What is the ‘old man’ and ‘new man’ in Paul’s writings?
Question 6044
Paul’s language of the “old man” and the “new man” appears at key points in his letters, and it is easy to read past it without understanding the weight of what he is actually saying. This is not motivational language about improving yourself or leaving bad habits behind. It is a description of an objective, historical event that has already happened to every person who is in Christ, and its implications for how Christians understand themselves and live are far-reaching.
The Old Man: More Than Bad Behaviour
The Greek phrase Paul uses is palaios anthropos, literally “old human” or “old man.” The most direct statement about what happened to this old man is in Romans 6:6: “We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.” Notice the tense: “was crucified.” This is a completed, historical event in the past. It is not an ongoing process or a future goal. When Christ died and rose again, everyone who is in him through faith participated in that event. The old man, the person you were in Adam, under sin’s dominion and heading for death, was crucified with Christ.
The old man is not simply your bad habits or your worst tendencies. It is your entire former identity as a person defined by sin, belonging to the realm of Adam, living under condemnation. Paul describes it in Ephesians 4:22 as “the old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires.” It is the totality of who you were before Christ, not a department of your personality that needs some renovation.
The New Man: A New Creation in Reality
The new man (kainos anthropos, using the Greek word for new in kind rather than new in sequence) is the person you are in Christ. Ephesians 4:24 describes this new self as “created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.” Colossians 3:10 adds that it “is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.” The new man is not your best possible version of your old self. It is a new creation. 2 Corinthians 5:17 states it directly: “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”
Colossians 3:9–10 combines both concepts: “you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self.” Again, Paul uses the past tense. This is not something you need to achieve. It is something that has already happened and that you are called to live in accordance with.
The Tension: Already and Not Yet
If the old man has been crucified and we are new creations, why does sin remain a daily reality? This is where many people misread Paul. The crucifixion of the old man is objective and real, but the daily experience of the Christian involves what Paul calls “putting to death” the deeds of the body (Romans 8:13) and “mortifying” sinful habits and desires (Colossians 3:5). These commands make sense only because, while your identity has been decisively changed, the flesh (the residual pull of the old way of living) remains active. The old man is crucified; the flesh is still being put to death. These are not the same thing.
Sanctification is the process of bringing your daily experience into alignment with the objective reality of who you already are in Christ. You are not becoming a new creation; you are learning to live as the new creation you already are. This is why Paul’s commands in Colossians 3 follow the declarative statements. He states what is already true (verses 9–10) and then lists the specific things to put to death and to put on (verses 5–17). The order is not accidental. The commands flow from the reality, not the other way around.
So, now what?
The practical significance is enormous. When temptation comes, the Christian does not simply appeal to willpower or resolve to try harder. They appeal to what is actually true: this is not who I am any more. The old man who was enslaved to this sin is dead. I am a new creation. Romans 6:11 makes this an explicit instruction: “So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” “Consider” here means to reckon or count it as fact, because it is fact. Christian obedience is grounded not in aspiration but in identity, an identity that God himself has given.
“You have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.” Colossians 3:9–10