Put on the New Man
By Pastor Matt Black
Bible Text: Ephesians 4:24
Preached on: Sunday, April 13, 2008, 11am
Tabernacle Baptist Church
7020 Barrington Road
Hanover Park, Illinois 60133
Website: www.GodCentered.info
Introduction: Open your Bibles to Ephesians 4:24.
Have you ever seen a caterpillar fly? No. Because caterpillars don’t fly. But they undergo a wonderful transformation. They are created again. They go into the cocoon and in a sense they are reborn! And even though they are the same insect, yet they are not the same. They have a new nature, they look different, and they have a new ability. They can fly!
Got created the caterpillar to show us in nature an amazing miracle that happens in the human heart. Our passage today tells us the miracle of God creating us again into a new person, a new man.
This morning we are looking at what it means to “put on the new man”.
Paul says in Ephesians 4:24, “And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.”
[Prayer for guidance]
I. What is the new Man? How should we think about this? Putting on the new man is not simply emulating Christ’s behavior. We are not Christians because we have moral standards. It is not that we put on good behavior. Anyone can do that for a time without the direct intervention of God.
To put on the new man is to put on the very person of Christ. We read in Galatians 3:27, “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.”
A. Therefore, number one, the new man is a new Union. The moment your soul comes into a spiritual union with Jesus Christ you are a new man, a new person. You are eternally united to Christ, and therefore, you are never again alone. Jesus says at about His union with you, “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee” (Hebrews 13:5).
Illustration: The marriage is a picture of this union between you and Christ. Married people are no longer two separate persons, but ONE FLESH. It is their highest joy to cleave to one another and to be united. So the new man is the newly created nature of your soul united with Christ that longs to cleave to Christ. It is who you are united to Jesus Christ.
We are told in Romans 13:14, to “put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof.” In other words—putting on the new man is remembering who you are united to and who lives inside of you!
· John 17:23: The Lord Himself prays to His Father: “I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one.”
· Colossians 1:27, “Christ in you, the hope of glory”.
· Galatians 2:20: Paul speaks of himself and all true Christians: “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.”
· Ephesians 3:17-18: Paul prays “that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.”
· Jesus tells us in John 15:4, “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me.”
The moment you are united to Christ, you are a “new man”—a new person. You have put on the Lord Jesus Christ. You are never the same again.
B. Second, the new man is also a New Creation. Notice what Paul says again in Ephesians 4:24, “And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.” We are a new creation. We are not trying to be better than we once were--
To understand the NEW creation, we have to go back to the ORIGINAL creation for a word picture.
Genesis 1:1-3 is a beautiful picture of the new creation. So let’s take a journey all the way back to the very beginning of time. There was no creation. But something amazing happened. We read the very first words of the Bible: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 2 And the earth was without form, and void [CHAOTIC]; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” You might say, “That is strange! Why would God purposely create a chaotic earth?” Read verse 3, “And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.” So that He could bring order to that chaotic earth. The ORIGINAL creation is a picture of the NEW creation. God brings order out of chaos!
Are we all clear how chaotic we are outside of Christ? We are “dead in trespasses and sins”! “We all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath” (Ephesians 2:3). But something happened!
How many of you can testify that God took the chaos of your old life, and the Holy Spirit moved upon the face of your soul, and God one day said, “Let their be light!”? Can you testify in the words of John Newton:
Amazing Grace how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me
I once was lost but now am found
Was blind but now I see
God turned the light on! He did a work in your soul. We see this all over in Scripture.
2 Corinthians 5:17, “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”
Ephesians 2:10, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus…”
Paul says in our text of Ephesians 4:24, that the new man is “after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.” As we saw in the original creation, the word “create” tells us that something came out of nothing.[1]
God must do something upon the human heart. He must “create”. He had to have acted upon your heart or you never would have been saved. It is only when God acts upon the human heart that a man or a woman or a child can come to God. The lost person has no desire or ability to really come to God until that time, no matter how religious or moral he or she is.
John 6:44-45, “No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day. 45 It is written in the prophets, And they shall be all taught of God.”
But finally they do come to God. Jesus said in John 10:27, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me”. John 6:37, “All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.”
This obedient following of Jesus Christ is a result of a goat being transformed into a sheep so that he now wants to come to Jesus—he now wants to forsake all and follow Jesus. This is the new creation! We are all born dead in sins, but God gives an inward change that the Holy Spirit operates upon the human heart.
C. The new man then has a New Birth. Jesus said that in order to enter into the Kingdom of God, “Ye must be born again” (John 3:7).
What is the new man? Well, the new man is the birth of a brand new life for you. It is a new way of thinking and acting. Everything is new! And like a new born baby, you have to learn and grow and change to be more and more like Jesus Christ.
And we can bless God with Peter in 1 Peter 1:3, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,”
D. The new man also has a New Heart.
Ezekiel describes this transaction as having a divine heart and a spirit transplant read in Ezekiel 36:26-27, “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my spirit within you”.
The new heart is a broken and a contrite heart. Instead of covering your sins, now you are honest and humbled by them. You are broken and tender hearted.
Not only that, but your new heart has new desires. Your heart cries out with David, “Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee” (Psalm 73:25), or in Psalm 63:1, “O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is”. Your new heart is now “hungering and thirsting after righteousness” (Matthew 5:6).
E. The new man also has a New Nature.
Ephesians 2:3, “Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.”
How can a person with a nature of disobedience change his nature to righteousness? You can’t. As our text says, your new nature is “after God created in righteousness and true holiness”.
Jeremiah 13:23 asks the question, “Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil.” So God draws you to Himself and creates in you a new nature—a nature that can only do what is right.
This is exactly what 1 John 3:9 teaches. Turn over there if you will. We get this shocking statement from 1 John 3:9. I don’t know if you’ve read this before, but it is such a high standard that it seems impossible. This is probably one of the most surprising verses in the Bible. Look at what it says: “Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.” The new nature remains in the one that is born of God. God put “his seed” in you. That seed is the new nature and is absolutely not capable of sinning. If you walk according to the new man, you will not sin. It is just as Paul says in Galatians 5:16, “Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.” He could have just as easily said, “Put on the new man…and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.” The point is God has united Himself with the spirit of all those who have come to know Christ. And when your flesh is shed at glorification, you will be completely freed. You will never sin nor have the desire to sin again. But you will not wait until then to begin the pursuit of Christlike perfection. God’s intention is that you would begin it now.
We were by nature children doing things that provoke God’s wrath. But now 2 Peter 1:4 says we are indeed “partakers of the divine nature”. When you come to know Christ, He as God, enters your soul!
What is the new man you ask? It is God’s very nature in you. It is the very life of God in the soul of man. Think of this! It is Christ living in you and working in you a new life. Peter says that we are “partakers of the divine nature”. The new man is the very life of God in the soul of man giving you therefore a new nature, or a new heart desire to be holy and godly.
So Paul says in Ephesians 4:24, “And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.” There is something that you are to put on which God has created. It is this newly created person that we are as we are united to Jesus Christ. Now we ask another question:
It is this new union, new creation, new birth, new heart, and new nature.
So we have answered the question: What is the new man?
II. What is the new Manner of the new man? Paul says in Ephesians 4:24, “And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.” Here’s the gist—if you are united to Jesus Christ—if you are filled with His Person, then you are going to be desiring the righteousness and true holiness that comes from God. If God is in you, then He is creating all His desires in you. “God is light and in Him is not darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). All God wants is righteousness and holiness.
So, what is the new Manner of the new man? Here we have the answer. If you have the new man which is a new union, a new creation, a new birth, a new nature, then you what comes out of you will be two things:
If the new man is reigning in you, Jesus Christ united to your soul, then you are going to have true holiness—true inward purity, and then you are going to have right outward actions!
A. We need to Return to Jesus’ teaching to understand that fruit comes out of the new root. The new heart has come, the new man has been created, and out of it comes obedience and holiness. This is not a new teaching with Paul. Just about everything Paul teaches you can first find in the teaching of Jesus. Jesus said in John 10:27, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me”. Paul says in Ephesians 4 that all true believers have been “taught by Jesus”. Jesus mentions this in John 6:45. He says, “It is written in the prophets, And they shall be all taught of God. Every man therefore that hath heard, and hath learned of the Father, cometh unto me.” We are taught of God, we hear His voice, and we come to him. We hear His voice, and we FOLLOW JESUS. This is what Jesus taught. God creates a new nature and a new heart and it makes us inwardly holy, and out of that comes outward righteousness. The result is a radical inward change that results in a radical outward change. We put off the old man, and put on the new. We put off the old way of thinking and acting, and put on the new.
“The new man… after God is created in righteousness and true holiness” (Ephesians 4:24). Simply, God changes us on the inside, He makes us brand new, and our lives start producing the fruits of righteousness and true holiness.
B. Why does there need to be a Re-creation? What we find out from this verse is that the image of God in man needs to be re-created in man. “The new man… after God is created in righteousness and true holiness” (Ephesians 4:24). In Genesis 1:26 we meet God, and He is ready to create man, and we hear him saying in Genesis 1:26, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness”. Adam was created in perfection and innocence and holiness. Adam when he was made by God had an amazing love for His Creator, a fear of offending him, and a readiness to do his will.
But Adam threw all of this away and rebelled against God and the inward principle of hostility toward God robed every aspect of his inward being and outward actions. The image of God was cursed and scarred in man. Our hearts became hardened. Our reasoning became deceitful.
When a person comes to Christ, the image of God in man is re-created in man. There is a consciousness in a believer of having had a new heart created in them—the very life, or holiness, of God has possessed and overtaken them. Putting on the new man is not a mere outward change of behavior. Of course the outward changes radically, but it is as a result of an even more radical inward change.
So from this new creation in you, comes obedience. From this true inward holiness comes a radical outward righteousness.
C. Let’s look at two Scriptural examples. The proposition is this: God changes your heart from a hard heart to a humble and a holy heart, and out of your life comes the fruit of righteousness.
1. In Luke 6:43-46 our Lord explains this change exactly, “For a good tree bringeth not forth corrupt fruit; neither doth a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. 44 For every tree is known by his own fruit. For of thorns men do not gather figs, nor of a bramble bush gather they grapes. 45 A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil: for of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh. 46 And why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?”
What kind of a tree are you? What kind of fruit are you bringing forth?
In Ephesians 4, the metaphor is not fruit but clothing. We are to disrobe from the old clothing and be robed and characterized by the clothing of the new man.
The “old man” is who you were before you came to Christ. The “new man” is the new life that you have. God calls you out of this world and creates in you a new heart. And you are changed from the inside, but it also changes your outside.
Without this holiness you cannot be sure that you have a changed heart. “Without holiness…no man shall see the Lord” (Hebrews 12:14).
Let’s look at another Scriptural example. Do you remember the parable of the marriage feast (Matthew 22:1–14)? The invitation was thrown open to anybody who would come. But then Jesus says,
2. Matthew 22:11-14, “And when the king came in to see the guests, he saw there a man which had not on a wedding garment: 12 And he saith unto him, Friend, how camest thou in hither not having a wedding garment? And he was speechless. 13 Then said the king to the servants, Bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 14 For many are called, but few are chosen.”
John Piper put it this way:
There will be many shocked church goers when the Lord comes, who think that they have responded to the Lord's invitation to come to the banquet of heaven, but in fact have never [had their heart changed]…. They walk in the door, as it were, when the bell rings, but they don't listen to him. With their lips they honor him as the schoolmaster, but their hearts are far away. It's as though they were not even there. When the Master says, “Change your clothes,” they adjust their collars or shine their shoes, or tuck in their shirts, but they won't take off those cherished habits. They won’t strip away those old attitudes of racism, or the love of money, or the addiction to pornography. They want the hope of heaven, but they won't dress for heaven. They won't change their clothes. And Jesus says in the end on the graduation day, “Bind him hand and foot and cast him into outer darkness.” He had never really enrolled with his heart. It was all a show.
Essentially, the test of your new heart and new life is the fruit of your obedience. Do you have that beautiful wedding garment on? Have you changed the filthy of the old life? Have you put on a love for holiness? Are you characterized by righteous fruit in public, but especially in private? Do you do what is right not just when it is convenient, but when it hurts, and when it costs you something?
Paul tells us the same thing in Romans 13:12-14, “The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light. 13 Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying. 14 But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof.”
III. Thirdly and finally we ask, what is the Mandate of the new man? We are to “put on the new man”. It is essentially putting on the Lord Jesus Christ and walking in union with Him, walking in the filling of His Spirit. As Romans 13:14 says, “put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof.”
We are to “Put on the New Man”- In taking off the filthy rags of the old man, put on the clean garments of the new man. The new man is the life of Jesus Christ in you and His deeds.
A. You say “How can I obey this mandate? How do I put off the old man and put on the new?”
Remember who you are! Various people go into the Army. You might be a doctor. You might be a hippy. But once you’re in, you are a soldier! You can never forget that you are a soldier. Whatever you were before—you are now to talk like a soldier, eat like a soldier, walk like a soldier. You are to compose yourself with honor and dignity.
Paul is saying the same thing. Put off what you used to be. You are no longer that. God has created something new in you.
B. Ok, that’s good, but you say, “How do I actually do it?” There is a new principle of life and holiness operating from within you. Listen to the voice of Jesus and obey. Jesus said in John 10:27, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me”. I want you to see how this works in Philippians 2:12. Turn over there. This is an amazing principle. Philippians 2:12-13—you are to “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling”. You are to do it. You now have this ability. And you can be confident of verse 13, “For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure”.
We know that there is an order in salvation—it’s laid out very clearly in Romans 8:28-30. God elects us. And everyone He elects He calls. And every one He calls He justifies. And everyone He justifies, He conforms to the image of His dear Son. How does God conform us to the image of Christ? He does it by indwelling us, by possessing us. We call the outworking of this indwelling “the new man”.
Conclusion: As we close, let me ask you, do you have the very life of God in your soul? It is unmistakable. You know it! Do you have the new man created in you? Has there been a time when you were drawn by Christ and taught by Christ Himself. Yes, you go to hear preaching, but there was a time when God Himself spoke to you directly through the preaching, and you were drawn to Christ. You wanted to come to Christ—it wasn’t a duty. You came to Him. You now have a new union, you are a new creation, you have a new nature, a new heart—everything is so new—you’ve experience the NEW birth.
You say you’ve experience all this. Ok, here’s the test. Is your life different? Are you radically transformed? Have you put off the old man and put on the new?
Daily Christian, you are to put off the old man. You are to “walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called” (verse 1). Remember who you are. Live in holiness and righteousness by the power of God in your soul.
Stop it at the starting point—in your mind. Be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and with that mind set, you need to confront those sinful habits. Walk according to the mind of Christ. Stop living the old life according to the old nature. “put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof.”
This message is all about personal holiness. If you are called and justified, you will be conformed to the image of God’s dear Son. That happens as you put off the old man and put on the new! Remember who you are!! “Walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called” (Ephesians 4:1)!
[1] God, with absolutely no obligation to do so, restores and renews a portion of sinful humanity to true inward holiness once again.