“8 But now you yourselves are to put off all these: anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth. 9 Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old man with his deeds, 10 and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him, 11 where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all.”
Question: What does it mean to put on the new?

Put on the new

Paul here gives a picture of us needing to undergo a change, like a change of clothes, where we take of our old garments of habits such as anger, malice, and blasphemy, and put on a new covering in the image of Christ. And while that correctly portrays how the change will be observable to others, if we focus only on external appearance we will miss the depth of change involved, we will miss what is needed for the real change to occur.

Not what we do

In Matthew 23:27-28 Jesus condemned the Pharisees for their legalistic focus on external appearance and actions: “… for you are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. Even so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.”

Dying to our old self

The first step in this change is our death to our old sinful selves.
Colossians 3:3 reads, “For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.”
And in Romans 6:4 we read, “We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.”
When Christ died on the cross, our old self, being enslaved to sin, was crucified to set us free, and we are born again to a new life in Christ.

Changed from within

When we repent and believe in Jesus, we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, who lives within us, and changes our hearts from within.
Acts 2:38 reads, “Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”
Those changes mean that we have a new identity; we are born again as a new person, the person of Christ who lives within us.
Galatians 2:20 reads, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.”

A transformed life

Our lives are transformed, not by what we do or don’t do, but by God’s grace through Jesus. And that changes both who we are and what we do, our change in identity results in changes in external behaviour.
It’s not a complete change all at once, but a gradual work that God is doing in us, as we become more like Jesus, despite the times we fall.
The focus that Paul gives to the deeds of the old man, like anger and wrath, have purpose as a check on whether that process of change has stalled, to highlight whether we have placed obstacles in the way of that change.
But we are encouraged as we see signs of change. Just as Jesus often went to a quiet place to be alone with His heavenly Father, we find ourselves needing to do the same. And we can find grace and forgiveness that we never had before, and strength and wisdom that can only come from God.

I pray for a desire to let go of the old self, to be rid of the old habits like bitterness, flippancy, and laziness, and that they will be replaced with faithful obedience in all He wants me to do.