Get Your Pretense On!

Chapter 4: Put Off, Renew, Put On • 83

taught the truth in Jesus which directly contradicts the old, tired lies and lusts of our Gentile pre-Christian lives. Paul now exhorts us to put off these false, pre-Christian identities, lifestyles, and perspectives of our “old selves,” the people we use to be before we confessed faith in Jesus Christ, when we were unsaved. Paul calls for all believers to consciously reject the old ways of self-talk, self-concept, and self-definition that we had before we met the Savior. Whatever it was, whatever we were called, whatever labels others used about us – all of this is now to be disregarded in favor of the truth in Jesus Christ. According to Paul, our position has changed, and therefore we ought now never accept the same old tired judgments we and others had about who we were and what our lives were about. Since we have believed, we now are rooted in a new direction and philosophy: we have “learned Christ” (vv. 20-21). Our salvation in Christ has provided us with an entirely new foundation of our self definition: we possess a brand new identity. We are not to treat ourselves as the same person we were before we came to Christ. As a matter of fact, we are to “put off” (discard, snatch off, lay aside) our old identities which belong to our former manner of life (v. 22a). Like old, shabby clothes, moth-eaten and moldy, we are to “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you , along with all malice” (Eph. 4.31). Paul affirms this same attitude of rejecting past perspectives and behaviors in other places where he discipled growing Christians (cf. Col. 3.8 – But now you must put them all away : anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth). Christians are not obligated to be consistent with what they used to be; we are new creations (2 Cor. 5.17), the workmanship of God (Eph. 2.10), carrying no obligation to act consistent with our former way of living, speaking, and thinking. We are charged to lay aside those things which bound our lives, clogged our minds, and poisoned our hearts. In Christ, through his blood and his