The
characteristics of the New Man are the exact opposite of those of the Old
Man: intellectual ductility, spiritual durability, and moral decency. God
wants the believer to be “ductile,” capable and willing to be formed and
fashioned into the image He desires. Ephesians 4:20-21 picture “the Schoolhouse
of Christ”: But ye have not so learned Christ; If so be that ye have heard
him, and have been taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus. With Christ as
the center, we see three principles of education: He is the Subject, the Schoolmaster,
and . . .
Third, He’s the Surroundings, the
context, the environment, in which all this teaching occurs. Specifically, this
environment is the truth [that] is in Jesus. God is the source of Truth,
and Truth cannot be found outside of His revelation. Truth is in
Jesus, as our Lord Himself declared in John 14:6. Think of it! Truth
is the environment for learning, and Jesus is Truth. Why are
children and young adults learning evolution, Humanism, and other such
philosophies? Because they are being taught not in an environment of Truth
but an environment of lies. Only in an environment of Truth can
we learn Truth.
There’s a
subtlety here that is often overlooked. We should notice that Paul uses the
name Jesus here in a way he has not done before in the entire letter. He
just used the title Christ in verse 20, so why Jesus here?
Additionally, while he uses Jesus elsewhere in the letter, it’s always
in conjunction with other titles, such as “Lord Jesus Christ” (1:2) or “Christ
Jesus” (2:6-7). While some commentators see no importance in this and just call
it a “stylistic variation” that has no “theological significance,” that is an
error. The change in title is simply too obvious not to be deliberate.
So why the
change? Greek authority Kenneth Wuest explains it this way: “Jesus is
used rather than Christ; the historical rather than the official name. The life
of Christianity consists in believing fellowship with the historic Jesus, who
is the Christ of prophecy.”
Great expositor Martyn Lloyd-Jones, however, said it best:
“Paul is really say that we must not think of salvation in loose, vague terms;
we must not talk about some great cosmic Christ who exerts an influence upon
men in this world; we must not hold on to salvation merely as an idea and as a
concept and as a thought. Not at all! The Apostle says we must think it all out
in terms of Jesus. Now this Apostle of all men is fond of using the full
term the Lord Jesus Christ, but here he says, ‘as the truth is in Jesus.’
And for this good reason, that the Christian is not saved by a philosophy of
redemption; he is saved by that historic Person, Jesus of Nazareth, Son of
God!”
I was especially struck by that last
statement: “the Christian is not saved by a philosophy of redemption.”
Indeed, it’s not a philosophical concept or even a theological doctrine that
saves us, rather the person of Jesus. Every philosophical school and
every religious system is built merely on ideas. Christianity is found
on the person of Jesus.
May we also add, there have been countless attacks through
the ages on the person of Jesus. His Deity and humanity have always been
battlegrounds. Countless cults and heretics by the hundreds have denied the
“Historical Jesus,” and they’re still doing it. But the New Testament mentions
the name Jesus by itself some 612 times (KJV). Why? Because It is the
name of salvation. Jesus (Iesous) is the human name of our
Lord and means “Savior,” that is, “He shall save His people from their sins”
(Matt. 1:21). The Greek (and Latin) Iesous corresponds to the Hebrew Jeshua, which is equivalent to “Joshua,”
and means “the Lord is salvation.” That is why men must attack and destroy Jesus;
with Him intact, they must deny themselves, deny their religion, deny their
works, and trust Him alone for salvation. And that they will not do.
So, the
first characteristic of the “New Man” is Intellectual Ductility. We now
have a new mind. We have learned Christ because of the “New Man,”
because of God’s Word working in the mind. God wants to mold our minds because
the world today is working overtime to try to mold them into its image.
We’ll see
more of this in our next point.
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