What Is the “Old Man”?

As mentioned some time back, Ephesians chapters 4-6 reveal seven ways in which we are to walk, each of which in-turn is based on related doctrine in chapters 1-3. The first reality of our Christian walk is to walk in unity (4:1-16). Turning to the second reality, in 4:17-32 we discover that we are to walk in purity. The first thing to understand about living a pure life is to understand that the true Christian is no longer the “Old Man.” But what is this “Old Man?”

Ephesians 17a and 22a declares, “This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk . . . the old man.” Another key verse on this subject is Romans 6:6: “Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him [i.e., Christ], that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.” Oddly, this verse has been a battleground for centuries. The question has been not whether we become holy in Christ—all agree there—rather how this holiness is brought about. All misunderstanding, however, comes from the idea that Romans 6:6 refers to something that happens in our own experience, that it is something that we do in our efforts, that it is something that comes as result of our own struggling against sin. But that is the exact opposite of what the text SAYS.

The key to understanding this verse comes in recognizing that all the verb tenses in Romans 6 are past tenses. In other words, every verb tense that refers to our identification with Christ in His death refers to that identification being completed in the past. Romans 6:6, therefore, does not say that our “old man is crucified” or that our “old nature must be crucified,” rather it says that our “old man was crucified” way back when Christ died and that it was completed then and there. It does not say that we must each morning get up and “crucify ourselves again to sin.” Rather it says that by God’s judicial act, not by our experiential effort, the old man was “crucified” and therefore “destroyed.”

Based on that fact of the language, the old man can refer to only one thing: all that we were in Adam, that is, all the guilt, penalty, power, and dominion of sin that was in Adam. Immediately we want to ask, “But I do still sin—why?” We’ll deal with that next time. The point to get here is that sin is not the rule of life like it was before. We are not dominated by sin as we once were. The old man, the person we were before salvation is gone because of what Christ accomplished on Calvary. We are not sinless, as we’ll examine in verses 20-24, but we are no longer dominated and controlled by sin. While sin used to rule, it is now Christ Who rules.

To make this practical, how often have we all used the excuse, “Well, I just can’t help it; I’m a Christian, but because I just can’t help but sin?” Such an attitude is defeatist and actually justifies our sin. The fact is, as we’ll see, we most certainly can “help it” because we are no longer dominated by sin. Sin is no longer the rule, it is the exception.

Paul adds in Romans 6:6, that “the body of sin might be destroyed.” “Destroyed” is katargeo, “to render inactive, put out of use, cancel, bring to nothing, do away with.” Because it is in a past tense, like all the verbs in the passage, it declares that “the body of sin” (a synonym for old man) has been nullified, put out of use, done away with completely in the past. It was through the cross that God put the old man out of action. That “body of sin” no longer hangs on us as like an anchor to sink into the ocean of sin; God has removed it and freed us from sin’s dominion.