Article November 9, 1912 Issue

"PUT OFF"—"PUT ON."

J. MORLEY WYARD.

In various parts of the Scripture, the act of putting off and putting on is employed symbolically to impress with graphic distinctness many lessons respecting purity of life and conduct,—putting off "the old man" of sin, putting on "the new man" of righteousness; putting off the foolishness of childhood, putting on the full vigor of Christian manhood; putting off materiality with its selfishness and its failure, putting on spirituality with its selflessness and its triumphs; putting off mortality and corruption, putting on immortality and incorruption.

Hiding away from the wrath of the Pharaoh during forty long years of exile and isolation and weariness, in the lone fastnesses of Horeb, far down in the historic peninsula of Sinai, where he kept the sheep of his father-in-law, there came to Moses that memorable day when he received his divine commission as the deliverer of his own people from the bondage of the Pharaoh. Drawing near to the bush which burned with fire but was not consumed, he heard the command: "Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground." Obedient to the heavenly vision, Moses put off the mortal and material thought which had so long kept him in bondage to fear, and put on the new spiritual view or sense of things which qualified him to become the leader and judge of the chosen people during the forty years of their subsequent wandering. When the prodigal of the parable got ready to put off the riotous living and the quickly sequent famine and swine and husks, he found that the father whose love he had grieved and outraged stood ready to put on him the robe and the ring and the shoes, and to restore him to his once unappreciated sonship.

In the epistles of Paul this putting off and putting on is a favorite figure, which he frequently uses to inculcate the most searching instruction. "The carnal mind is enmity against God," he says to the Romans, "for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be." And he enjoins the Colossians and the Ephesians that they put off the "carnal mind"—the mortal mind—the "old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts." The black catalogue of the characteristics of the "old man" is here and there repeated, which sums up the misery and the shame, the suffering and the sorrow, the costliness and the unprofitableness, of indulgence in these "lusts." "Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering; forbearing one another. ... And above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness." "Put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him." As if to make his meaning still more plain, he says: "Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ;" and again, "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." "Though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day."

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