PUT ON OR PUTTING ON II

(This continues some thoughts from yesterday’s Journal entry)

It appears that there are two choices concerning Christ: We put him on or we are putting him on.
Putting On is often defined: ‘If you put someone on, you deceive someone, often in a joking way. Or,
“Put someone on” is an expression that means to joke, tease, or tell a lie, usually in humor. You’re not serious about what you have said. It is to be fooled in some way. Put on here means “pretending” or “play-acting.’ (Online dictionary) A common phrase is: ‘Are you putting me on? Or, ‘You are putting me on.’

It is almost the opposite of ‘Put On’ as Paul used the term. In his letter to the Ephesians he wrote: “But you did not learn Christ in this way, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught in Him, just as truth is in Jesus, that, in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit, and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.” (4:20-24)

We are to Put On Christ or we are Putting On… usually religion. There is a third option, when a person has never heard of the need to Put On the new life (or ‘the new self’) and is not Putting On. They don’t know.

“So don’t be surprised when I say, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows wherever it wants. Just as you can hear the wind but can’t tell where it comes from or where it is going, so you can’t explain how people are born of the Spirit.” Jesus