Wesley Corpus

Many of these applications are neither for us, nor against us. Some make strongly for us; as when it is applied to the words or ways of God and man. But the question now is, what it signifies when applied to God or to moral agents, and that by way of opposition to a vicious character and conduct. Is it not, in the text before us, applied to man as a moral agent, and by way of opposition to a corrupt character and conduct? No man can deny it. Either, therefore, prove, that jasher, when opposed, as here, to a corrupt conduct and character, does not signify righteous, or acknowledge the truth, that God “created man upright, or righteous.” (Page 11.) “To evade the argument from Ephesians iv. 24, Dr. Taylor first says, “The old man means a heathenish life;’ and then says, “The old and new man do not signify a course of life.’ What then do they signify? Why, ‘The old man,’ says he, “relates to the Gentile state; and the new man is either the Christian state, or the Christian Church, body, society.’ But for all this, he says again, a page or two after, “The old and new man, and the new man’s being renewed, and the renewing of the Ephesians, do all manifestly refer to their Gentile state and wicked course of life, from which they were lately converted.’ “When, then, the Apostle says, “Our old man is crucified with Christ, (Romans vi. 6) is it the Gentile state or course of life which was so crucified? No; but the corrupt nature, ‘the body of sin,” as it is termed in the same verse. And ‘to put off the old man,’ is, (according to St. Paul,) ‘to crucify” this ‘with its affections and desires.’ On the other hand, to ‘put on the new man,’ is to cultivate the divine principle which is formed in the soul of every believer by the Spirit of Christ. It is this of which it is said, (i.) It is created; and in regard to it we are said to be “created unto good works.” (ii.) It is renewed; for it is indeed no other than original righteousness restored. (iii.) It is after God, after his image and likeness, now stamped afresh on the soul.