Put Off the Old, Put On the New
20 But you didn’t learn Christ that way, 21 if indeed you heard him and were taught in him, even as truth is in Jesus: 22 that you put away, as concerning your former way of life, the old man that grows corrupt after the lusts of deceit, 23 and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, 24 and put on the new man, who in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of truth.
The contrast is stated as something learned, and the two garments are exchanged with a renewal of the mind between them.
But you didn't learn Christ that way. The construction is unusual — one does not normally learn a person — and it treats Christ as the curriculum rather than the subject of one. Verse 21 makes it explicit: you heard him and were taught in him.
The clause even as truth is in Jesus grounds the contrast. What the readers were taught was not a better ethic but a person in whom truth is located.
Then the three infinitives that carry the paragraph, and their order is the argument. Put away the old man — the verb is undressing, taking off a garment. Be renewed in the spirit of your mind — passive, something done to them. And put on the new man — dressing again.
The middle step is the one that keeps this from being behavior management. Between the two garments stands a renewal of the mind, which answers the diagnosis three verses earlier where the futility was in the mind and the darkness followed from it Ephesians 4:17–18.
The old man is described as growing corrupt after the lusts of deceit — decaying, present tense, and deceived rather than merely disobedient. Nothing is said about managing it. It is taken off.
And the new man is not the reader's own improvement. It has been created — passive again, and by God — in the likeness of God, in righteousness and holiness of truth. The same word for creation the letter used of the one new man made of two Ephesians 2:15.
What follows in the rest of the chapter is what wearing it looks like, item by item Ephesians 4:25.
settled What this mark means