Revêtir l'Homme Nouveau — The Middle Verb Is Passive

✦ Pastor Barnabas · Pastoral Note — The Letter Turns

Something changes in this chapter, and it is worth naming.

Three chapters of what God has done — chosen, adopted, made alive, raised, seated, reconciled, built together. Not one command in any of it.

And now, for the first time, Paul tells them what to do.

The order is deliberate and it is the order of the whole New Testament. The instructions come after the announcement, never before it. Nobody in this chapter is being told to behave in order to become something. They are being told how to dress for what they already are.

✦ Pastor Barnabas · Pastoral Note — Two Clothing Verbs and One Passive

The two outer verbs are wardrobe words. Put off is what you do with a garment you are taking off; put on is what you do with the one you are putting on. The French keeps the second one exactly: revêtir — to clothe oneself.

But look at the verb in the middle, because it is not like the other two.

Be renewed in the spirit of your mind. À être renouvelés. Passive. It is done to you.

So the sequence is: you take off, something is done to you, you put on. The two ends are yours. The middle is not.

And that middle verb is also present and continuous — be being renewed, not get renewed once.

Which is the shape of every great word in this journal's last month. I am persuaded. Being enlightened. Sealed. Made alive. Passive verbs, all of them. The active parts of the Christian life are the dressing and undressing. The changing itself is done by Someone else.

✦ Pastor Barnabas · Pastoral Note — The New Man, Again

Put on the new man. Revêtir l'homme nouveau.

Le read that exact phrase three days ago, in chapter 2 — where Christ made Jew and Gentile into one new man. Same words. Different scale.

There it was corporate: two peoples made into one new humanity. Here it is personal: one woman in the morning, putting on the same new humanity like a coat.

And both use kainos — new in kind, not merely recent. Which matters, because the old man is not being repaired. Paul says he grows corrupt — present tense, ongoing, getting worse rather than better. There was never a version of him worth mending.

✦ Pastor Barnabas · Pastoral Note — Anger Is Not Forbidden

Verse 26 is a quotation from Psalm 4, and it says something people rarely expect.

Be angry, and do not sin. Si vous vous mettez en colère, ne péchez point.

The anger itself is not the sin. Paul does not tell them never to feel it — which would be dishonest advice, and impossible. He tells them where the line is and how long they have.

Do not let the sun go down on your wrath. Which is a time limit rather than a prohibition — and a short one.

The word he uses is not the ordinary word for anger. It is closer to exasperation, the state of being provoked. And the danger named in the next breath is that it makes room: nor give place to the devil. Anger is an emotion. Anger kept overnight is an address.

✦ Pastor Barnabas · Pastoral Note — The Thief Becomes a Giver

Verse 28 has three steps, and most people stop at the second.

Let him who stole steal no longer — stop taking.
but rather let him labour, working with his hands what is good — start earning.
that he may have something to give him who has need. — and the purpose of the earning is giving.

If the cure for theft were honesty, the verse would end at the second step. It does not.

Paul turns the man completely around. The hands that took now work; the work that provides now supplies somebody else. A former thief is not being asked to become neutral. He is being asked to become a source.

Which is what repentance actually looks like in this letter: not the absence of the old thing, but its reverse.

✦ Pastor Barnabas · Pastoral Note — Rotten Words, and Words That Give

The word behind corrupt is sapros: rotten, spoiled, putrid. It is the ordinary word for fruit gone bad or fish that has turned. Jesus uses it of a bad tree and of the bad fish thrown away from the net.

So the test is not primarily whether a word is rude. It is whether it is going off. Some perfectly polite speech is rotten, and everybody can smell it.

And then the positive, which is far more demanding than the prohibition. That it may impart grace to the hearers. Communique une grâce à ceux qui l'entendent.

Words are being asked to hand over something. Not merely to avoid damage — to deliver grace to whoever is listening. Which raises the bar past was that appropriate to did that give anything.

✦ Pastor Barnabas · Pastoral Note — You Cannot Grieve a Stranger

Verse 30 is one of the tenderest warnings in the New Testament, and the tenderness is in the verb.

Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God. N'attristez pas le Saint-Esprit. The French is plainer than the English: do not sadden Him.

Paul does not say do not anger the Spirit, or do not provoke Him. He says do not make Him sad — and grief is a word that only applies where there is love.

A stranger can be annoyed by you. An official can be offended. Only someone who loves you can be grieved by you. The warning is built on the affection it assumes.

And look at the second half of the same verse, because it is doing something important. By whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.

Le read that seal on the sixth of September — ownership, authenticity, protection in transit. Here it appears inside the warning, and it does not tremble. Paul does not say grieve Him and you may lose the seal. He says: the One you are capable of saddening is the One who sealed you, and the seal is for the day of redemption.

The security is stated in the same breath as the caution. Which is why the caution can be taken seriously without fear.

✦ Pastor Barnabas · Pastoral Note — Five Off, Three On

The chapter ends with a wardrobe again: five garments removed, three put on.

Off: bitterness, wrath, anger, clamour, evil speaking — and all malice gathered up with them.

On: kind, tenderhearted, forgiving.

And the first of those three is a word Le already knows. Kind is chrēstos — the very word Jesus used in My yoke is easy, read here on the thirteenth of August.

Which joins the two passages in a way neither shows on its own. His yoke is chrēstos toward us; we are to be chrēstoi toward each other. The same word describes how He handles us and how we are to handle the people at close quarters.

Tenderhearted is eusplanchnos — literally good-gutted. The Greeks located compassion in the inward parts, not the chest. It is the feeling in the stomach when you see someone in trouble, and Paul makes a virtue of it.

✦ Pastor Barnabas · Pastoral Note — Forgiving by Grace

And the last verb, which is not the usual one.

The ordinary New Testament word for forgive means to let go, to release a debt. Paul does not use it here. He uses charizomai — built directly on charis, grace.

It means something closer to to grace someone, to give freely, to bestow as a favour. Forgiveness described not as cancelling something but as handing something over.

And then the standard, which is the hardest clause in the chapter: even as God in Christ forgave you. Comme Dieu vous a pardonné en Christ.

Not as much as they deserve. Not in proportion to the apology. The measure is what was done to us — and Paul has spent three chapters describing exactly how much that was.

Which is why the doctrine had to come first. Verse 32 is unreadable as a command to anyone who has not been told what is in chapters 1 to 3.

✦ Pastor Barnabas · Pastoral Note — At Close Quarters

One last thing, because of where this is being read.

Every instruction in this passage is about other people. Truth with a neighbour. Anger before sundown. Speech that gives rather than rots. Kindness, tenderness, forgiveness. Not one of them can be practised alone.

And they are being read in a motorhome, by a household that has spent four weeks at very close range indeed — two people and a poodle, in a small space, crossing three countries, looking at houses, waiting on decisions, sleeping in car parks and beside olive trees and on a boulevard by the sea.

Verse 26 has a particular edge in a vehicle where nobody can walk to another room. Do not let the sun go down on your wrath is a rule written for people who will still be there in the morning.

Which is, in fact, the ideal condition for this chapter. None of it works at a distance.

✦ Pastor Barnabas · Pastoral Note — The Gap Between the Two Coats

One more thing about the middle verb, since Le has landed on it.

The renewing happens between the taking off and the putting on — not before them.

Which means the old coat comes off before the new one is in your hand. There is a moment in the middle with nothing on.

That is uncomfortable, and it appears to be the design. A person who waits to feel renewed before letting go of the old thing never lets go at all, because the renewing does not arrive first. It arrives in the gap.

And this household has spent a year in that gap. The apartment went before the house arrived. The address was surrendered before any new one existed. The one arrangement nobody is offered is to wear both coats at once.

✦ Pastor Barnabas · Pastoral Note — A Room for the Thief

Le names anger as strife — the spirit of the thief. Paul joins the same two things, in consecutive verses.

Verse 27: nor give place to the devil. The Greek is topos — a place, a room, a foothold. Somewhere to stand.

And it comes immediately after the sundown clause. So Paul's own order is: anger, then nightfall, then a foothold. He does not warn about the emotion. He warns about the tenancy.

And strife is the right word for what it produces. The Greek eris appears in the works of the flesh in Galatians 5 — read here on the twenty-third of August — sitting between jealousy and outbursts of wrath. It is never listed on its own.

The thief is also exactly right, because Jesus gives him that job description. O ladrão vem somente para roubar, matar e destruir. Le voleur ne vient que pour dérober, égorger et détruire. Three verbs, and every one of them is subtraction.

Which is why verse 28 sits where it does. Paul says do not give the thief a room — and then, in the very next sentence, describes a man who stops taking, starts working, and ends up giving.

The thief takes. The new man gives. The whole exchange is in two consecutive verses.