I. The great purpose of the Gospel is our moral renewal: "the new man," created in righteousness and holiness. Notice (1) the profound sense of human sinfulness which underlies the text. (2) The Apostle specifies as the elements or characteristics of this new nature righteousness and holiness.
II. A second principle contained in these words is that this moral renewal is a creation in the image of God.
III. This new creation has to be put on and appropriated by us. That process of assumption has two parts. We are clothed upon with Christ in a double way, or rather in a double sense: we are found in Him, not having our own righteousness, but invested with His for our pardon and acceptance; we are clothed with His righteousness for our purifying and sanctifying. There is the assumption of Christ's righteousness which makes a man a Christian and has for its condition simple faith; there is the assumption of His righteousness, sanctifying and transforming us, which follows in a Christian course as its indispensable accompaniment and characteristic, and that is realised by daily and continuous effort.
IV. Finally, the text contains the principle that the means of appropriating this new nature is contact with the truth. (1) Let us learn how impossible are righteousness and holiness, morality and religion, in men unless they flow from this source; (2) let us learn the incompleteness and monstrosity of a professed belief in the truth which does not produce this righteousness and holiness.
A. Maclaren, Sermons in Manchester,3rd series, p. 119.
I. "The inward man is renewed day by day." This renewing is to be sought after and to be cherished. A Christian is not to wait for its coming; he is to secure its advent.
II. Further, these changes are to be made manifest. When a Christian is renewed within, the renewing is to appear. It is not to be kept secret, but is to be shown, just as the newness of life in the vegetable kingdom is shown in the buds, and in the expanding leaves, and in the formative blossoms.
III. The new man consists, not of words merely, or of one class of actions, but of the entire human development. The characteristic of the new man is godliness, and its distinctive features are righteousness and true holiness.
S. Martin, Westminster Chapel Sermons,2nd series, p. 93.
References: Ephesians 4:24. Preacher's Monthly,vol. viii., p. 159; J. Edmunds, Sixty Sermons,p. 398. Ephesians 4:25. H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit,vol. vi., p. 115; W. Braden, Ibid.,vol. vii., p. 225; G. E. L. Cotton, Sermons and Addresses in Marlborough College,p. 158.