Special Year-End Letter from Ken Boa
Dear Friends,
The Old and the New Self
All who are born in this world receive the gift of bios, or biological life, but the greater gift of zoē, or spiritual life, is a product of the second birth. This zoē is a radically new form of life, because it is the life of Christ in us (Galatians 2:20; Colossians 1:27). Since we were formerly dead, blind, and bound (Ephesians 2:1; 2 Corinthians 4:4; 2 Timothy 2:26), the new self is more than a resuscitation of the old self; it is a new entity before God (2 Corinthians 5:17; Ephesians 4:24; Colossians 3:10). I see the new self as the life of God’s Son within us, uniquely expressed through the prism of each believer’s personality. This new self must be perfect before God, or we could not have intimate communion with the holy Father of lights.
On the other hand, I would not equate the new self with the imago Dei, since the image of God in its various dimensions (e.g., our soul, relationality, God-given authority, and spiritual capacity) was distorted, but not eradicated in the fall. The new or true self, which is our inner life in Christ (Ephesians 3:16; Romans 7:22), impinges on and progressively transforms our thinking, character, and actions in such a way that the imago Dei is gradually being purified, though never fully or perfectly in this earthly life.
I associate the false or old self with the way Paul uses sarx (“the flesh”) in texts like Galatians 5:13-24 and Romans 7:18, 25. When God implanted His zoē in our regeneration, He did not erase the old memories, false scripts, and inauthentic ways of having, being, and doing. In this life of progressive but often fitful growth in sanctification, we are fully capable of thinking, speaking, and acting in ways that express the deeds of the flesh instead of the life of the Spirit within us. False patterns of beliefs and behaviors can be manifested in the hidden self (avoiding God and others), the unseen self (not perceived until illuminated by grace), and the masked self (the false images we act out before others).
The radical contrast between what we actually were, when stripped of our pretense and posturing, and what we are now called to be in Christ is evident in Paul’s exhortations to the Colossians:
Therefore, consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry. For it is because of these things that the wrath of God will come upon the sons of disobedience, and in them you also once walked, when you were living in them. But now you also, put them all aside: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive speech from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, since you laid aside the old self with its evil practices, and have put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created him (Colossians 3:5-10).
The “image of the One who created him” is the very image of God’s Son, and it is God’s ultimate intention that we become conformed to His image (Romans 8:29). The marred imago Dei is now being restored by the redemptive power of the new creation in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17). The world does not now see us as we will be, but our Lord already sees us as we truly are in the depths of our being in Him. Because we have been purchased by His blood and metamorphosed into new creatures, we have died, and our new life is hidden with Christ in God; when He is revealed, then we will also be revealed with Him in glory (Colossians 3:3-4). This is proleptic life—living in anticipation of the age to come and manifesting the presence and power of the kingdom in this passing age. Spiritual formation involves living the not-yet in the midst of the now; the life of the new creation in the context of the old; and the splendor of the eternal in the sphere of the temporal.
May you abide in His life,
Kenneth Boa
P.S. I would be grateful for your prayers for the further development of Reflections Ministries resources, and for the Lord’s provision of our ministry needs.