in the above verse quoted that we are to “present” our members (i.e., our bodies). What does he mean by this word “present”? It means the same thing that it did for those who use to make a concerted effort in presenting to God their animal sacrifices in the OT. Only this time it is in the presenting of our own physical bodies as a living sacrifice which Paul says is now “your [our] reasonable service” and “spiritual act of worship” (Rom. 12:1; cp. KJV and NIV). Presenting our bodies is as simple as flicking on the light switch in order for the light to begin to come on. We are the ones that just simply have to do it. In the OT God was not going to appropriate the sacrifices for the people, they had to appropriate or “present” them before God themselves. As the Creator of all things, God provided the animals (and in this case our bodies) and commanded the people (and us) how to offer them in order to receive their sanctification and blessing. But unless any of us begins to appropriate such sacrifices, nothing is ever going to happen. We will all just end up going nowhere fast.
Do you want to just end up going nowhere fast? If not, then begin to start reckoning yourself dead to sin and alive unto God. Begin appropriating by faith the offering up of your body unto God and begin to see what He does with all such sacrifices that are well-pleasing unto Him. Weymouth’s translation says of Rom. 12:1, “present all of your faculties to Him.” This includes even our minds. And I don’t need to remind you of the countless Scriptures that address that issue. This should all be common knowledge (and hopefully our “practice”) by now for all of you who have been Christians for some time now.
It’s a funny thing about thinking. A life committed to sanctification and personal holiness will always only be a figment of our own imagination apart from a disciplined mind. As David Needham has said,
If I am committed to holiness, I must face up to the fact that I am surrounded by an incessant bombardment from both the world and the prince of this world. They are calling out to me in sounds and shapes and ideas that precisely conform to the desires of my insatiable flesh. Already, countless automatic, sinful, chain-reaction thought patterns have been stored away in my brain, ready for instant recall. I hope it is not too late for Christians to welcome the radical, personal disciplines that will enable the church to start behaving as strangers in Vanity Fair.[19]During such moments that we would much sooner rather forget than remember, the desires of our flesh attempt to rush in on us in order to fill up the vacuum in our lives which many of us seem so often not able to endure. Therefore, the starting point for what we must do is to think upon what it is that we really believe in about ourselves.
Again, Needham writes,
Did he [God] give us [only] a dream to treasure, knowing full well it was only a dream? Is this the teaching of the epistles?Watchman Nee talks about this removal of the slave to sin that we formerly were in the past, along with the removal of the body’s capacity to sin, by way of an illustration of being unemployed. He writes:
No matter how discouraged we may be as to the sins in our own lives, once and for all you and I must reject the idea that sin is to be accepted as the unavoidable norm. We must reject the teaching that says there’s not too much we can do about it except to keep our confessions up-to-date, inhale the Spirit’s power, and then perhaps, enjoy a few seconds of cleanness before we start the miserable cycle all over again.
What are God’s expectations? The unmistakable answer is a life of genuine holiness.[20]
the body, which before had been a vehicle of sin, is unemployed (Rom. 6:6). Sin, the old master, is still about, but the slave who served him has been put to death and so is out of reach and his members are unemployed. The gambler’s hand is unemployed, the swearer’s tongue is unemployed, and these members are now available to be used instead “as instruments of righteousness unto God” (Rom. 6:13).[21]Nee also remarks in his footnotes that,
the verb katagero translated “destroyed” in Rom. 6:6 (A.V.) does not mean “annihilated,” but “put out of operation,” “made ineffective.” It is from the Greek root argos, “inactive,” “not working,” “unprofitable,” which is the word translated “idle” in Matthew 20:3, 6 of the unemployed…”.[22]Sin can still be present, in our bodies, but we know the deliverance from its power in ever-increasing measure day by day. In effect, our body has become "unemployed" from sin. And this deliverance is so real that John can boldly write: “Whosoever is begotten of God doeth no sin…he cannot sin” (1Jhn. 3:9, ASV). The propensity to sin is no longer in the nature of the one who is born of God. There is nothing “sinful” in this new birthing by the Holy Spirit that would drive us to sin any longer! This is why we are able to overcome it. All that is the result of the work of Christ, or “in Christ,” cannot sin; all that is the result of the work of Adam, or “in Adam” still can, and will, sin; and does so whenever the spirit of this world (Satan) is given the chance to exert his power and influence over such a person who is unregenerate.
Do you realize in consideration of all of this where the whole problem of sin lies? Sin no longer has its place in us, in the new man in Christ. It came in with the old man created in Adam; it went out with the old man crucified in Christ! Oh, I hope you are seeing this brethren! If you do, then victory over the world, the flesh, and the devil is truly yours for the taking. It really is. And it truly became mine when I began to get a hold of all of these truths, as it has for many others as well. Such truth, as truth should be, is extremely liberating and invigorating. Our consecration to God is no longer a consecration of our old man, but of our fleshly minds and bodies. Presenting ourselves “as alive unto God” as Paul exhorts us to do relates to the fleshly members of our bodies which have been severed or “unemployed” (as Nee put it) from our former old man with respect to serving its propensity to sin. Being now a “new man” we are now “alive” in order to be able to do this, whereas before we were “dead in sins and trespasses” and not able to do so!
There are many, many more passages like those described above that have often been misunderstood and misdirected at the saints when they are really referring to the “ain'ts,” if I may use such a word (and I address many more of these verses in an appendix in my book version of this topic with the same title). Often, many such texts are taken out of their context, even out of the context of the entire testimony of Scripture, to establish pretexts for false notions and ideas about ourselves. The end results are not very noble indeed.
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Footnotes:
[1] The Interpretation of Galatians, Ephesians, and Philippians, pp. 563, 568-569. Brackets mine.
[2] Darkness and Light, an Exposition of Ephesians 4:17-5:17, pp. 177-178.
[3] Principles of Conduct, p. 203, 205, 207, 208, 212.
[4] Ibid, footnote 4, pp. 214-215.
[5] Ibid, footnote 5, p. 215.
[6] Basics of Biblical Greek Grammar, see pages 194, 195 and 198.
[7] Ibid, pp. 215-216.
[8] Murray makes a note here with regards to these particular words and phrases concerning “learned” or “have learned” in verse 20, and “were taught” or “have been taught” in verse 21; and the tension that has been created with regards to them in their juxtaposition to the “putting off” of the old man and the “putting on” of the new man; and as to whether these last two phrases should be regarded as progressively occurring or as having already occurred. John Murray writes,
It is a question upon what the infinitives apothesthai [to put off] and endusasthai [to put on] depend. Winer (op, cit., pp. 321f.) thinks that apothesthai umas [to put off ye] depends on edidachthēte [have been taught]. It does not make a great deal of difference, it seems to me, to the exegesis of the passage whether these infinitives depend on emathete [learned] or edidachthēte [were taught]. In the exegesis presented above [on p. 217] I have taken them as depending upon emathete [learned]; and the thought then would be, ‘Ye have not so learned Christ as to walk as other Gentiles walk (a description of which is given in verses 17-19), but ye have learned Christ so as to put off the old man and put on the new man’. If these infinitives depend on edidachthēte, then the thought would be, ‘Ye have been taught by Christ to put off the old man and to put on the new man’, and the infinitives would express either the end contemplated in the teaching, or the content of the teaching, or the result actually following upon the teaching. But the governing thought is not affected, and the exegesis of the passage as a whole remains the same. At least these alternatives do not materially affect the main question at issue. (Principles of Conduct, footnote 6, p. 217; bracketed words mine for clarity of the Greek words).Lenski also adds here,
The three infinitives depend on “ye were taught” and state what the Ephesians were taught in connection with Christ. Because the minor clause intervenes, it was necessary to add umas; if the infinitives had followed immediately after “you were taught,” this pronoun would have been omitted, for the subject of an infinitive is normally that of the main verb. It is written only when, as here, there is a reason, or when the subject of the infinitive differs from that of the main verb….Paul keeps the main line of his thought, conversion away from the whole Gentile life and walk, and is not defining the general idea of “truth” or reality in Jesus…. these infinitives…denote actions [as]…the products of truth.[9] Ibid, pp. 216-217. Bracketed words mine.
It is not necessary to regard these infinitives as indirect discourse for original imperatives [or commandments]. Although the whole paragraph implies admonition, Paul nowhere uses “I admonish,” as he did in v. 1. We should not think that he is calling on the Ephesians to do what these infinitives state. They had learned Christ, they had heard and had been taught (three historical aorists), and Paul now states what they had been taught. “Did learn Christ,” like the “if” clause, puts beyond question the fact that the Ephesians had followed this teaching. Paul recalls its content to their minds. The “if” clause implies only this much, that if any member had not truly accepted the teaching—which Paul can scarcely believe—that person should certainly do so now.
The first and third infinitive are aorists: to put off the old man and put on the new are punctiliar actions, done once, done once for all (The Interpretation of Galatians, Ephesians, and Philippians, pp. 562-563; bracketed words mine).
[10] The Christian Looks at Himself, p.74.
[11] vol. 12, p. 228.
[12] The Normal Christian Life, pp. 64-65.
[13] A Place For Weakness, p. 145, 146.
[14] The Normal Christian Life, pp. 64-65.
[15] Luther's Works, ed. Jaroslar Pelikan [St. Louis: Concordia, 1956], 21:303
[16] ibid.
[17] Tyndale New Testament Commentaries, The Letters of John, p. 194.
[18] Romans, The New Man (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1972), p. 179.
[19] Birthright: Christian Do You Know Who You Are? (Sisters, OR: Multnomah Pub., 1999), p. 182.
[20] Ibid., p. 128.
[21] The Normal Christian Life (Wheaton: Tyndale, 1977), pp. 71-72.
[22] Ibid.
