Topic: Living in the Spirit
Colossians 3:8-11: But now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.
Paul speaks in these verses of the old self and the new self. Some contemporary writers use the terms false self and true self to address this issue—which makes a good point. Ephesians 4:22 speaks of the old self having deceitful desires, so, yes, it is false, it is deceiving, it is misleading. But to the degree that we abide in Christ we are free of this old self, this false self, with its misleading desires and all the confusion and pain it brings. Achieving this freedom to be our new self, our true self, is not a quick process; it takes time and much spiritual experience to learn to live in communion with the Spirit, to be able to abide in Christ. But it is our calling—our promise—and as we persevere, we experience more and more the reality that truly “Christ is all, and is in all.”
