Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Colossians · About this commentary
Put Off the Old Man
Colossians 3:8-9
8 but now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and shameful speaking out of your mouth. · WEB
The second list is entirely about speech — and the reason given for dropping it is a change of clothes that has already happened.
But now you also put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, shameful speaking out of your mouth. The first list was about appetite; this one is about temper and what it produces, and four of the five are verbal.
The progression is observable. Anger is the settled disposition; wrath is the outburst; malice is the will to harm; slander is the harm delivered about someone; and shameful speech is the general coarsening that comes with the rest. The mouth is where all of it surfaces.
Verse 9 adds the one that governs relationships most directly: don't lie to one another. And then gives the reason, which is not that lying is harmful but that it is out of date — seeing that you have put off the old man with his doings.
The metaphor is clothing, and the tense is decisive. Not put off the old man, as a command, but having put him off — a completed act reported as the ground of the instruction. The letter's whole moral logic is here: it does not ask people to become something but to stop wearing what they have already taken off.
settled What this mark means