As we are to mortify inordinate appetites, so we are to mortify inordinate passions (Col 3:8): But now you also put off all these, anger wrath, malice; for these are contrary to the design of the gospel, as well as grosser impurities; and, though they are more spiritual wickedness, have not less malignity in them. The gospel religion introduces a change of the higher as well as the lower powers of the soul, and supports the dominion of right reason and conscience over appetite and passion. Anger and wrath are bad, but malice is worse, because it is more rooted and deliberate; it is anger heightened and settled. And, as the corrupt principles in the heart must be cut off, so the product of them in the tongue; as blasphemy, which seems there to mean, not so much speaking ill of God as speaking ill of men, giving ill language to them, or raising ill reports of them, and injuring their good name by any evil arts, - filthy communication, that is, all lewd and wanton discourse, which comes from a polluted mind in the speaker and propagates the same defilements in the hearers, - and lying: Lie not one to another (Col 3:9), for it is contrary both to the law of truth and the law of love, it is both unjust and unkind, and naturally tends to destroy all faith and friendship among mankind. Lying makes us like the devil (who is the father of lies), and is a prime part of the devil's image upon our souls; and therefore we are cautioned against this sin by this general reason: Seeing you have put off the old man with his deeds, and have put on the new man, Col 3:10. The consideration that we have by profession put away sin and espoused the cause and interest of Christ, that we have renounced all sin and stand engaged to Christ, should fortify us against this sin of lying. Those who have put off the old man have put it off with its deeds; and those who have put on the new man must put on all its deeds - not only espouse good principles but act them in a good conversation. The new man is said to be renewed in knowledge, because an ignorant soul cannot be a good soul. Without knowledge the heart cannot be good, Pro 19:2. The grace of God works upon the will and affections by renewing the understanding. Light is the first thing in the new creation, as it was in the first: after the image of him who created him. It was the honour of man in innocence that he was made after the image of God; but that image was defaced and lost by sin, and is renewed by sanctifying grace: so that a renewed soul is something like what Adam was in the day he was created. In the privilege and duty of sanctification there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free, Col 3:11. There is now no difference arising from different country or different condition and circumstance of life: it is as much the duty of the one as of the other to be holy, and as much the privilege of the one as of the other to receive from God the grace to be so. Christ came to take down all partition-walls, that all might stand on the same level before God, both in duty and privilege. And for this reason, because Christ is all in all. Christ is a Christian's all, his only Lord and Saviour, and all his hope and happiness. And to those who are sanctified, one as well as another and whatever they are in other respects, he is all in all, the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end: he is all in all things to them.

Lie not one to another - Do not deceive each other; speak the truth in all your dealings; do not say, "My goods are so and so," when you know them to be otherwise; do not undervalue the goods of your neighbor, when your conscience tells you that you are not speaking the truth. It is naught, it is naught, saith the buyer; but afterwards he boasteth; i.e. he underrates his neighbour's property till he gets him persuaded to part with it for less than its worth; and when he has thus got it, he boasts what a good bargain he has made. Such a knave speaks not truth with his neighbor.

Ye have put off the old man - See the notes on Rom 6:6; and particularly on Rom 13:11-14 (note). Ye have received a religion widely different from that ye had before; act according to its principles.

Lie not one to another.... Which is another vice of the tongue, and to which mankind are very prone, and ought not to be done to any, and particularly to one another; since the saints are members one of another, and of the same body, which makes the sin the more unnatural; of this vice; see Gill on Eph 4:25, and is another sin that is to be put off, or put away; that is to be abstained from, and not used. The arguments dissuading from this, and the rest, follow,

seeing that ye have put off the old man, with his deeds. The Syriac, Arabic, and Ethiopic versions read this as an exhortation, as they do the next verse also. Who is meant by the old man; see Gill on Rom 6:6, and what by putting him off; see Gill on Eph 4:22, and as for "his deeds", they are the same with the deceitful lusts there mentioned, and the works of the flesh in Gal 5:19 and with the members of the body of sin in the context, Col 3:5. Some, as Beza, think, that here is an allusion to the rite of baptism in the primitive church; which, as he truly observes, was performed not by aspersion, but immersion; and which required a putting off, and a putting on of clothes, and when the baptized persons professed to renounce the sins of the flesh, and their former conversation, and to live a new life.

(Eph 4:25.)

put off--Greek, "wholly put off"; utterly renounced [TITTMANN]. (Eph 4:22).

the old man--the unregenerate nature which ye had before conversion.

his deeds--habits of acting.