What Does Ephesians 4:22 Mean?

(22-24) These verses explain the substance of the teaching of Ephesians 4:21. The original may be interpreted either of the teaching of a fact, “that ye did put off . . . and are being renewed,” &c., or of a duty, “that ye put off . . . and be renewed.” The latter is, on the whole, the more probable, although the former would yield a simpler sense. It is to be noted that the words “put off” and “put on” in the original denote a distinct and complete act; the word “be renewed,” a continuous and still incomplete process. The complete act is consummated, and the continuous process begun, by the practical “learning” of Christ—that is, by growth in spiritual communion with Him. (22) **Concerning the former conversation.**—So far, that is, as concerns the conversation or mode of life described above (Ephesians 4:17-19) as the moral condition of heathenism. It is in relation to this, the corruption of the true humanity, and not in relation to the true humanity itself, that the “old man” is put off. The phrase “the old man” (found also in Romans 6:6; Colossians 3:9) is here illustrated by the description following: *which is being marred in virtue of the lusts of deceit.* The word rendered “corrupt” expresses not so much pollution as disintegration and decay, much as in 2Corinthians 4:16; and so carries out the idea implied in the epithet “old.” The unregenerate nature, subject to “the lusts of deceit”—the lusts, that is, of the spirit of delusion, blind themselves, and blinding the soul which yields to them—is gradually sinking into the spiritual decay which must become spiritual death, unless by the effort of faith, entering into the communion with Christ, it be, once for all, “put off.” The various qualities of the nature thus stripped off are variously described: in Rom. 13:22, as the “works of darkness; in Hebrews 12:1, as simply “encumbrance;” in James 1:21, as “filthiness and excess of evil;” in 1Peter 2:1, as “malice, and craft, and hypocrisies, and envies.” All these are the “lusts of deceit.”