Lie not one to another, seeing that you have put off the old man with his deeds;
Read Chapter 3
Ambrose of Milan
AD 397
Therefore, as upon the cross it was not the fullness of the Godhead but our weakness that was brought into subjection, so also will the Son hereafter become subject to the Father in his participation in our nature. This is so that when the lusts of the flesh are brought into subjection the heart may have no concern for riches or ambition or pleasures. The intention is that God may be all to us, if we live after his image and likeness, as far as we can attain to it, through all. The benefit has passed, then, from the individual to the community; for in his flesh he has tamed the nature of all human flesh…. Therefore, “laying aside all these,” that is those things we read of: “anger, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication”; as he also says below: “Let us, having put off the old man with his deeds, put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him.” –.
The renewal and reforming of the mind takes place “after God,” or “after God’s image”: it is said to be “after God,” to exclude one thinking it to be after some other creature; and “after God’s image,” to make it plain that the renewal is effected in the place where God’s image is, that is, in the mind. .
Seek nothing with exterior gold and bodily adornment; but consider the garment as one worthy to adorn him who is according to the image of his Creator, as the apostle says: “Stripping off the old man, and putting on the new, one that is being renewed unto perfect knowledge ‘according to the image of his Creator.’” And he who has put on “the heart of mercy, kindness, humility, patience and meekness” is clothed within and has adorned the inner man.
And even so we say that the true and perfect soul is the human soul, as is clear from the very nature of its operations in both sensory power and intellect. Anything else that shares in life, because it possesses the power of growth, we call animate by a sort of customary misuse of language, because in these cases the soul does not exist in a perfect condition…. Thus Paul, advising those who were able to hear him to lay hold on perfection, indicates also the mode in which they may attain that object. He tells them that they must “put off the old man” and put on the man “which is renewed after the image of him that created him.” Now may we all return to that divine grace in which God at the first created man, when he said, “Let us make man in our image and likeness.”
Moral choice rather than human nature is the determining factor and rather constitutes “the human condition” than the natural determinants. For human nature itself does not cast one into hell, nor does it lead one into the kingdom, but this happens by men themselves. We neither love nor hate anyone so far as he is man, but so far as he is such or such a man. If then our real essence as human beings is the body, which in any case cannot be accountable, how can one say that the body is evil? But what does Paul say? “With his doings.” He means freedom of choice, with its accompanying acts.
It is worth enquiring here, what can be the reason why he calls the corrupt life, members, and man, and body, and again the virtuous life, the same. And if the man means sins, how is it that he says, with his doings? For once he said, the old man, showing that this is not man, but the other. The moral choice does rather determine one than the substance, and is rather man than the other. For his substance casts him not into hell, nor leads him into the kingdom, but men themselves: and we neither love nor hate any one so far as he is man, but so far as he is such or such a man. If then the substance be the body, and in either sort cannot be accountable, how does he say that it is evil? But what is that he says, with his doings? He means the choice, with the acts. And he calls him old, on purpose to show his deformity, and hideousness, and imbecility; and new, as if to say, Do not expect that it will be with this one even as with the other, but the reverse: for ever as he farther advances...
