What is the ‘old man’ and ‘new man’ in Paul’s writings?

Question 6044.

When Paul speaks of the old man he is not describing a sinister lodger who lives in the believer’s spare room. He is describing the person you used to be, considered as a whole, in Adam and under condemnation.

Getting that right changes a great deal about how the Christian life is fought, so it is worth a careful look at the three passages where the language appears.

The three passages

Paul uses the expression in Romans 6:6, Ephesians 4:22-24 and Colossians 3:9-10. In Romans he says our old self was crucified with Him. In Colossians he says you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self.

In Ephesians the wording is different, an instruction to put off the old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God (Ephesians 4:22-24).

The Greek is palaios, literally the old human being. Some translations say old self, which is closer to the sense than old man, though the older phrase has stuck in Christian speech.

Not a part of you but a phase of you

The common picture has two natures living side by side in the believer, an old man and a new man, taking turns at the controls. It is memorable and it does not fit the grammar.

Paul is using a corporate and historical category. The old man is the person you were in Adam: the whole self, considered under the old headship and the old condemnation. The new man is the whole self, considered in Christ under a new headship.

That is why he can say it was crucified rather than that it is being weakened. A phase can be ended in a way that a resident tenant cannot.

What Romans 6 actually claims

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 (Romans 6:6). The verb is past and completed, and it is something to be known rather than achieved.

Paul then tells his readers to consider themselves dead to sin and alive to God. The reckoning follows the fact; it does not create it. You are not asked to believe something into existence but to take seriously something that has already happened.

Then, and only then, come the commands: do not let sin reign, do not present your members to unrighteousness. The indicative comes before the imperative, and reversing that order produces exhausted Christians.

So why do I still sin?

Because the old man being gone is not the same as the flesh being gone. Paul uses sarx for the fallen inclination that remains in the believer and opposes the Spirit, and he assumes its continuing presence in every letter he writes.

The old man is who I was. The flesh is the residual pull of what I was, still operating through habit, appetite and reflex. The person has changed headship; the wiring has not yet finished being replaced.

That is why Galatians 5 describes an ongoing war between flesh and Spirit in people who are unquestionably converted. Conflict is not evidence that nothing has happened. It is evidence that something has.

Putting off and putting on

The imagery in Ephesians and Colossians is clothing, and it is deliberately practical. You take off a garment and you put on another, and Paul lists what goes in each direction: falsehood off, truthful speech on; stealing off, honest work and generosity on.

Notice that removal alone is never enough. Every prohibition comes paired with a replacement, because a vacuum will be filled by whatever was there before. The thief is not told to stop stealing; he is told to work with his hands so that he has something to share.

That is the practical shape of dealing with the old man’s habits. Not suppression but substitution, and substitution requires deciding in advance what goes on.

Is the old man dead or dying?

This is where the debate sits, and the tenses settle it. Romans says the old man was crucified, past tense, and Colossians says you have put it off, past tense. Ephesians phrases it as an instruction, which some read as an ongoing process.

I take Ephesians as describing the outworking of a completed transfer, in the same way a man who has emigrated must still learn a new language. The status changed at the border. The habits change over years.

So I do not tell believers to crucify the old man daily. I tell them that it has been crucified and that they now have to stop dressing like the person they used to be.

Identity comes before behaviour

This is not a technical point. The reason it matters is that people become what they believe they are. A believer who thinks of himself as fundamentally a sinner who occasionally does better will live accordingly.

Paul addresses whole churches, including badly behaved ones, as saints. He does not flatter them, and he corrects them severely, but he never tells them they are still the old man. He tells them to live like who they now are.

If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come (2 Corinthians 5:17). That is the ground the New Testament fights from, and it fights from victory rather than towards it.

Where this goes wrong in practice

One error is to treat the new man as a second nature that must be encouraged to win, which turns the Christian life into an internal referee’s job. The other is to conclude that since the old man is dead, sin is no longer a real danger, which the New Testament flatly denies.

A third error is to make this about feelings. Whether I feel like a new creation on a wet Tuesday is beside the point. The claim is about status and about union with Jesus, and neither of those fluctuates with mood.

Steer between them by holding both halves: something decisive has happened, and something ongoing is required.

The renewal is continuous

Colossians adds that the new self is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. That is a present tense, and it is the piece that keeps the doctrine from becoming static.

The renewal happens largely through the mind. Be transformed by the renewal of your mind, Paul tells the Romans, which is why sustained attention to Scripture is not an optional extra for keen Christians.

What is being restored is the image of God, damaged in the fall and remade in Jesus. That is the direction of travel, and it will be completed at the resurrection rather than before it.

A word on how you talk to yourself

Many believers speak to themselves in the voice of the old man and then wonder why they feel defeated. The accusation says this is what you are and this is what you will always be, and it sounds like realism.

It is not realism; it is out of date information. The believer’s realism is Romans 6, and the accurate sentence is that you were that, and you are not that now, and the difference is Jesus.

Preach that to yourself in the morning and you will find the day goes differently. There is more on this in the study on union with Christ.

Not licence but freedom

Paul anticipates the obvious objection. Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means. How can we who died to sin still live in it? His argument is that the doctrine makes ongoing sin absurd rather than permitted.

A man released from prison does not return to the cell for the atmosphere. The freedom is the point, and the whole logic of putting off the old man depends on genuinely preferring the new arrangement.

If that preference is missing, no amount of technique will help, and the question to ask is not about method but about love. See also the study on definitive and progressive sanctification.

So, now what?

Read Romans 6 slowly this week and mark every past tense. Most of us have read that chapter as a set of instructions when it is mostly a set of announcements.

Then take one habit that belongs to the old man and decide what goes on in its place. Removal without replacement is why so many resolutions fail by February.

And change the sentence you say to yourself when you fail. Not there I go again, which is old man language, but this is not who I am, which happens to be true.

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.

Romans 6:6 (ESV)