The new self is what Christians have “put on,” like a set of new clothes. The purveyors of false teaching at Colossae probably taught that Paul’s teachings about Christ, though once new, were now getting old, and therefore needed to be renewed with their new, mysterious (pre-Gnostic) teachings. But, the truth doesn’t change. Christ is enough. And our “new self” in Christ is not static, but dynamic, being constantly renewed like a continuous upgrading, to being more and more like Christ. The more we know of Christ, the more we become like Him. Exposure leads to evolution into God-image likeness.

Now this “renewal” is blind to human distinctions. Prejudice dissolves before God’s redemption; the world is no longer divided into Jew and non-Jew. The term Greek is virtually synonymous with Gentile in Paul’s writings, for the Jews were a minority in predominantly Greek culture, even during Roman political ascendency. Further distinctions of culture/political groupings mattered nothing to the spiritual renewal of believers. It does not matter to the spiritual point Paul is making, whether a person is a barbarian (uncultured and considered savages), Scythian (the worst of the barbarians), slaves or non-slaves. The deepest human distinctions are obliterated in Christ. It is not that Christians have come to recognize through human wisdom the uncivilizedness of such animosities based on social status. Rather the knowledge of Christ overwhelms and obliterates all such distinctions—like a high intensity floodlight extinguishes all shadows.

In God’s eyes there is no difference, but the new self in us is being renewed to increasing awareness and embracing of that truth. Christ is all and in all. Today, there is one church—there are not black Christians and white Christians, as though the defining attribute of a person is the color of his skin, and his beliefs are secondary. We are above all Christians—that is our central and most important identification. The point, then, is that Paul’s instructions are based on that new life. Our moral behaviors, therefore, are not conditioned by those surface differences, but by our new life as “those who have been chosen by God, who are holy and beloved” (vs. 12a).