-The old man, the former lifestyle - this is who I used to be, the way we were. BEFORE we learned the Truth about Jesus and began following Him. Truth is, this old man was AND STILL IS headed in the WRONG direction, headed straight towards certain destruction, gradually being destroyed. This is the Law of Corruption, to which all of creation has been subjected (Romans 8.21). Stuff breaks down. Everything breaks down - nothing lasts forever. We experience this ultimately in death, the process of death, whose genesis we see when the first couple chose NOT to follow the Lord. And death now is the lot of fallen man, mortal, dying, fatally consigned to tread the wide road which leads to destruction. And, irony of ironies, it took a death, an unlikely death in the fulness of time, the implausible impossible death of eternal immortal God, to reverse the curse and finally break the stranglehold which this law of destruction had over us.
-Some insist that the old man has been forever removed from us in Christ, but Paul says he is still kicking, still hanging around - if we let him. A rotting mass of moral filth, our old self is dead weight at best. Specifically, the old man is being destroyed according to what Paul calls the lusts of deceit. The key word here is deceit. Lust technically is simply desire - desires are normal, God-given in fact. It is the object of our desire which determines its moral goodness or lack thereof. And the problem is that we desire, we attach our heart to things which lead us away from God and which ultimately destroy us. Enticing, tempting, they may have every appearance of goodness (cf Genesis 3.6), but it is a fool’s paradise, leading us down the primrose path. Yes, it is this obfuscation of the truth which gets us off track - precisely what the serpent did to Eve (cf 2Corinthians 11.3), which again is what cranked up the whole process of death to begin with. And it continues unabated to this day (2Timothy 3.13, Titus 3.3). If we let him, our old man will doggedly persist in dragging us after things which are contrary to truth - half-truths, blatant falsehoods - constantly striving in the vain attempt to fill the infinite abyss with chimeras, illusory apparitions, anything actually other than the One Who made him. And the outcome is of no consequence, deceived as he is, like a canine creature of habit he will never stop returning to his vomit. It is the old proverbial question of which dog wins in a 2-dog fight? The one you feed...
-So Paul says, stop feeding him. Once and for all, lay the old man down. Take him off like the nasty ratty old coat that he is, thrown him off, and don’t put him back on ever again. That is no longer who I am. The former thoughts and habits and hangouts and hangups - old man, gone for good. And thankfully, there is no vacuum left behind in his place...(next verse!)
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