You were taught with reference to your former way of life to lay aside the old man who is being corrupted in accordance with deceitful desires,

The issue of teaching is coming up again. And part of the teaching that Paul probably supplied concerned their former way of life.

Repentance could mean lay aside, and it always entails a change in lifestyle. And way of life is not talking about your spiritual gift, because sometimes we may think that the operation of a spiritual gift will give us a pass when it comes to a wrong way of life.

Paul said he subdues his body and makes it his slave so that after preaching to others he himself will not be disqualified (1 Corinthians 9:27), meaning he recognized that there can be a disconnect between spiritual gifts and personal lifestyle.

And we find that same line of thought in Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount, where He said some people will come to Him saying they did all manner of things in His name, but He will tell them to depart from Him because they are lawbreakers (Matthew 7:22–23).

This focus verse tells us that a basic teaching is to lay aside the old man. I regard the old man as the instinct that we were born with, that we have cultivated, things that are innate to us.

But we are called to lay it aside. Paul is making it a matter of choice.

The distinction I see between the unbeliever and the believer in Paul's writings is that the unbeliever has no choice, whereas the believer has a choice; that choice, in my opinion, is predicated on the available grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

This focus verse emphasizes that choice.

Paul also wrote in the book of Romans about putting to death your members and not yielding your members as instruments of sin, but rather as instruments of righteousness (Romans 6:11–13).

That choice believers have, instead of a wholesale capture, is the grace that we have in Jesus. As Scripture says, this grace “trains us to reject godless ways and worldly desires and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age” (Titus 2:11–12). It is the grace that we are meant to come to the throne of grace to seek (Hebrews 4:16).

Paul is saying the key is teaching, not fasting, teaching, not prayer, teaching, not vigils. Teaching is so important that Jesus told Peter three times, ‘Feed my sheep’ (John 21:15–17), after equating the word of God with food during His temptation by the devil (Matthew 4:4).

We may want to preoccupy ourselves with something else, including power or service, which means we would be deficient when it comes to the charge to leave behind our former way of life.

If there is the old man to lay aside, then there is the new man to put on; the new man is Christ-shaped, God-imaged. The old man is first-Adam shaped. That is the truth.

So, while “the old man who is being corrupted in accordance with deceitful desires,” the new man “is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of the one who created it.” The new man is running on new desires, the desires of the Spirit (Galatians 5:16–17).

Jesus said, put new wine in new wine skins (Matthew 9:17). To pour the Holy Spirit on us, He has to make us new. There was no other option.

There is a duality of our earthly experience now, hence the call to lay aside the old man.

Paul said to walk in the Spirit so that you will not fulfill the lust of the flesh (Galatians 5:16); He talks about this duality while we are still in the flesh, the ever-present possibility of sinning.

While he urged the laying aside of the old man, he at the same time communicates the ever-present possibility of sinning, and look what he did not say: he did not say that you lose your salvation when you sin, rather telling you you may be teaching deficient or lack right action on your part.

He mentioned teaching and action in this verse. You have to be taught, and you have to take the action of laying aside the old man, meaning you have to confront the degenerate part of you, acknowledge it, don’t ignore it. Then lay it aside through constant repentance.

And see how the old man is described: It is being corrupted. It’s getting worse and worse.

If it's something we lay aside, it means we have multiple opportunities in a day to do that, to make choices that contradict the old man; it may be in small or big things. Actually, the small things reflect the big things. It’s a daily practice, not a destination.

Paul, in another place, writes, “Whoever sows into the flesh will reap corruption (Galatians 6:8), and bad company corrupts good manners (1 Corinthians 15:33). Sowing communicates practice; manners communicate practice.

In this focus verse, Paul distinguishes between you and the old man by using the phrase “your former self.” He uses the phrase "the old man" as if it is something we are supposed to disown, as something that is not you but is somehow attached to you, or that you are tempted to be attached to.

In another place, Paul said in him dwells nothing good (Romans 7:18), and that sin dwells in him (Romans 7:17, 20); these are all statements about the old man that he is saying to lay aside.

And "lay aside" is a figurative expression that conveys an ongoing struggle with sin. The old man does not want to be laid aside. Paul uses “who” to refer to the old man, and says it is being corrupted. It is therefore a living thing, in my opinion. It therefore takes ongoing repeated effort on your part. It doesn’t happen automatically.

In another place, Paul calls it the body of sin (Romans 6:6), and cries out that Jesus is the one who will deliver him from the body of sin (Romans 7:24–25). In my opinion, deliverance comes when we have a new body.

There is a conceptual frame for understanding that we are dead to sin and we should live for righteousness, and there is a deliberate choice made in that direction; as it is written, the one who sows into the flesh will reap corruption (Galatians 6:8).

The old man is being corrupted because the old man is still in the world (while the new us is seated with Christ in the heavenlies (Ephesians 2:6)), so there is no hope for us apart from Christ is the point.

Another thing Paul mentioned is deceitful desires, which communicate a capture. When Eve said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate” (Genesis 3:13).

We were told that she saw the fruit as something to be desired to make one wise (Genesis 3:6), but their struggle to cover themselves up after the sin shows that the supposed promise of wisdom was false.

So she rightly concluded that she was deceived. And the “deceitful desires” mentioned in the focus verse are plural, and Jesus also said that desires for other things can come in and choke the word (Mark 4:19).

May we not be captured by the wrong desires in Jesus' name. They are deceptive because our understanding is darkened in that area, and we would inevitably fall into a pit. That is the truth.

We can have deceitful desires lurking in our hearts that can spring up on us. That is why our thought life is important, and why we need to abort wrong thoughts, which form the basis of desires that can have a life of their own (James 1:14–15).