What is “The New Man”?

We have all seen “before and after pictures,” where the before picture is, for example, an overweight or bald person and the after picture is the same person now slim and trim or with a thick head of hair. The pictures, of course, are designed to sell us a new diet pill or fitness machine, a magic formula for hair restoration, plastic surgery, and so forth. My son once made the observation concerning an “overweight” commercial that it always seems that in the after picture the person is also beautifully tanned; I’m not sure how that applies to the product their selling.

While the Apostle Paul isn’t trying to sell us anything, he does show us dramatic “before” and “after” pictures in Ephesians 4:17-24. As examined in our last several installments, in verses 17-19, Paul shows us what we were before Christ came into our lives: our understanding was darkened, we were alienated from the life of God, ignorant, spiritually blind, past feeling, and were living in lasciviousness, uncleanness, and greed. Not a pretty picture. That was the “old man.” “Old” is palaios, which means “old in the sense of worn out, decrepit, useless.”

In verses 20-24, however, we see a truly beautiful “after picture.” Using the same approach as in our last few studies, let us now gaze upon the New Man (v. 24). First, then, we must understand what the New Man is.

New translates a very significant Greek word, kainos. Another word translated new is neos, which “refers to something new in time, to something that recently has come into existence.” In contrast, kainos “refers to something new in quality,” as it would be distinguished from something that is old and worn out. This word is used, for example, to refer to the “new tomb” in which Joseph of Arimathea laid the body of Jesus (Matt. 27:60). It was not a new tomb that had recently been hewn from the rock (which would be neos, new in time), rather one that had never been used and was therefore new in the sense of quality.

The New Man, then, is something that has not existed before. Using a descriptive Latin word, one commentator writes that the New Man “is more than a new habitus, it is the life principle itself which produces the habitus.” Habitus (English, “habit”) describes condition, character, dress, or appearance, so the New Man is more than that, more than a new habit, dress, or appearance; he has been inwardly transformed, which is what produces the new character and new habits.

A key verse to understanding this truth is II Corinthians 5:17, which we have referred to several times throughout this exposition: “Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away; behold all things are become new.” As one would expect, new is again kainos. The Christian is, therefore, a “new creature,” not new in the sense of time—as in the date he received Christ as Savior—rather new in quality, a creature that has never existed before, a creature with a new character.

Ponder a moment what things become new. First, and foremost, there is a new meaning to life. Before Christ came into us, there was no meaning to life, nothing to live for because spiritual death awaited. I once heard someone sum up life this way, “Life is hard and then you die.” What a depressing view of life this is, but it is accurate for the unbeliever. Only Christ can give us meaning to life. There are countless other things that become new: desires, purposes, loves, motives, goals, values, relationships, attitudes, activities, knowledge, will, and on it goes. The old ways are not “reformed,” rather they are done away with and replaced with the new ways.