As we come to consider just how Gods plan of salvation is worked out in our lives, let us recall our situation.
We belong by birth to a rejected race, to which the way to the Tree of Life has been closed, which has been banished from His presence, cutting off all hope of eternal life and the eternal purpose of God for man. What we think of as our good points and our better nature do not count with God at all. His standard is perfection.
There is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
But the Lord Jesus has not only made our pardon possible through the shedding of His blood on the cross, but He has also accomplished a merciful exit for us in it, because there a rejected race died, as far as God is concerned. Then, in the resurrection of Christ, God made a new beginning. Having in His Son, the kind of man He wanted when He created Adam, He is now proceeding to create a new race in Him and like Him.
The Lord Jesus could say of Himself, The prince of this world comes, and he has nothing in Me. Because He was without sin, there was nothing in Him over which Satan had control. The trouble with us is that the devil has a clear foothold in us - he has in our hearts an ally because we share his rebellious nature. This explains why the Lord Jesus said on one occasion, to those rejecting Him, You are of your father, the devil, and why John describes this fallen race of sinners as, the children of the devil. Solemn language indeed, and with serious implications!
We who are of the old race must die and be born again into the new. United with the Lord Jesus in His death, we die; united with Him in His resurrection, we live again. There are now, therefore, two human races, two kinds of humanity and salvation is being transferred from one race to the other. The Lord Jesus is the First, the Head of the new race, the Eldest in a vast Family the Firstborn among many brothers. Through Him and in Him, God is now bringing many sons to glory.
There is a race, a kind of man, a humanity, that is no good, and has been rejected, driven out, crucified with Christ on the cross. There, Adam and his self-centered race came to an end. There, in Christ, we all died. But there is another kind of man, the Christ-kind, which is totally acceptable to God, and which has been raised from the dead in Him. For all united with Him, and only such, there is a glorious future.
This end of the one humanity and beginning of the new humanity must be seen, accepted, and then worked out in us by the Holy Spirit as we cooperate with Him. Repentance not only means that we realize our desperate need of forgiveness, but also that we truly accept, in our heart of hearts, the fact that we are not good, that we are rebels and incorrigible sinners by nature, and that the Lord will have to change us radically. Mere words or mental assent to creeds, or to the bare statement that we are all sinners, is not true repentance. We must realize something of the awful truth about ourselves. We must see that we have died at the cross to membership of, and involvement in, the old, rejected race, and that we have risen with Christ to become part of Gods new humanity.
Paul uses the metaphors of putting on and stripping off clothing to illustrate this radical change and refers to these two races and their natures as the old man and the new man.
In Colossians 3:9-10, having described some of the sinful ways in which the old man behaves, Paul appeals to the believers in Colosse to behave like Christians on the ground that, at conversion, they
had stripped off the old man, [the old self, the old nature] with its habits, and had put on the new man, [the new self, the new nature] which was being renewedin the image of its creator
They had committed themselves to the new race when they came to the Lord but were still behaving like members of the old. Paul appeals to what happened at the cross, and their commitment to this fact at their conversion and their baptism. (True baptism is a decisive act of confession and commitment to Gods new order. It is a clear declaration of where a person stands.)
In Ephesians 4:22-24, his appeal is to the Christians to work out this profound fact in their lives,
to put off the old man, [the old self, the old nature] which is being corrupted by its deceitful desiresto be renewed in the spirit of your mindsto put on the new man, [the new self, the new nature] created in Gods likeness in genuine righteousness and holiness.
In other words, he is calling them to a continual repudiation of their involvement in Adams fallen race, and to a continual commitment to live as members of the new, as members of Christ, by the enabling of the Holy Spirit.
There are many similar Scriptures which may best, perhaps, be summed up in Romans 13:12, 14:-
cast off the works of darkness put on the armor of light put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires.
and in Galatians 3:27:-
as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.
Here we have a call to the believers for positive action. Because of the fact of the cross the situation must be faced and dealt with. So Paul writes,
Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.
There is no place for passivity or drift in the Christian life.
PUT ON the new man STRIP OFF the old man CAST OFF the work of darkness PUT ON the armor of light PUT ON the Lord Jesus Christ by the Spirit PUT TO DEATH the deeds of the body WORK OUT your own salvation with fear and trembling.
As we respond and actively cooperate with the Holy spirit, we shall experience His enabling in
the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christfor God is at work in you both to will and to work for His good pleasure.
Be DOERS of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. (James 1:22)