What is the new man in Colossians 3:10?

Verse 10. The new man is renewed in knowledge, or in other words made new for knowledge. It is the Christian seen in his new nature through the new life. "After the image of him that created him." The renewing that God accomplishes in us is not after the pattern of the first Adam, but a renewing according to Christ. This verse presents two privileges for the Christian, the divine nature in him, the new man; and an object outside himself, Christ, the object of his faith and thoughts.

All these things are to be put off as forming part of the character of the old man with his deeds, and as wholly inconsistent with the new man. Here, then, the Apostle draws the contrast between the old man and the new. These expressions do not refer to particular individuals. They are used to describe different orders of men each having certain characteristics. In ordinary language we speak of "the black man" and "the white man", not in reference to any individual, but as describing different races of men. Further, the expression "new man" does not mean simply a fresh man, as when we speak of a new man being appointed to fill some position; it implies an order of man that is new in the sense of being entirely different to the old man.

This new man is "renewed", a word that implies it is daily gaining new strength. This fresh strength is found in the knowledge of the One that has created the new man. As we grow in the knowledge of Christ, so we become like Christ, the One who is the perfect expression of the new order of man. When Christ came into the world there was under the eye of God One who, morally, set forth a new order of man — a heavenly man — with new characteristics. The introduction of the new order of man made the first man, morally, the old man.

In Colossians the new man is said to be “renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created Him.” This “renewed” is something wholly new, and which had never previously existed, renewed in the full knowledge of God, made to know Him in His very nature, for the nature of the new man is Divine. “God is love,” and “Love is of God.” Everyone therefore that “loveth is born of God, and knoweth God” (1 John 4). And this is “after the image of Him that created Him.” The Creator is Christ, to Him all creation owes its existence in Colossians. The new man is after the prototype of Christ.

The old man and the new man speak of two natures, both of which are only found together in one really born of God. The old man, palaios (Rom. 6:6; Eph. 4:22; Col. 3:9) is a term used of that sinful nature which governs the unconverted, and which we all inherit from Adam. It is also called the flesh, and sin. (Gal. 5:19; Rom. 7:20.) The new man (kainos in Eph. 4:24, and neos in Col. 3:10) tells us that this nature, derived from the new birth, is to man one wholly new in kind, and so called kainos; and new as to time, seeing he did not formerly possess it, so it is called also neos. That which formerly characterized him ere his conversion, the walking after the dictates of the old or former man, is to characterise him no longer. For that old man has been crucified with Christ; i.e. judicially dealt with by God at and on the cross; and now the nature that the Christian has received, as born of God, is to be seen working in him. For the new man is created, according to God, in truthful righteousness and holiness (Eph. 4:24); but though new as to time - neos, it is a nature only, and not power, so is to be renewed, anakainoumenon, unto full knowledge, epignosis, according to the image of Him that has created him. (Col. 3:10.) As new then, kainos, it is wholly different from the old, palaios, man; and as new, neos, or recent, there was a time when the person did not possess it. The man then, the Christian, is a person composed of parts - body, soul, and spirit; with two natures diametrically opposite the one to the other; the one, the old man, only and wholly evil; the other, the new man, which is impeccable. At times the person may be viewed as identified with the one, and at times as identified with the other. An instance in Gal. 2:20 will make this plain: "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me." The new man is not crucified with Christ. The old man was. So "I am crucified with Christ" views the person as identified with the old man, for whose actions he is and will be held responsible. "I live," etc., views the same person as identified with the new man.

Truth, however, is incumbent upon us because we have put off the old man and have put on the new. This is what we have done in our conversion, and the exhortations to put off and put on in verses 8 and 12 are based upon it. Conversion means that we have learnt to judge and condemn and refuse the old order of man and his character, and to put on the new man which is God's creation and partakes of His character. We do not for one moment say that we understood this or realized it at the moment of our conversion. But we do say, in the light of this Scripture, that this is what was really involved in our conversion, and that it is high time that we do understand and realize it.

In this new man the distinctions of this world — whether national, religious, cultural or social — simply do not exist. Christ is everything, and in all who have put on the man, for the new man is a reproduction of Himself.

Just what the old man is and what the new man is, is not easy to grasp and still less easy to explain. In both expressions we have a certain character of man personified. In the one you have the Adam character, in the other Christ. Only it is not just idealism but a real transaction. The Adam order is judged and we have done with it and put on Christ and consequently the character of His life. We put it on however not just as a man may don a new coat, but rather as a bird dons a new dress of feathers after moulting. The new character grows naturally out of the new life we have in Christ.

In verse 8, we come to another thing - there is no lust, but the flesh is not subdued. We have no lust to be angry; it is an unsubdued nature, and that is not Christ. This is a second step - "also put off all these." We have done with these horrid evils that God abhors (and He abhors them even more in His children than in others; His delight in us does not change the holiness of His nature) now put off these which express an unsubdued will, and unarrested action of the flesh. If a man says something to me, and I get in a passion, that is not Christ; it is that which unsubdued flesh gives forth. "Lie not one to another." Satan was a liar and a murderer; we are to put off lying and violence. Put these off, because "you have put off the old man [faith has done it] and put on the new." You have done with the old as to its very nature, you have put on the new; now do not bring forth the fruits of the old - the crab apples of the old stock. The new is "renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him." The new man knows God, and takes nothing as the right thing but what suits God. It is not merely an intelligent creature; he is not received in that way; but the Christian knows the love and holiness of God in Christ. It is the knowledge faith has of God. There is no measure of the path I am to walk in as a new man but God Himself. That is where the Christian is set. Act in the same spirit and character as He has shewn in Christ. Did He not shew grace to you when you were an enemy? Then you go and show grace. Was He not full of mercy to the unthankful? Then you go and do the same. "Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect."

473 Verse 11. There is no motive, no life, no character but Christ. "Christ is all and in all." I am not a Jew, a Gentile, or an Englishman; I am in Christ as to my life, and "to me to live is Christ." What we are brought into is Christ, and our object is Christ, and nothing else whatever. The life was expressed in Him, and the power of it is in us as alive; we are brought into it by redemption, and Christ is the whole object and character of it. It is Christ subjectively in me, and objectively outside me. I get in Christ Himself the knowledge of God. He is Himself the image of God. Look at Christ, and you see it all in a man. Christ is everything, and He is in the Christian. The whole sphere of the life, and the object of the Christian, is Christ. Where Christ is the divine life, He is the object of the life. The Father's love is fully revealed in Him too. Then what comes in most blessedly is, that I have His place.

Believers have put off the old man with his deeds (v.9). The old man is what the believer was as a man in the flesh. That has been put off forever: he can no longer be the same. Of course, the fleshly nature remains, but we are not "in the flesh" (Rom.8:9), though the flesh is in us. We have put on the new man. This happened when we first trusted the Lord Jesus as Savior. There has been a vital renewing in knowledge, for the new man is part of God's new creation, in which the life that is in God Himself is the pervading power, so that the new man is after the image of the Creator, a representation of His own nature.

In Colossians 3:10, we are viewed as having put on the "new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created him." There are none of the racial, religious, cultural or social distinctions in the new man that are to be found with "Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bond and free." Nor are there any of the features that are found in any of these men, "but Christ is all, and in all." Christ is everything to those who form this new man, and He is in every one who, by grace, is there. Christ is the object and the life of every Christian: and every feature of the new man is to be seen in Christ.

Yet God has created a man that is for His pleasure, and not one trait of man after the flesh is in him: his every feature has come from Christ. Every beautiful trait that was evinced in Christ here upon earth is to be found in the new man. God found infinite delight in Christ down here, and will have a race of men like Christ. This is the new kind of man that God brings before us. Here, “Christ is all, and in all.” Not a single feature of any other man is to be found, only Christ: He is all. And Christ is in all who, by God’s grace, have their part in this new man. He is not only in the church corporately, but in each one who is blessed of God, in all that have Christ as their life.

This new man is renewed into full knowledge, after the image of Him that created him. His knowledge is very different from that of Adam in innocency, for it is the full knowledge of God in Christ, both as regards the revelation of the Father in the Person of the Son, and all that is to be learned of God in His counsels of love, which centre in Christ glorified at His right hand in heaven.

In Ephesians 4:24 we learn that the new man has been created after God “in righteousness and true holiness,” and in this passage in Colossians we have Christ as the creator of the new man, and he is renewed in knowledge after the image of his creator., So that the new man has not only the features of Christ, but has the knowledge that belongs to Christ. Through Christ we have the true knowledge of God, and of all the things that belong to the new creation into which God in His grace has brought us. With such knowledge we are to be here for the pleasure and the will of God, both as individual believers, and as having part in the new man.