St. Aidan's Anglican Church, Kansas City - Weekly Talks

Romans 6:6f. The old self (anthropos) is our archetypal Adamic self, rooted in Eden’s curse. Old implies a New Self. The humanity that defined you before coming to faith in Christ is dead, that old Adamic self was destroyed in Christ on the cross only to birth a New Humanity, no longer defined by Adam but by Christ. The old Adamic self is the self you once were, the self that belongs to the old aeon (this present, evil age), the self dominated by sin and exposed to wrath (Fitzmyer, p 436). Like the children of Israel in the wilderness, far too many Christians still suffer with an Identity born in under Pharaoh than Christ. The struggle of the old seeks to define their new identity and life in Christ. As such, we have not understood nor appropriated our New Exodus in Christ. The “old anthropos” is not a part of the “new” self, but the old self ruled by sin, and dead in trespasses and sin (Eph. 2). That self was co-crucified with Christ … the only explicit reference to the cross in Romans. As we cons