The New Man

13. ‘The New Man’
13. "새 사람"
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- August 2001
- 2001년 8월
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- About behavior, norm, ethics…code of conduct by a person becoming ‘the new man’ Apostle Paul tells
-바울 사도의 ‘새 사람’이 되어가는 행동, 규범, 윤리...행동강령에 대하여...
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Ephesians 4;17~32
16. So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking.
17. They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts.
18. Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more.
19. You, however, did not come to know Christ that way.
21. Surely you heard of him and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. 22. You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires;
23. to be made new in the attitude of your minds;
24. and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.
25. Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we are all members of one body.
26. "In your anger do not sin": Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry,
27. and do not give the devil a foothold.
28. He who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with his own hands, that he may have something to share with those in need.
29. Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.
30. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.
31. Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice.
32. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.
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Still in Korea, there are many families with old parents to support.
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One of proud things in Korea to the world is the tradition of living with old parents.

Even though there are more increasing people who refer to the nuclear family era, more increasing old people who live alone and more increasing old peoples’ home, still in Korea there are relatively more old people who live together with their children. (I don’t know how long this phenomenon will last, but I have a wish that we are not the last generation on this land where our old people live with their children.)
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One general thinking in the minds of Korean folks has it that it is customary for the first son and his wife to live with his parents. Nowadays a lot changed, there are more old people whose other sons as well take turns periodically to live with or more old people who live with their daughter and her husband.
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In the meantime, there are some of old folks who think it natural that the oldest son and his wife should attend upon at least those who live in the houses of younger son, and also some of old folks who live with their daughter and her husband who feel depressed in the speaking to themselves, “Oh, my son, my son....” or “If only I have a son, I might not be in this harsh treatment....”
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This favoritism to a son is the Korean sentiment that has been traced down till now.

There are many cases that those old folks who live with their son handed down all their hard-earned hard-accumulated money to their son and his wife. To judge strictly, the pocket money sons give off to their parents is often a mere tiny bit out of their parents’ property, and yet even the pocket money they give it to their parents with an attitude of patronage on their faces.
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If their daughters’ husbands took this attitude, the parents who might have been silent to such action of their sons go as far as to show reluctance. Due to growing in learning the still existing bad discrimination between son and daughter, the younger generation in their 30s~40s as well is of no exception to their way of thinking about son. The big-talking man who says he doesn’t discriminate son or daughter when he begot is, for the most part, the man who has already one son or the man who is in his early stage of marriage.

Though different according to locality little by little, it is said that any elementary school has the same problem of lacking girls. In a severe case, it is said that girl children are immoderately insufficient compared to boy children in the ratio of 100 to 130.

This phenomenon is said to be much worse in China.
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Thanks to ‘ideology of favoritism toward male babies’ that hangs on to sons, old folks in China and Korea think they still don’t lose the just cause, even if they live with their son and the wife. The older-aged folks they are, the more natural they think it to be well-treated when they are old, by speaking to themselves about their sons they had been so strenuous to grow “How far I have gone to grow my son....”
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However, it is different from the standpoint of daughters-in-law.
There goes a saying, “However great pains you go to, two unappreciated thankless jobs are ‘taking care of baby children’ and ‘waiting on aged parents’.” Between them, waiting on aged parents is much harder. Taking care of baby children takes just as long as 2~3, or as longest as 5~6 years, while waiting upon parents takes even as long as 20~30 years of time and tide until the end.
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Though there is a satirical fad phrase like ‘a hard life under her daughter-in-law’ nowadays, yet there is mostly more cases of ‘a hard life under her mother-in-law’ or ‘a hard life under her family-members-in-law.’ Even if an oldest son and wife or one of the other sons and wife serves their parents, looks and appearances of daughter-in-law’s life under her parents-in-law are not different. This is the common complaints by daughters-in-law.
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Even though they serve their parents-in-law faithfully by fixing warm meals more than 2 times a day if not ‘all three warm meals,’ and even though they live ‘in the temperance of their privacy’ compared to their friends who live in nuclear families, they just live in all being scolded without receiving any single right compliment from their mothers-in-law. What is even worse, however, on a day like when another daughter-in-law or daughter of theirs drops by mothers’ houses accidently once or 1~2 times a month with purchased meat or clothes and slips some allowance money into their hands, the old parents-in-law express their gladfulness by saying, “Our ∞ is the best in the world.”

Not sufficient enough with being glad alone, too often than not we can see them run right to their neighbors, their senior citizen’s hall and their school for old people and every other place possible so that they sing praises only of sons, daughters-in-law and their sons-in-law who came for just a short drop-by.
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Serving warm meals 3 times a day, trying to please whichever way they want, looking after them numerously, being scolded to a repulsive degree,..., without attention to each and every kinds of such attentive efforts, they feel thanks only to and show interest only in ‘their son and daughters-in-law who appeared a short moment and slipped a little allowance into their pockets,’ so that the daughters-in-law who are living together with them just go mad and crazy in resentment.

This picture often seen in the neighborhood is one of conflictive issues between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. Not sufficient enough with such praises for others, even worse goes the discord between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law on an occasion like when mothers-in-law give the farm produce they have taken so much pains together in growing to live with their children (in rural area) or the items they collected with their money so hard-earned together up to a shoulder-drooping degree (in city), into the hands of other daughters-in-law who are merely dropping by once in a long while, without even asking to their daughters-in-law who are living together.
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Son or daughter who lives in a branch family comes their parents for a short visit once in a long while, receives client-like treatment and eats this and that fixed in their front. And then if he or she makes a demonstration of benevolence by giving allowance money and clothes, they are spoken of as a good and decent daughter-in-law or son-in-law. In case of siblings with children attached, their children make a mess of the whole house, which is irritating. In that condition, the slow-witted senseless mother-in-law brings out and gives them this and that by saying “I give mine own as I please” and does others, so that the daughter-in-law living together just feels her bosom sore in resentment one way or another.

Of course, this picture is not fit for every family. Yet, we can see a numerous families still have troubles in such similar ways.
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Speaking of one interesting phenomenon, there is a saying, “In case of a mother-in-law passing away, the daughter-in-law who had been under the same roof in serious conflicts with her mother-in-law in her lifetime weeps the most plaintively and sorrowfully.” It is neither a false weeping nor a perfunctory.

Since she has been together with her mother-in-law in bad affection and good in so long-lasted discord, all these things became the life of her own. That’s why she so unconsciously bursts into the fit of emotion different from other patronizing daughters-in-law.
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There goes a saying, ‘People who’s married after 7 years of romance fall into divorce in just a year after.’

In romance days, it doesn’t have the system where he or she reveals one’s everything to the other for 24 hours every day. Even though they see each other once in a while or every day, he or she shows just part of oneself and looks at just part of the other. If they now marry, however, they have a lot more chances to see a lot more parts of the other against their will, and to greedily attempt to correct the other’s weaknesses. In this situation where most of one’s identity is discovered by the other and one’s opinions collide with the other’s at any time of 24 hours, there came ceaseless occasions of dissonances.
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This way, people feel difficulty in front of words like ‘Continuously’ or ‘Like Every Day’ meaning constant repetition.
‘Life of faith’ as well is not different from that.
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Life of faith required by the Bible is not the role of daughter-in-law who shows all good outward appearances by smiling sweetly and slipping money into their parents-in-law’s pockets in just-once-in-a-long-while visits. It is life of faith that is like of a daughter-in-law who has to live in conflict in the middle of sundry errands and small complaints face to face to a tiring degree any moment 24 hours.

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Paul the Apostle who constantly preached Jesus until he died after repentance on the way to Damascus wrote a good quantity of the Bible(Paul’s Epistles). ‘Paul’s Epistles’ authored by Paul the Apostle of the Gentiles have several characteristics.
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The first is the spreading of the Gospel.
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It was the law that had remained religiously for the Jews in Asia Minor until Paul’s preaching the Gospel.

Apostle Paul explains by taking various examples about the issues between the law and the gospel, respectively the former that is the precepts of life and the latter that Paul himself preaches. In an intense case, he compares the law to ‘Ishmael’ borne by Hagar, a female servant of Abraham and compares the Gospel to ‘Isaac’ borne by Sarah, a wife of Abraham (Galatians 4:21~31). Against the law dominating over the Jewish world at the time, Paul the Apostle of the Gentiles preaches the Gospel that salvation comes not from the law but comes from Jesus. That is the first characteristic of Paul’s Epistles.
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The second is the foundation of the church
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Not synagogues that used to be for Jews so far, a new community of the church was established. Apostle Paul highlights that the church can play role solely in the first priority of the community’s ‘order and harmony.’ Apostle Paul explains to believers by comparing that church to the human ‘body.’
①Now I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God (1 Corinthians 11:3).
②The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ (see 1 Corinthians 12:12~31).
In the illustrative sentences such as above, we can see the church is likened to the body of a human.
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Lord’s Supper Service is indeed the institution to have the Church as ‘One Body’ understood.

On the eve night of being caught and taken away, Jesus imparted his disciples bread and the cup in remembrance of him and said, “This is My Body, which is for you (when Jesus took and broke bread after giving thanks) (1 Corinthians 11:24)” and “This cup is the new covenant in My Blood (1 Corinthians 11:25).” These sayings in the Sacrament must only be interpreted in terms of the Church as an organic body so that they may be rightly understood, according as Apostle Paul reminds.
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The third is that he taught the ethics necessary for the church community.
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Apostle Paul’s Epistles emphasizes life principles or ethics for the believers in the early church. This aims at establishing of order within community for the upkeep and development of a newly born church community.

The early church began to consist of people of various kinds. It was the community of slaves and masters worshiping together (Ephesians 6:5~9, 2 Timothy 6:1~2). It was the community of Jews and Greeks worshiping together (1 Corinthians 1:24, 10:32). Rich or poor, educated or uneducated, old or young, men or women and so forth, the worship community of people from various walks of life gathering together to attend service was the internal status of each church after Paul’s instituting the church. Since such many stratums of people attended worship service, a variety of issues began to occur.
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A characteristic of Paul’s Epistles is that Apostle Paul mentions the issues that began to arise in each church and suggests how to solve the issues.
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For instance, Corinth region is the city where commercial industry was developed at the time.
The city was so developed in commerce that comings and goings of people were naturally so frequent. With all and sundry people crowding in there, sexual immoralities were wide and prevalent. The sexual impurities were filtering into the whole city of Corinth. Such situation is a precondition for why the sexual issue unseeable in other parts of Paul’s Epistles was also deeply dealt with in the church at Corinth (1 Corinthians 5:1~8, 6:15~20)
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We can best interpret today’s text, Ephesians 4:17~31 when we set its background to Paul’s concern who wishes to preserve the ‘purity of the church at Ephesus’ by guiding his brothers and sisters in a right manner.
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The opening of the text including Ephesians 4:17~31 begins with the words including ‘I request earnestly’ at Ephesians 4:1.

This section is the record of believers’ ‘norms of life’ that are related to reality. And its core message lies in the words, ‘Be one.’ Work for God is divided into many duties. And these duties working harmoniously each other to set up the church is a ‘metaphorical depiction of the body’ and a ‘basic theme of being one,’ which Paul the Apostle highlights.
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From Chapter 4:17, he teaches ‘practicable standards of life (code of conduct)’ that people need to apply in their reality of life. He emphasizes the believer must overcome the old man of heathenism and further and further be changed concretely into the new being created in baptism.
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From Verse 22, he instructs through imperative sentences that the Christians should put off the old self (Verse 22), that is, put off falsehood, madness, stealing and evil speaking so that they may have their truth and sincerity recognized.

Verse 25 analogous to the ninth article in the Ten Commandments is what he orders by preconditioning that the believers of faith and baptism are the members of the church that is the body of Christ. It forbids any falsehood from happening between neighbors.

Verse 28 analogous to the ninth article is what the Christians of one body should understand in their mutual relationships in the context of the order, ‘Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God (Verse 30).’
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To sum up the flow of Ephesians Chapter 4:1 ~ Chapter 5, it would be as follows:
4:1 - I request politely....
4:2-16 ‐ Be one.
4:17-24 ‐ Put on new man.
4:25-32 ‐ Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God.
5:1 ‐ Be followers of God
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To look more closely, there are one saying ‘Be renewed (4:23)’ and another saying ‘Put on the new self (4:24).’ To go further to pay attention to the verse 25 ‘Therefore...,’ the conduct appearing in the 4:17~22 are the acts by none other than the people that belong to the old self or the body of sin, meaning “Now that ‘you are renewed’ because of ‘our Lord Jesus Christ,’ you should ‘lead the conduct’ of verse 25 and below’ from now on.”
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The essence of Ephesians 4:25~32 tells about the process of growing in the new self, and about manners, principles, ethics, conduct codes and such that should be observed in each Christian’s growing process as a new being.

Apostle Paul firmly states with an imperative sentence, “All kinds of malicious thinking, evil words and immoral acts are ‘grieving the Holy Spirit of God,’ such as lying, madness, stealing, evil speaking, brawling and faultfinding that are the doings of the sinful old man before believing Christ, conducted by you the self-professed new men.”
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Here comes a conclusion.
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A certain person’s thinking is expressed through actions. And if the actions pile up, they become habits. There are many times when habits determine the rest of one’s life.

Among Presbyterian doctrines (the order of salvation), the saying ‘Be made new’ in today’s text doesn’t refer to the ‘Justification (being called righteous)’ determined through a single ruling.
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“You already received the decision that you are ‘righteous in the blood of Jesus’ concerning your identity by the grace of God. Yet, the saying ‘Put on the new self’ in the text refers to the person who keep overcoming themselves -- or their evil thinking, speaking and action -- in discordant relationship with neighbors in the life led day by day till one’s death on the earth.
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Speaking of the saying “I am not who used to be,” if this is used by a man who has bitter grudge against money, that becomes his slogan for making money. If used by an examinee who studies, that becomes a decision to stop playing around and study hard. But if used by a Christian who has received God’s grace, that becomes a mature Christian’s motto who pursues the characteristics of the new self like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control and such, by breaking away from the characteristics of the old self like sexual immorality, idolatry, deception, evil language, greed, fits of anger and such (Galatians 5:16~24).
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Apostle Paul’s words ‘Victorious Life’ indicate the life in which one knows how to overcome him- or herself in the Christian’s day-after-day struggle like that. Only the person living that way is ‘the new man’ who is renewed every day (see 2 Timothy 4:1~8).
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I pray you everybody be ‘the new man’ yourself in your ‘victorious life’ day by day!
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