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Colossians 3.5-11 - Put Off the Old Man

16 min read

Paul has just said that the faithful have died, been raised with Christ, and now possess a life hidden with Him in God. Then comes the severe word: Therefore put to death. The command is severe because the gift is real. Christ has not raised His people so that lust, greed, anger, contempt, and lies can continue ruling them under religious names.

Colossians 3:5-11 is not a morality code detached from the Gospel. It is baptismal re-creation becoming visible. The old life must die because a new humanity has been put on. Paul begins with desires that corrupt the person, moves to speech that wounds communion, and ends with the Image renewing a Church in which inherited status can no longer rank souls. Repentance here is neither self-hatred nor self-invention. It is the risen life of Christ reclaiming the whole person and the whole community.

Put to Death What Belongs to the Old Life (Colossians 3:5-7)

5 Therefore put to death your members which are on the earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. 6 Because of these things the wrath of God is coming upon the sons of disobedience, 7 in which you yourselves once walked when you lived in them.

Therefore joins this command to resurrection. Paul does not tell the Colossians to defeat sin so that Christ might accept them. He tells those raised with Christ to stop lending their bodies, imaginations, appetites, and choices to a life that has already been judged in His death. Grace comes first, then grace demands a life consistent with the One who gives it.

The Greek command Νεκρώσατε (nekrōsate) is decisive: put to death. Paul names members because the struggle is embodied, but the body itself is not the enemy. The vices that follow identify what must die: the earthbound practices operating through the person.1 Orthodox asceticism therefore refuses two evasions. It refuses the soft claim that destructive passions merely need better management, and it refuses the cruel claim that holiness requires hatred or injury of the body. The body belongs to Christ, is sanctified in the Church, and is destined for resurrection. Sin’s use of the body must end.

This distinction matters wherever sexual sin and sexual suffering are taught. Paul names sexual immorality, impurity, passion, and evil desire as realities requiring repentance. He does not make a person violated by coercion or abuse morally unclean, nor does he treat temptation or an involuntary wound as identical to chosen sin. The Church must name consent, exploitation, trauma, temptation, and deliberate action truthfully. Shame that confuses the wounded with the offender does not serve repentance.

Paul’s list reaches inward. It begins with conduct, but it passes through impurity and passion to evil desire, then ends with covetousness. The Greek πλεονεξία (pleonexia) is grasping greed, the drive to have more; Paul calls it idolatry.2 Greed can attach itself to money, but also to status, attention, control, sexual possession, influence, security, and the need to win. It becomes worship when the heart expects a created thing to provide the safety, worth, or fullness that belongs to God.

The warning about God’s wrath must retain its weight. Divine judgment is not an irritable outburst. God’s holiness opposes what degrades His creatures and destroys communion. Sexual exploitation, possessive desire, and idolatrous greed are not private preferences with no victim. They train the heart in disobedience and turn neighbors into objects. Yet Paul addresses people who once walked in that life. The past tense carries hope: a former way of life can truly become former through repentance in Christ.

St John Chrysostom gives mortification a sacrificial, Spirit-shaped meaning: Let us then quench concupiscence, slay anger, abolish envy. This is a living sacrifice.3 Concupiscence here means disordered desire. The sacrifice is living because the person is not destroyed. The passions are deprived of their rule so that the person may become alive to God.

The Coptic lectionary includes this whole session within Colossians 3:5-17, the Pauline reading for the Liturgy on the Sunday of the sixth week of Great Lent. It also includes the session within Colossians 3:1-17 on the Sunday of the third week of the Holy Fifty Days. The assignments are secure, though the surviving range evidence does not establish the historical rationale for their selection. Heard in both seasons, Paul’s command belongs to one Paschal pattern: those raised with Christ put death-dealing practices to death.

For our life

Mortification begins where excuses become specific. A person who repeatedly falls into lust may need confession, firm boundaries with devices or relationships, fasting joined to prayer, and prompt help from a trustworthy priest or qualified professional. A person ruled by acquisition may need to name what possession promises, stop the purchase, give generously without display, and accept the discomfort of not controlling every outcome. Decisive repentance is concrete, but it must never become self-injury, panic, or punishment of the body.

Put Off the Speech That Fractures Communion (Colossians 3:8-9)

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,

But now moves from the life once walked to the conduct required in the present. Paul shifts from disordered appetite to disordered relationship. Anger, wrath, malice, reviling, abusive speech, and lying may leave no visible mark on the speaker, but they make trust impossible and turn the Body against itself.

The sequence is exact. Anger can harden into wrath, wrath can cultivate malice, and malice seeks a mouth. In this human-to-human list, the NKJV’s blasphemy includes slander or reviling, speech that attacks another person’s reputation. Filthy language translates αἰσχρολογία (aischrologia), which can include obscene, shameful, or abusive speech.4 Paul is not merely policing profanity. Gossip disguised as concern, public humiliation disguised as courage, contempt disguised as discernment, and cruelty excused as honesty all belong under the command to put off.

This command does not silence truthful disclosure. Reporting abuse, naming danger, correcting a lie, seeking safeguarding help, or giving honest testimony is not slander simply because someone finds the truth uncomfortable. Malice seeks another person’s harm; truthful speech seeks protection, justice, repentance, or healing. The Christian mouth must learn both mercy and moral clarity.

Paul also names lying because communion cannot survive without truth. Lies told to avoid embarrassment, protect an image, manipulate a decision, conceal misconduct, or control what others know all return the speaker to the old humanity. Even a technically accurate sentence can serve falsehood when it is crafted to deceive. Repentance may therefore require more than stopping. It may require correcting the record, apologizing without self-defense, returning what was gained through deceit, and accepting consequences.

Language insight: command and accomplished clothing change

Verse 8 commands the Church to put off these practices with ἀπόθεσθε (apothesthe), to lay them aside. Verses 9-10 then use the clothing verbs ἀπεκδυσάμενοι and ἐνδυσάμενοι, having stripped off the old human and having put on the new.5 The grammar holds identity and obedience together. The clothing change in Christ is the ground of the command, not proof that struggle has ended. Christians do not invent a new self by moral performance; they make their conduct agree with the humanity they have received.

Old man is therefore not contempt for men, elderly people, or human embodiment. Paul is naming the former humanity shaped by sin. The old human speaks as if anger grants authority, secrecy grants safety, and another person’s humiliation grants strength. Putting off that old humanity means refusing its language when pressure makes it feel natural.

For our life

The mouth often reveals the passion before the person admits it. Notice the moment irritation becomes a rehearsed speech against someone who is absent. Stop before sending the message or recruiting an ally. Tell the truth without contempt. If anger has already escaped, repent quickly and name the exact harm instead of saying, I am sorry you were offended. The new humanity learns a different sentence: What I said was cruel and false. Please forgive me. I will correct it.

Put On the New Humanity Renewed in the Image (Colossians 3:10-11)

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.

Paul’s answer to the old life is greater than removal. The faithful have put on the new man, and this new humanity is renewed. The first phrase names a gift already received; the second names continuing transformation. Repentance does not leave the soul standing unclothed after sin has been stripped away. Christ restores what sin distorted.

Language insight: gift, growth, and the Image

Having put on translates an aorist participle, while being renewed, ἀνακαινούμενον (anakainoumenon), is present and ongoing. Paul then says renewal moves toward knowledge according to the image of the Creator.6 Knowledge in Colossians is never permission to admire religious information from a distance. The person comes to know God truthfully by being remade according to His purpose.

The letter has already named Christ the image of the invisible God in Colossians 1:15. That earlier confession gives this renewal its center. Humanity is restored according to the Image by union with Christ, the incarnate Son. The goal is not a more polished private identity. It is a person whose desires, speech, relationships, worship, and use of power increasingly bear the likeness of Christ.

Gems from the Fathers 💎

St John Chrysostom calls this renewal creation: Lo! the best life is styled a creation, after the image of Christ.7 The line protects repentance from despair. Christ is not asking the ruined person to repair himself with the same desires that ruined him. The Creator acts, and the new human learns to consent to His renewing work through faith, prayer, sacramental life, watchfulness, confession, and obedience.

St Athanasius offers a thematic witness to the same Christ-centered restoration. He writes that the most holy Son of the Father, being the Image of the Father, came to our region to renew man once made in His likeness.8 Athanasius is not commenting directly on Colossians 3:10, but his argument names the theological ground beneath it: the original Image renews the human image damaged by sin.

Verse 11 then shows the social form of that renewal. Colossae stood in the Lycus Valley near Laodicea and Hierapolis, within a region shaped by Greek, Jewish, Roman, and local histories. The evidence supports a culturally layered setting, though it does not prove the exact demographic composition of the house church.9 Paul’s list names ethnicity, circumcision status, cultural reputation, and legal-social status. Scythian could carry the force of an ancient outsider stereotype; Paul places that contempt inside a list whose power Christ overturns.10

Where links verse 11 to the renewed humanity of verse 10. Within this new creation, Greek or Jewish ancestry, circumcision status, cultural prestige, enslavement, or freedom cannot establish spiritual rank. Paul does not teach that Jewish identity disappears, that cultural histories become meaningless, or that the wounds of slavery are imaginary. He denies every inherited distinction the right to control access, dignity, or superiority in Christ.

This makes verse 11 both consolation and judgment. It consoles the person whom society treats as inferior: no human label can reduce what Christ receives and renews. It judges the Christian who carries contempt into the Church: no ancestry, education, wealth, office, citizenship, piety, or usefulness can become a second throne beside Christ.

The phrase Christ is all and in all belongs to this ecclesial setting. It does not make creation divine, erase persons, or teach automatic salvation without repentance and union with Christ. Christ is the source, measure, and indwelling life of the renewed Body. Chrysostom expresses the point personally: Christ will be all things to you, both rank, and descent, and Himself in you all.11 What the old humanity sought in status, the new humanity receives in Christ.

For our life

Ask whose presence changes your manner in church. Do you become warm around the influential and impatient with the unnoticed? Do education, ethnicity, income, ministry title, immigration story, marital status, disability, age, or past failure quietly determine whose voice you value? Verse 11 does not ask us to pretend differences do not exist. It commands us to see every person from the center established by Christ.

Spiritual Fruit 🍇

Bring the hidden bargain into the light. A passion gains strength when the heart keeps negotiating with it: one more look, one more purchase, one more private fantasy, one more justification. Name the act and the promise beneath it. Bring it to confession, remove the occasion where possible, and ask Christ to become the good you were demanding from the created thing. Mortification means ending the bargain without turning hatred against your body.

Recognize greed when it wears responsible clothing. Prudence plans; covetousness cannot rest unless it possesses, controls, or outranks. If anxiety about money, recognition, or influence is shrinking generosity and prayer, practice a concrete release. Give something useful, surrender one needless advantage, or accept a decision you cannot control. Let the discomfort expose which altar the heart has been serving.

Repent of the sentence, not only the emotion. Anger may arrive quickly, but malice is cultivated and speech gives it a weapon. Refuse gossip that recruits you into contempt. Correct a false account you helped spread. Apologize without explaining away the harm. At the same time, speak clearly when someone is endangered; truthful safeguarding is an act of love, not a violation of silence.

Live from the clothing Christ has already given. Repeated struggle can make a Christian feel fraudulent or permanently old. Paul says the new human has been put on and is being renewed. Return to baptismal grace through prayer, confession, the Eucharistic life of the Church, and obedient practice. The persistence of struggle does not cancel the gift; it calls you to inhabit it more fully.

Remove rank from the heart. Notice one person you routinely overlook because that person offers no advantage, shares no familiar background, or carries a history you judge. Give attention without condescension. Listen before categorizing. Christ does not become one item among the person’s other identities; He becomes the center from whom every person must be received.

For prayer this week:

  • Lord Jesus Christ, put to death in me what cannot live in Your risen life.
  • Name one passion plainly in confession or accountable prayer.
  • Repair one injury caused by anger, slander, abusive speech, or deceit.
  • Release one possession, advantage, or demand for control that has begun to rule the heart.
  • Honor one person whom status or familiarity has trained you to overlook.

Footnotes

  1. SBLGNT, Colossians 3:5-11; BibleHub interlinear, Colossians 3:5. ↩

  2. BibleHub interlinear, Colossians 3:5; NET, Colossians 3. ↩

  3. St John Chrysostom, Homily LXXIV on John, concluding exhortation citing Colossians 3:5, CCEL direct section. ↩

  4. BibleHub interlinear, Colossians 3:8; BibleHub lexical entries for βλασφημία and αἰσχρολογία. ↩

  5. BibleHub interlinear, Colossians 3:8, Colossians 3:9, and Colossians 3:10. ↩

  6. BibleHub interlinear, Colossians 3:10; BibleHub lexical entries for ἀνακαινόω and ἐπίγνωσις. ↩

  7. St John Chrysostom, Homily VIII on Colossians, on Colossians 3:10, CCEL direct text. ↩

  8. St Athanasius of Alexandria, On the Incarnation, section 14, New Advent. This is a thematic witness rather than direct commentary on Colossians 3:10. ↩

  9. Alan H. Cadwallader, “Colossae,” Bible Odyssey. ↩

  10. Encyclopaedia Iranica, “Scythians”; BibleHub lexical orientation for Σκύθης. ↩

  11. St John Chrysostom, Homily VIII on Colossians, on Colossians 3:11, CCEL direct section. ↩

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