I’m writing as I’ve been doing a study related to the “old man” and the “new man”. It is a spin off from a word study I was doing on the “flesh” (‘sarx‘ in Greek – Strong’s Nr. G4561) in Rom 6. In writing this, I’m also taking on a view that some theologians take which is the ‘old man’ is dead and gone while ‘new man/inner man’ is perfected. I’m not so sire about that. They use two parallel passages to make that point i.e. Eph 4:22 and Col 3:9-10. Unfortunately they do not do the grammar on all the words in those verses.
I have not studied Greek and Hebrew but I have bible study tools to help me understand Greek and Hebrew grammar, so I’m taking a stab at those two references.
Eph 4:22 [ESV]
to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires,
The word ‘corrupt‘ in the Greek is passive, participle which I understand as the old self being in the process of corruption through deceitful desires. They talk about the “put on/put off” principle which I believe refers to sanctification but they do not unpack the latter part of the verse.
Col 3:9-10 [ESV]
Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices
and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.
In Col 3:10 the word ‘renewed‘ in the Greek is present, passive, participle which I understand as the ‘new man’ being in the process of renewal. Again, I believe this process of renewal has to do with sanctification.
I can understand the ‘new man’ as perfect in terms of position and salvation but not in terms of progression and sanctification because the ‘new man’ does get stained with the world. I ask myself the following questions:
- Why does Paul in Rom 12:2 give us an imperative to continue to renew our minds if we have a perfected inner man?
- Why does David in Psa 51 ask God for a “clean heart”?
- Why does David in Psa 139 look introspectively and ask God to search his heart if there is a “grievous way” in himself?
If the ‘old man’ is being corrupted and the ‘new man’ is being renewed, it seems like there are some vestiges of the ‘old man’ and I believe that they are traces of our old way thinking/living, which we need to unlearn. The more we fill our mind with His word and obey that word through the Holy Spirit, the faster will our old way of life or thinking wane. I’ll be clear…I do not believe Christians are “spiritually schizophrenic” but I do believe that when Rom 6:6 says “the old is crucified” it means the power of the old man is gone as opposed to the old man itself being gone. God has removed the power and penalty of sin but He has not removed the presence of sin.
It seems like the conflict is very much within the mind/heart and not between the mind/heart and the physical body although the physical body in many cases is the channel through which sin is manifested. The physical body has desires but it takes my heart to sin. In other words…
Sin is not sin unless the heart is involved because it takes a choice to “practice lawlessness” (1 John 3:4).
If the ‘flesh’ includes physical body + heart (mind, emotion, will), then I can confidently say the conflict is in the flesh.
