How to Put On the "New Man"

Bullet points for putting on the "new Man". I know this is Christ's work in my life, but I have a part to play.

-The new man is not wavering, though he is imperfect. Falling into imperfection and even choosing it sometimes is not unexpected, but should not be willingly stepped into under the guise of being broken. This includes the use of inappropriate humor and foul language.

Prayer from Lauds, The Liturgy of the Hours “...This is the morning on which the Lord appeared to men who had begun to lose hope and opened their eyes...”

-Part of putting on the new man means helping the Lord appear to those who have lost or are losing hope. We, through our way of living, open their eyes to His love and all He can do in our lives. Our disciplined, structured way of being must be consistent to the extent we have any control over that through constant submission to Christ.

Col 3:1-17 "..."....If, then, you have risen with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your hearts on heavenly things, not the things that are on earth...You must put that aside now: all the anger and quick temper, the malice, the insults, the foul language.

Stop lying to one another. What you have done is put aside your old self with its past deeds and put on a new man, one who grows in knowledge as he is formed anew in the image of his Creator..."

From the book When the Son Frees You"... it is sometimes said that a man never truly really comes into his own until he is accepted into a group of other men who love, accept, and defend him unconditionally. He needs to feel that he belongs to his group, his clan, his tribe. Men need other men... nonetheless, both(men's organizations in the church and fraternities and gangs) testify to the need men have to be with other men..."

-Isolation, control, selfishness, and pleasure seeking are all things of the past. Things of the old man. Despite the comfort they bring, they must be put aside. This comfort is the comfort of the world. Of the enemy.

Putting on the new man requires effort. This new behavior must be maintained despite telling myself it's ok to take a day off. The new man can not have the day off, for a day off throws him off, and the old man is not likewise thrown off as easily.

The new man we put on is life.  Life does not take a break. Life does not take a couple of days off each week, allowing the old man to return. The old man isn't to be set aside; he is to die. His death must be permanent. He can not die if he is resuscitated every weekend.

Part of the new man is being my brother's keeper. Being a keeper doesn't necessarily mean correcting others, but rather being an example for others by living the life of the new man.

Psalm 63 "O God,  You are my God, for You I long, for You my soul is thirsting. My body pines for You like a dry, weary land without water..."

Part of putting on the new man is recognizing and accepting that our spiritual bodies never stop pining and thirsting. If we go back and forth between refreshing ourselves with Christ and refreshing ourselves with the things of this world, our bodies can not take on the new man fully. We remain in flux. Waffling back and forth. Never new or old but something in between.

Acts 10:40-43 "...God raised up Jesus on the third day and granted that he be seen, not by all, but only by such witnesses as had been chosen beforehand by God — by us who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. He commissioned us to preach to the people and to bear witness that he is the one set apart by God as judge of the living and the dead..."

The commission of the new man is a new way of being. Not something that is put on and taken off. It is not a job but a way of being: priest or cop, not barber or bartender.

Putting on the new man. What does that mean?  Many of us are afraid of true masculinity because we don’t know what it is, but we suspect it does not revolve around pleasure seeking and selfishness, and this scares us. We often struggle to be responsible, tender, and self-sacrificing. We see aggression, violence, and pleasure seeking all around us, and many have fallen into the trap of “that’s just how men are”. Rubbish!!!

Men are this way because many do not have models of true masculinity to base the new man on. They look to bad role models. If they do have good, truly masculine men around them, they may reject them because they’ve been told real men are not “soft,” which is how many view truly masculine traits.

To put on the new man, we must find an example of true masculinity. Jesus or someone like St. Paul, who is close enough to Jesus that they can say, “Brothers and sisters, be imitators of me.”

Human-Written, AI Spell-Checked 4/11-4/15/21 AD

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