The ethical note of the true Paulinism is the conception of the _new man_ in Christ Jesus, whose sins were slain by His death, and who shares His risen life unto God (Rom. vi.). From this idea, as from a fountainhead, the apostle in the parallel Colossian epistle (ch. iii.) deduces the new Christian morality. The temper and disposition of the believer, his conduct in all social duties and practical affairs are the expression of a "life hid with Christ in God." It is the identical "new man" of Romans and Colossians who presents himself as our ideal here, raised with Christ from the dead and "sitting with Him in the heavenly places." The newness of life in which he walks, receives its impulse and direction from this exalted fellowship.
The characteristics of St Paul's teaching which we have described--his logical thoroughness and finality, his peculiar historical, theological, spiritual, and ethical standpoint and manner of thought--are combined in the conception which is the specific note of this epistle, viz., its idea of _the Church_ as the body of Christ,--or in other words, of _the new humanity_ created in Him. This forms the centre of the circle of thought in which the writer's mind moves;[6] it is the meeting-point of the various lines of thought that we have already traced. The doctrine of personal salvation wrought out in the great evangelical epistles terminates in that of social and collective salvation. A new and precious title is conferred on Christ: He is "Saviour of _the body_" (v. 23), _i.e._, of the corporate Christian community. "The Son of God who loved _me_ and gave up Himself for _me_" becomes "the Christ" who "loved _the Church_ and gave up Himself for _her_."[7] "The new man" is no longer the individual, a mere transformed _ego_; he is the type and beginning of a new mankind. A perfect society of men, all sons of God in Christ, is being constituted around the cross, in which the old antagonisms are reconciled, the ideal of creation is restored, and a body is provided to contain the fulness of Christ, a holy temple which God inhabits in the Spirit. Of this edifice, with the cross for its centre and Christ Jesus for its corner-stone, Jew and Gentile form the material--"the Jew first," lying nearest to the site.[8]