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Col_3:9. Μὴ ψεύδεσθε εἰς ἀλλ .] i.e. lie not one to another, so that εἰς expresses the direction of the ψεύδεσθαι (comp. ψ . κατά τινος in the sense of the hostile direction, Plat. Euthyd. p. 284 A, al.; Jam_3:14), like πρός in Xen. Anab. i. 3. 5; Plat. Legg. xi. p. 917 A; Lev_6:2. It is different in Susann. 55. 59. It connects itself with what precedes, and hence it is to be separated only by a comma from Col_3:8 (with Lachmann and Tischendorf); the following ἀπεκδυσάμενοι κ . τ . λ . adds a determining motive for the whole ἀπόθεσθε … ἀλλήλους : since ye have put off the old man … and put on the new, etc., with which the retaining of wrath, etc., and the farther lying (observe the present ψεύδ .) would not be consistent; on the contrary, this transformation which, in principle, has taken place in and with the conversion to Christ, must manifest itself practically by the laying aside of those vices. Accordingly, the aorist participles are not synchronous with the foregoing (exuentes, etc., so Vulgate, Luther, Calovius, and others, including Flatt, Olshausen, Huther, de Wette, Ewald, and Bleek), but precede it; they are not included in the exhortation, for which reason 1Pe_5:6 f. is inappropriately appealed to, but assign a ground for it. This is clear, even in a linguistic point of view, from the fact that ψεύδεσθε is the present; and also, as regards the sense, from the circumstance that if the words be regarded as part of the exhortation itself, as a definition of the mode of what is required, the exuentes only, and not the induentes, would correspond with the requirement to lay aside and to abstain from lying. Besides, Col_3:11 is inappropriate as a constituent part of an exhortation, but suits well as an argumentative enlargement. Finally, the assumed figurative exhortation only comes in expressly at Col_3:12, and that by way of inference ( οὖν ) from what had been said previously from ἀπεκδυσάμ . onwards in the same figure, though not yet in paraenetic form. Without any sufficient reason, and out of harmony with the simple paraenetic form of the entire context, Hofmann begins with ἀπεκδυσάμ . a new period, whose protasis ends in Col_3:11, and whose apodosis begins with οὖν in Col_3:12 (comp. on Rom_2:17 ff.); by this we gain only a more clumsy complication of the discourse, especially as the supposed apodosis has again participial definitions. The entire practical part of the Epistle proceeds in plain sentences, not dialectically joined together. Comp., moreover, on Col_3:12.
Respecting the double compound ἀπεκδυσ ., comp. on Col_2:11.
The terminus ante quem for παλαιός is the adoption of Christianity, so that, by the whole expression ὁ παλαιὸς ἄνθρωπος generically the collective pre-Christian condition in a moral respect[147] is presented as personified.[148] Comp. on Rom_6:6; Eph_4:22.
σὺν ταῖς πράξεσιν αὐτοῦ ] not generally: with his doing (Hofmann), but in the bad sense: along with his evil practices, with his bad tricks. Comp. on Luk_23:51 and Rom_8:13.
[147] Original sin is not denoted by the expression and the conception to which it is subservient (in opposition to Calvin: “veteris hominis nomine intelligi pravitatem nobis ingenitam; “comp. Calovius: “concnpiscentiam pravam congenitam “); it is, however, according to the biblical view (Rom_7:14 ff.), its presupposition and the regulative agent in the moral character of the old man.
[148] With the entrance of Christianity into the life of humanity, the old has passed away, and all things have become new (2Co_5:17). But the old man was individually put off by the several subjects through their own historical conversion to Christ. The Χριστὸν ἐνεδύσασθε of Gal_3:27 is not in substance different from the having put on the new man.