Beyond The Surface: "The New Man"

II Corinthians 5:17, "Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come." [NASV]

Ephesians 4:23-24, "and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, (24)and put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth." [NASV]

"The New Man" (Yes, this is for the ladies too)

The more we get what we call "ourselves" our of the way and let Him (Christ) take us over, the more truly ourselves become. There is so much of Him that millions and millions of "little Christs," all different, will still be too few to express Him fully. He made them all. He invented--as an author invents a character in a novel--all the different men that you and I intended to be. In that sense our real selves are all waiting for us in Him. It is not good trying to "be myself" without Him. The more I resist Him and try to live my own, the more I become dominated by my own heredity and upbringing and surroundings and natural desires…I like to believe: most of what I call "me" can be very easily explained. It is when I turn to Christ, when I give myself up to His Personality, that I first began to have a real personality of my own.

There are no real personalities any where else. Until you have given up your real self. Sameness is to be found most among the "natural" men, not among those who surrender to Christ. How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been: how gloriously different are the saints.

There must be a real giving up of the self. You must throw it away "blindly" so to speak. Christ will indeed give you a real personality: but you must not go to Him for the sake of that. As long as your own personality is what you are bothering about you are not going to Him at all. The very first step is to try to forget about the self altogether. Your real, new self (which is Christ's and also yours, and yours just because it is His) will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him. Does this sound strange? The same principle holds, you know, for more everyday matters. Even in social life, you will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impressions you are making. Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring two pence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it. The principle runs through all life from top to bottom. Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised form the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown away.

Luke 9:23-24, "And He (Jesus) was saying to them all, 'If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me. (24)'For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it.'" [NASV]

"The New Man," as written by C.S. Lewis: "Mere Christianity--Beyond Personality;" Macmillian Publishing., Inc--Copyright 1943, 1945, and 1952