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I. THE CHANGE OF THE SPIRIT'S DRESS.

1. We have the same idea before. "Death" is equivalent to the "putting off of the old," and "resurrection" to "putting on of the new." The figure of the change of dress to express change of moral character is frequent in Scripture. "Let thy priests be clothed with righteousness." Zechariah saw the high-priest change his filthy garments for festal robes when God "caused his iniquity to pass from him." See also Christ's parables of the Wedding Garment and Prodigal Son, and Paul's exhortation to Christ's soldiers to put off their night-gear, "the works of darkness," etc. In every reformatory the first thing done is to strip off and burn the rags of the new-comers, and then give them a bath, and dress them in clean clothes. Character is the garb of the soul. Habit means costume and custom.

2. The apostle hazards a mixed metaphor — "Put on the new man" — to show that what is put off and on is much more truly part of themselves than an article of dress. There is a deeper self which remains, the true man, the centre of personality. Thus the figure expresses the depth of the change and the identity of the person.

3. This entire change is assumed as having been realized at that point of time when the Colossians began to put their trust in Christ.

(1) Of course the contrast between the old and the new is greatest in converted heathens. With us, where Christianity is widely diffused, there is less room for a marked revolution. Many can point to no sudden change, or if they have been conscious of a change, have passed through it as gradually as night passes into day.

(2) But there are those who have grown up without God who must become Christians by sudden conversion. And why should this be regarded as impossible? Is it not often the case that some ignored principle has come, like a meteor in the atmosphere, into a man's mind, and exploded and blown to pieces the habits of a lifetime? And why should not this be so with the truth of God's great love in Christ?

(3) The New Testament does not insist that everybody must become a Christian in the same fashion. Sometimes there will be a dividing line between the two states as sharp as the boundary of adjoining kingdoms; sometimes the one will melt imperceptibly into the other. Sometimes the revolution will be as swift as that of the wheel of a locomotive, sometimes slow and silent as the movement of a planet.

4. But however brought about, this is a certain mark of the Christian life.

(1) If there be any reality in the act by which we have laid hold of Christ, old things will have passed away — tastes, desires, etc. — and all things will have become new, because we move with a new love, have a new hope, aim, song.

(2) This is a most needful test for those who put too much stress on believing and feeling. Nor is it less needful to remember that this is a consequence of faith in Christ. Nothing else will strip the foul robes from a man. To try to begin with the second stage is like trying to build a house at the second story.

5. The practical conclusion: "Seeing that." The change, though taking place in the inmost nature, needs to be wrought into character and wrought out in conduct. The leaven is in the dough, but to knead it thoroughly into the mass is a lifelong task, only accomplished by our continually repeated efforts.

6. So the apparently illogical, Put off what you have put off, and put on what you have put on, is vindicated. It means, Be consistent with your deepest selves; carry out in detail what you have already done in bulk. Cast out the enemy already ejected front the central fortress, from the isolated positions he still occupies. You may put off the old man, for he is put off already; you must do so, for there is still danger of his again wrapping his poisonous rags about your limbs.

II. THE CONTINUOUS GROWTH OF THE NEW MAN, ITS AIM AND PATTERN.

1. The new man is "being renewed" — a continuous process, perhaps slow and difficult to discern, but, like all powers and habits, it steadily increases; and a similar process works to opposite results in the old man (Ephesians 4:22).

2. This renewing is on the man, not by him. There is a Divine side. The renewing is not merely effected by us, nor due only to the vital power of the new man, but by the "renewing of the Holy Ghost." So there is hope for us in our striving, for He helps us. "Work out your own salvation," etc.

3. The new man is renewed "unto knowledge." Possibly there may be an allusion to the pretensions of the false teachers to a higher wisdom, There is but one way to press into the depths of the knowledge of God, viz., growth into His likeness. We understand one another best by sympathy. We know God only on condition of resemblance. For all simple souls, bewildered by the strife of tongues, and unapt for speculation, this is a message of gladness.

4. The new man is created after "the image," etc. As in the first creation, so in the new. But the old image consisted mainly in the reasonable soul, the self-conscious personality, the broad distinctions between men and animals. That humanity, in a sense, still has, though marred. The coin bears His image and superscription, though rusty and defaced. But the new image consists in holiness. Though the majestic infinitudes of God can have no likeness in man, we may be "holy as He is holy," be "imitators of God," "walk in love as He hath loved us," and "in the light as He is in the light."

III. THE GRAND UNITY OF THIS CREATION.

1. "Christ is all." Wherever that new nature is found, it lives by the life of Christ.

2. All who are His partake of that common gift. He is in all. There is no privileged class, as these teachers affirmed. Necessarily, therefore, surface distinctions disappear. Paul's catalogue may be profitably compared with Galatians 3:28.

(1) Greek and Jew. The cleft of national distinctions, which never yawned more widely than this, ceases to separate.

(2) Circumcision and uncircumcision. Nothing makes deeper and bitterer antagonisms than differences in religious forms.

(3) Barbarian, Scythian: which reflects the Greek contempt for outside races as of lower culture. A cultivated class is always tempted to superciliousness, and a half-cultivated class more so, as was the case at Colossae. In the interests of the humble virtues Christianity wars against the pride of culture, the most heartless of all.

(4) Bondman, freeman. That gulf was too wide for compassion to cross, though not for hatred to stride over. The effacement of this distinction is seen in the letter to Philemon which was despatched with this.

3. Christianity waged no direct war against these evils. Revolution cures nothing. The only way to get rid of evils engendered in the constitution of society is to elevate and change the tone of thought and feeling, and then they die of atrophy. Change the climate, and you change the vegetation. Until you do, neither mowing nor uprooting will get rid of the foul growths. So the gospel does with all these lines of demarcation between men. What becomes of the ridges of sand that separate pool from pool at low water? The tide comes up and over them, and makes them all one, gathered into the oneness of the great sea.

(A. Maclaren, D. D.)

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KJV: Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds;

WEB: Don't lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old man with his doings,