Ephesians 4:22

Concerning the former conversation. — So far, that is, as concerns the conversation or mode of life described above (Ephesians 4:17) as the moral condition of heathenism. It is in relation to this, the corruption of the true humanity, and not in relation to the true humanity itself, that the “old man” is put off.

The phrase “the old man” (found also in Romans 6:6; Colossians 3:9) is here illustrated by the description following: which is being marred in virtue of the lusts of deceit. The word rendered “corrupt” expresses not so much pollution as disintegration and decay, much as in 2 Corinthians 4:16; and so carries out the idea implied in the epithet “old.” The unregenerate nature, subject to “the lusts of deceit” — the lusts, that is, of the spirit of delusion, blind themselves, and blinding the soul which yields to them — is gradually sinking into the spiritual decay which must become spiritual death, unless by the effort of faith, entering into the communion with Christ, it be, once for all, “put off.” The various qualities of the nature thus stripped off are variously described: in Rom. 13:22, as the “works of darkness; in Hebrews 12:1, as simply “encumbrance;” in James 1:21, as “filthiness and excess of evil;” in 1 Peter 2:1, as “malice, and craft, and hypocrisies, and envies.” All these are the “lusts of deceit.”