Put Off the Old Man: Colossians 3:9-11 Explained
Short answer: Colossians 3:9-11 treats the old man and the new man as two identities, not two moods. Paul writes, "Don't lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old man with his doings" (Colossians 3:9). The old man is the person you were in Adam, corrupted by deceitful desires and enslaved to sin. The new man is the person you are in Christ, renewed toward knowledge in the image of the Creator. That is why Paul can say the divisions of the old world no longer define the church. The new man is not a personality upgrade you manufacture; it is the life of Christ formed in a person who has been crucified with him, raised with him, and is now being renewed by the Spirit. The command flows out of the indicative.
What Paul means by the old man in Colossians 3:9
The phrase Paul uses for the old man is not a label for bad habits. In Colossians 3:9 the old man comes with his doings, a whole pattern of life that belongs to a former identity. Paul uses the same word in Romans 6:6, where he says the old man was crucified with Christ so that the body of sin might be done away with. That is past tense. Something decisive happened to the old man at conversion, and Paul treats it as accomplished fact. He is not telling the Colossians to kill an old man who is still alive; he is telling them to stop living as though a dead identity still had authority over them.
This matters because many believers read the phrase old man as a description of ongoing personal weakness. They then hear the command as a demand to try harder, which collapses the gospel into moral effort. Paul's logic runs the opposite direction. Because the old man was crucified with Christ, lying is now inconsistent with who you are. The imperative rests on the indicative. You put off the old man not to become something but because you have already been made something in Christ. Understanding this order is the difference between striving and resting, between trying to die and reckoning yourself dead indeed.
The old man also has characteristic doings, and Paul names lying because it is the most social of sins. Lying fractures the community that the new man is building. In Colossians 3 the church is a body, and a body cannot function if its members deceive one another about what is true. Deceit was the atmosphere of the old life, and Paul elsewhere ties it directly to the old man that grows corrupt after the lusts of deceit in Ephesians 4:22. Lying is not merely a bad habit; it is the native language of the identity you left behind. To keep lying is to speak a dead language fluently.
There is pastoral comfort in that. If the old man has doings rather than a permanent claim, then failure does not restore his throne. The believer who lies and then repents has not reverted to being an old man; he has acted out of character and is being called back to character. Paul's exhortation is not a threat that you might be un-saved by a slip of the tongue. It is a summons to live consistently with the truth you have been given. The garment has been taken off. Put it back in the closet where it belongs, and stop wearing the corpse of who you were.
The new man is renewed toward knowledge, not self-improvement
Colossians 3:10 describes the new man as being renewed, which means the new identity is not static. It is a living reality that grows. Paul says it is renewed after the image of its Creator, which reaches back to Genesis, where humanity was made in God's image and that image was marred by the fall. Redemption is not the erasure of personhood; it is the restoration of the image. God is not erasing you and installing someone else. He is remaking you into the likeness of the one who is the image of the invisible God, and that remaking unfolds over a lifetime.
The phrase toward knowledge tells us the direction of that renewal. The new man is not renewed toward niceness or toward social respectability. He is renewed toward knowing God. In the Bible, knowledge is not merely information about God but communion with him, a relational knowing that reshapes the knower. Paul prays in Colossians 1 that the believers would be filled with the knowledge of God's will, and here in chapter three the new man is being renewed toward that same knowledge. Growth in Christ is therefore growth in knowing him, and knowing him is what makes you like him.
This is why the new man cannot be reduced to a self-improvement project. Self-improvement runs on measuring yourself against an ideal and then trying to close the gap. The new man runs on the reality that Christ is in you and is being formed in you. The language of renewal is passive: the new man is being renewed. The subject acting is God. You are not the author of your new identity; you are the field in which God is growing something. That does not make effort unnecessary, but it makes effort a response to grace rather than a purchase of it. You work out what God is working in.
Because renewal is ongoing, the believer should never be surprised by the need for change. There is no stage of maturity where a Christian has finished putting off the old man. The renewal is progressive, and its direction is constant even when its pace is uneven. Some seasons feel like spring and others like winter, but the one who began the good work continues to shape the image of his Son in his people. The new man is not a trophy you polish on a shelf. It is a living creature that God keeps making, and the evidence of his work is not perfection but a growing direction toward the one in whose image he is being formed.
Christ is all and in all: the dismantling of old-world hierarchies
Colossians 3:11 is the payoff of the passage, and it is stunning. Paul lists the sharpest divisions of his world: Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, slave, and free. These are not random categories. Together they represent the deepest religious, cultural, and social fault lines of the first-century Mediterranean. A Jewish man prayed a daily blessing thanking God he was not a Gentile, a slave, or a woman. Greeks called non-Greek speakers barbarians. Scythians were considered the most barbaric of all. Paul takes the entire ranking system of his world and says it no longer determines who is in the community of the new man.
The Jew and Greek distinction was the oldest and most religious of the divisions. It rested on covenant, circumcision, and Torah. Paul does not say these things never mattered. He says in Christ they do not divide. The circumcision and uncircumcision pair restates the same point in ritual terms, and the barbarian and Scythian pair handles the cultural snobbery of the Greek-speaking world. Slave and free handles the economic and legal hierarchy that structured Roman society. Four pairs, covering religion, ethnicity, culture, and class. Every wall a human being has ever built shows up on this list, and Paul says Christ is all and in all.
That final phrase is the most important thing Paul says about the new man. Christ is all, meaning he is the sum and substance of the new humanity. Christ is in all, meaning he indwells every believer regardless of their former category. The new man is not a mixed community of old identities tolerating one another; it is a single new humanity whose defining member is Jesus Christ. What unites a Jewish Christian and a Scythian slave is not shared culture or shared taste but shared Christ. He is the common denominator that is greater than every distinct numerator.
This has real application. The church is the one place where these divisions must not carry their old weight. It does not mean distinctions vanish into uniformity; Paul does not say there are no longer Jews or Greeks but that Christ is all and in all in a way that overrides their power to separate. The new man is a social reality, not just a personal one. If our churches still rank people by money, education, ethnicity, or background, we are dressing the old man in new clothes. The one who is all and in all is not honoured by a congregation that mirrors the world's hierarchy.
Already put off, still putting off: how the tenses work
One of the most important features of this passage is the tension between what is already done and what remains to be done. Colossians 3:9 says you have put off the old man, past tense. It is finished. Yet the surrounding verses command believers to put to death what is earthly in them and to put on the new man. If the old man is already off, why command the putting off? The answer is that Scripture consistently treats the believer's identity as accomplished and their experience as catching up. This is the same pattern Paul uses in Romans 6, where the old man was crucified with Christ and yet believers are told to reckon themselves dead to sin and alive to God.
This already-and-not-yet structure is not a contradiction; it is the shape of Christian living. Position determines practice. Because you are a new creation, act like one. Because the old man was crucified, stop obeying his voice. The commands are not the means of becoming a new man; they are the way a new man behaves. A person who has been given a new identity is called to live out that identity in the ordinary decisions of the day. The doctrine grounds the duty. Take away the doctrine and you get moralism. Take away the duty and you get presumption. Paul holds both together.
Paul uses the clothing metaphor deliberately. Putting off and putting on are decisive acts, like changing a garment. You do not gradually remove a shirt one thread at a time over thirty years. You take it off. But you do keep finding old habits clinging to you, and you keep having to consciously refuse them. The image is decisive in principle and progressive in practice. The suit has been removed once and for all. The smell of the old life lingers, and it is dealt with not by buying a new identity but by remembering the one you already wear.
The practical upshot is that Christian growth is not a matter of becoming someone you are not. It is becoming who you are. When Paul says in Colossians 3:10 that the new man is being renewed, he is not describing the creation of a second self alongside the first. He is describing the outworking of a single new self that God created in you when you were joined to Christ. So the fight against sin is not a fight for identity but from identity. The believer who understands this repents differently, serves differently, and endures differently, because the verdict is already in and it is not based on performance.
The new creation: 2 Corinthians 5:17 and Colossians 3:9-11 together
Paul's fullest statement of the new identity comes in 2 Corinthians 5:17, where he says, "Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old things have passed away. Behold, all things have become new." This is the theological engine behind Colossians 3:9-11. The phrase in Christ is the location of the new creation. It is not a psychological state or a religious feeling but a union with the risen Christ that redefines a person from the inside out. The one who is in Christ is not an old person trying to behave better. He is a new kind of thing altogether, a firstfruits of the world to come inserted into the present age.
The two statements complement each other. Colossians 3:9-11 emphasises the community and the cosmic scope of the new humanity; 2 Corinthians 5:17 emphasises the individual and the newness of the creation itself. Put them together and you get the full picture: the risen Christ is creating a new humanity out of people drawn from every old category, and each of those people is a genuine new creation. The new man in Colossians is the new creation in 2 Corinthians, seen as a collective body. Paul is not describing two events but one great work of God in Christ, applied to individuals and embodied in a church.
Notice that the old things have passed away is stated as accomplished fact, just as the old man has been put off. Paul is not predicting a future improvement. He is describing a past change with present consequences. The old things do not merely fade; they pass away. This is the same logic as Romans 6:6, where the old man was crucified with Christ. The New Testament consistently speaks of the believer's break with the old order as something already achieved at the cross and applied at conversion. Sanctification is learning to live in light of a change that has already occurred.
This should produce both humility and confidence. Humility, because the new creation is entirely God's work; you did not generate it and you cannot sustain it by willpower. Confidence, because it does not rest on your consistency but on Christ's finished work. The person who is in Christ is not on probation. They are a new creation whose old things have passed away, and the renewal that continues is the outworking of a settled reality, not a nervous attempt to secure one. That is the freedom Paul wants the Colossians to live in, and it is the freedom offered to every believer who has been united to Christ by faith.
Putting on Christ in ordinary life
Colossians 3 does not stay in theology. It moves straight into practice, and so should we. If the old man has been put off, the most ordinary Christian duties become exercises of the new identity. Colossians 3 tells wives and husbands, children and fathers, slaves and masters how to live, not because these roles define the new man but because the new man expresses himself in them. The new identity shows up in how you speak to your spouse, how you treat your children, how you work for your employer, and how you handle conflict in the church. The doctrine of the new man is tested in the kitchen, not in the seminar.
Speech is the first test Paul names. Putting off the old man means putting away lying and speaking truth, because the church is a body and bodies have to be honest with themselves. Putting off the old man also means putting away anger, slander, and filthy language, all of which Paul lists nearby. Put on the new man means putting on compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, and above all love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. These are not personality traits; they are the texture of the new creation. The fruit of the Spirit is the new man visible.
Because Christ is all and in all, the local church is the primary place where the new identity is lived. It is the one gathering where the old categories of status and background should have no leverage. If a congregation is visibly stratified by wealth or ethnicity or education, the new man is being obscured. If a congregation is a place where a former Scythian and a former Pharisee can sit at the same table and call each other brother, the new man is being displayed. The church is meant to be a preview of the new humanity, not a copy of the old one with religious vocabulary attached.
This also shapes how we treat our own failures. Because the new man is being renewed toward knowledge after the image of his Creator, growth is expected and imperfection is not a verdict. When you sin, you do not conclude that you are still the old man. You conclude that you acted beneath your identity and you turn to the one who is all and in all. The old man is off. The new man is being renewed. The command is to live as who you are, and the promise is that the one who began the work will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.
Where the new man comes from: union with Christ
Galatians 3:27-28 supplies the mechanism. Paul writes, "For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ." Baptism is the visible sign of union with Christ, the point at which the believer is publicly identified with his death, burial, and resurrection. To be baptized into Christ is to be clothed with him, which is exactly the clothing language of Colossians 3. The new man is not an achievement; he is a person, and you put him on the way you put on a garment. Christ himself is the new humanity, and being joined to him is what makes you part of it.
This is why Paul can go on in Galatians 3:28 to say there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. The categories differ from the Colossians list because the situation differs, but the logic is identical. Union with Christ dissolves the power of old identities to divide the people of God. The new man is not a new set of rules about how to relate across differences. He is Christ himself, and where Christ is put on, the old divisions lose their ultimate authority.
Some Christians have taken Galatians 3:28 further than the apostle intended and have treated it as a programme for abolishing all distinctions in creation. Others have taken it less far than he intended and have used the differences to justify superiority. The text is a statement about standing in Christ, not about erasing the created order. Men remain men and women remain women; Jews remain Jews and Greeks remain Greeks. What changes is that none of these categories any longer determines who is included, who is honoured, or who has access to God. The ground is level at the foot of the cross.
So the answer to the question of where the new man comes from is not found in self-discipline, therapy, or community pressure. He comes from union with Christ, signified in baptism, worked by the Spirit, and received by faith. Everything Paul says in Colossians 3:9-11 hangs on this. You have put off the old man because you are in Christ. You are being renewed because you are in Christ. Christ is all and in all because you are in Christ. The doctrine of the new man is the doctrine of union with Christ applied to daily life.
Biblical fidelity check
What Colossians 3:9-11 establishes is clear. It teaches that believers have put off the old man with his doings and are being renewed in the image of their Creator, and that in this new humanity Christ is all and in all. It does not teach that the old man is a separate entity possessing the believer, nor that the new man is a second nature existing alongside the first. It does not teach that Christians no longer sin, nor that sanctification is automatic. It does not promise that ethnic, cultural, and class distinctions cease to exist in the church, only that they no longer determine a person's standing in Christ. The passage grounds a real change in a real union with a real Christ.
A common misreading treats the new man as a self-improvement programme: God saved you, now try harder to be a better version of yourself. That reading inverts Paul's order. He commands the Colossians to stop lying on the basis of what has already happened to them, not in order to make it happen. Another misreading treats the old man as a still-living enemy that must be defeated by the believer's effort, which leads to despair when sin persists. The text says the old man was put off and crucified. He is not a rival king to be overthrown but a deposed one to be ignored, and the practical Christian life is learning to stop obeying a voice that no longer has authority over those who are in Christ.
Other passages that speak to Colossians 3:9-11
Paul's teaching on the new man fits into a wider argument that runs through the letters to the Corinthians and beyond. The same apostle who tells the Colossians to put off the old man also pleads with a divided church to be united in mind and judgement in 1 Corinthians 1:10, a passage that shows what happens when old identities fragment the body of Christ. The foundation of that unity is described in 1 Corinthians 1:9, where God's faithfulness and the believer's call into the fellowship of his Son are set out. For a broader survey of the letter's opening themes, see 1 Corinthians 1, and for the way Paul applies his doctrine to a church that confused freedom with license, see 1 Corinthians 10. Together these passages trace the same line: who you are in Christ determines how you live with one another.
Frequently asked questions
What is the old man in Colossians 3:9?
The old man is the former identity of the believer, the person he was in Adam before union with Christ. Colossians 3:9 says the old man comes with his doings, meaning a whole pattern of life shaped by deceit and sin. Romans 6:6 says this old man was crucified with Christ so that the body of sin might be done away with. He is not a living enemy that still rules the believer. He is a deposed identity, already stripped off, whose habits the believer must refuse to keep obeying by the power of the Spirit.
What does it mean that Christ is all and in all?
Colossians 3:11 gives the phrase as the climax after listing the divisions of the ancient world. Christ is all means he is the sum and substance of the new humanity, the one in whom every believer's identity is finally grounded. Christ is in all means he indwells every believer regardless of background. No former category, whether religious, ethnic, cultural, or social, determines a person's standing. The new community is defined by Christ, and he is present in each of its members, which is what makes them one body.
Does Colossians 3:9-11 mean Christians never sin?
No. The passage commands believers not to lie, which presupposes that lying is still a real temptation for them. What it teaches is that sin no longer matches their identity. The old man has been put off; the new man is being renewed. When a Christian sins, he is acting out of character, and the proper response is repentance and faith, not despair or a conclusion that the old identity still reigns. Growth is progressive, measured not by sinless perfection but by an increasing direction of life toward the likeness of Christ.
