Lie not one to another: here he puts them upon laying aside that vice which violates the ninth commandment, being opposite to truth in word and work: see Ephesians 4:25, where he doth more fully urge the putting away lying, from the same argument that follows here: a lie being no other than that voluntary expression by word or deed, which accords not with the conception of the mind and heart, on purpose to deceive those with whom we do converse; contrary to the principles of a new creature, because God, after whose image he is renewed, hates it more than any vice, since it is contrary to truth, and proceeds from the father of lies, Psalms 5:6, Psalms 15:2 Proverbs 12:22 1 Thessalonians 8:44 Revelation 21:8,27. They who in conversation do most stomach to be told of it, are most ordinarily guilty of it. But the apostle requires Christians indeed to put away all fraud and fallacy in commerce with men and one another, (as well as converse with God), that there may be in all due circumstances a just representation of that without which is conceived within, Ephesians 4:15 James 3:14. Seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds: the apostle subjoins his reason from the parts of regeneration or sanctification, viz.
1. Mortification, which he reassumes under an elegant metaphor, (intimating his solicitude to have the foregoing and the like vices to be wholly laid aside, as much as was possible in this life), borrowed from the putting off old and worn garments, which did as it were crawl with vermin; intimating that if the old man, as the cause, were put off with loathing, then those inordinate affections and actions which did proceed from it would also be removed; see on Romans 6:6,11, with Ephesians 4:22: if that which is born of the flesh and contrary to the Spirit, 1 Thessalonians 3:6, with Galatians 5:17, then inordinate affections and lusts, Galatians 5:24. (To see number 2: See Poole on "Colossians 3:10").