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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadCambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges - Colossians 3:9 - 3:9
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9. μὴ ψεύδεσθε εἰς ἀλλήλους. That the change to the present tense suggests that the sin was still existing (cf. Eph 5:18 μὴ μεθύσκεσθε) see the remarks by J. H. Moulton, Gram. Proleg. 1906, p. 126. The thought is expressed more fully in Eph 4:25.
ἀπεκδυσάμενοι. Compare Col 2:15 note, and ἀπέκδυσις, Col 2:11. The participle is dependent on μὴ ψεύδεσθε. But on the use of participles in imperatival sentences, see Moulton, op. cit. p. 181. St Paul takes up the common sin of lying—which heathen, and even those in a low state of Christian knowledge, hardly reckon as sin—and implies that it is a specially characteristic mark of “the old man.”
The construction of the participles ἀπεκδυσ. and ἐνδυσ. is doubtful. (1) They may state the motive “seeing that ye stripped off.” Compare the thought of Col 2:11. (2) They may be, and probably are, synchronous, “stripping off” (so Lightfoot). In favour of this are the following considerations (a) the parallel passage, Eph 4:22-25, is certainly imperative in sense, (b) In Col 3:12 the imperative immediately follows. (3) Hofmann and P. Ewald strangely take ἀπεκδ. as beginning a new period interrupted and resumed in Col 3:12, in spite of the οὖν there.
On the coincident action of the aorist participle vide supra, Col 2:13, and cf. Gildersleeve, Syntax, §§ 339–345, and Moulton, Gram. Proleg. 1906, pp. 130 sq.
The participles are in the aorist, because the present would express a gradual or a repeated action, whereas ideally the action is complete in itself and once for all. Even if experience shows that it must be repeated, yet on each occasion the act should be in itself complete.
τὸν παλαιὸν. As compared with ἀρχαῖος, which has “a suggestion of nature or original character” (Thayer), παλαιός thinks only of time (1Jn 2:7). But in earthly things the old in time becomes worn out (Mat 9:16-17), and “ready to vanish away” (Heb 8:13), and therefore is a fitting epithet of that which should no longer be worn by those who have received the new birth.
ἄνθρωπον. By a curious figure of speech ἄνθρωπος is spoken of as a vesture. It here almost=character rather than personality. Cf. Eph 4:22; Eph 4:24, Rom 6:6. See Suicer, I. p. 352. It is “the old self.”
There is a similar metaphor in 2Co 4:16, “ubi Apostolus per prosopopoeiam ac imaginem fingit, duos homines esse in eodem homine,” Suicer, I. p. 351. But there the outer man is the physical, the inner the spiritual side of our nature.
There can hardly be any reference to the first man Adam, for νέος would then include a reference to the second Adam, Christ. But Christ is not ἀνακαινούμενος εἰς ἐπίγνωσιν (Col 3:10).
σὺν ταῖς πράξεσιν αὐτοῦ, “together with his doings.” In reality, though not in form, a further definition of τὸν παλαιὸν ἄνθρωπον; the old state with all that this includes; not merely the old motives and the prominence of self, but also the various forms of action that belong to the self-life; cf. Gal 5:21.