Quote:
Originally Posted by awareness
Even when in the LC I had a problem with the new creation and new man. Not that I didn't see it in the abstract. I just didn't see it in reality. I saw lots of the old man, and old creation, still hanging around. It seemed to me that tribalism was of the old man, and it didn't go away in the new man. So where was the new man? How come he looked just like the old man?
Where is that new man anyway? Lee called it the organic body of Christ, but it turned out to be a body of Lee followers.
Here's what I found on Colossians 3:10 in a footnote in the New English Translation :
FN7 Put off all such things. The commands in vv. 8-9 are based on two reasons given in vv. 9-10 – reasons which are expressed in terms of a metaphor about clothing oneself. Paul says that they have put off the old man and have put on the new man. Two things need to be discussed in reference to Paul’s statement.
(1) What is the meaning of the clothing imagery (i.e., the “have put off” and “have been clothed”)?
(2) What is the meaning of the old man and the new man? Though some commentators understand the participles “have put off” (v. 9) and “have been clothed” (v. 10) as imperatives (i.e., “put off!” and “put on!”), this use of participles is extremely rare in the NT and thus unlikely here. It is better to take them as having the semantic force of indicatives, and thus they give an explanation of what had happened to the Colossians at the time of their conversion – they had taken off the old man and put on the new when they trusted in Christ (cf. 1:4). While it is difficult to say for certain what the background to Paul’s “clothing” metaphor might be (whether it is primarily Jewish and comes from the OT, or primarily Gentile and comes from some facet of the Greco-Roman religious milieu), it is nonetheless clear, on the basis of Paul’s usage of the expression, that the old man refers to man as he is in Adam and dominated by sin (cf. Rom 6:6; Eph 4:22), while the new man refers to the Christian whose new sphere of existence is in Christ. Though the metaphor of clothing oneself primarily reflects outward actions, there is a distinct inward aspect to it, as the rest of v. 10 indicates: being renewed in knowledge according to the image of the one who created it. Paul’s point, then, is that Christians should take off their dirty clothing (inappropriate behavior) and put on clean clothing (behavior consistent with knowing Christ) because this has already been accomplished in a positional sense at the time of their conversion (cf. Gal 3:27 with Rom 13:14). That speaks nothing about the organic body of Christ. That's a superimposition by Lee. It sounds more like the individual subjective experience of converting to Jesus, and putting off the former bad behavior and putting on the clothing of a new way of living. |
Well Colossians 3:15 says "And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts to which indeed you were called in
the one body and be thankful." So Lee wasn't wrong that the body of Christ is what the passage is about.
The problem I have with Lee's argument is that after condemning everything human whether it be religion or philosophy or organization, and then finding that there was a new humanity in Christ, he excludes Christianity from the new humanity and reserves it only for his group-- the local church. That to me demonstrates Witness Lee's sectarian spirit.