The Old Has Passed Away: Understanding Your New Identity
Rev. Aniekan "Mbomboyo" Okokon ·
Our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. — Romans 6:6
Every believer who has read 2 Corinthians 5:17 has asked the same question. If the old has passed away, why do I still feel it? The temper is still there. The fear is still there. The old appetites come back on a bad day as if they never left. Either Paul was exaggerating or we have misunderstood what he meant by the old.
He was not exaggerating. But he was precise, and the precision matters.
The old man and the old ways
Paul distinguishes between the old self - the person you were in Adam, dead in sin, under judgement, a slave - and the practices of that person, the habits and reflexes he formed over years. The old self was crucified with Christ. That is an event, and it is finished. The practices are being put off. That is a process, and it takes a lifetime.
So when the old temper flares, you are not meeting the old man risen from the dead. You are meeting his clothes, left behind in a wardrobe you have not finished clearing. The clothes are real, and they fit badly, but there is nobody in them.
Why this matters for how you fight
If you believe the old man is still alive, every failure is proof of who you are, and the fight is hopeless from the start. If you know the old man is dead, every failure is a stray habit acting without a master, and the fight is a clearing-out, not a civil war.
- The old identity is not being weakened. It is gone. You do not have to defeat it; you have to stop dressing in it.
- Habits are broken by replacement, not by regret. Put on the new self, Paul says - put on compassion, kindness, humility. The new clothes push the old ones out.
- Feelings are not evidence. The old life feels present because memory and body keep its patterns. The Word tells you what is true; the feeling reports what was familiar.
Living from the funeral
Baptism was the burial. Every time you are tempted to introduce yourself, in your own thinking, as the person you used to be, remember that you attended his funeral. He is not coming back. What remains is a new creature learning to live in a body that still has old reflexes - and the Spirit who raised Jesus is retraining those reflexes one day at a time.
The old has passed away. Say it, mean it, and go and live like the new has come.