Put Off the Old, Put On the Renewed Image
Because believers share Christ’s risen life, they must put to death practices belonging to the old order—sexual immorality, corrupt desire, greed, anger, abusive speech, and lying. Paul describes the change as taking off the old man and putting on the new man, who is being renewed in knowledge “after the image of him that created him.” In this renewed humanity, ethnic, ritual, cultural, and social divisions cannot define ultimate status: Christ is all and in all.
Where this fits in the story: Genesis says humanity was created in God’s image; Colossians returns to that language to describe renewal. The image damaged by sin is not discarded but restored in relation to the Creator, with Christ himself already identified as the true image in 1:15.