Learning Christ

Now this I say and testify in the Lord — this is how I opened it, and I do not soften it (Ephesians 4:17). When I sat down to write to the saints at Ephesus, I had already spent much ink on what God has done: how he made us alive when we were dead (Ephesians 2:5), how he broke down the dividing wall and made of two one new man (Ephesians 2:15), how he calls us to walk in a manner worthy of that calling (Ephesians 4:1). Now I turn from what God has made you to how you must therefore live. And I begin, you will notice, not with a rule but with a testimony — "I testify in the Lord." I am not handing you my opinion. I am bearing witness to something I would stake my chains upon.

And here it is: "you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds" (Ephesians 4:17).

Look closely at how I describe that old way, for I do not describe it first as wickedness — I describe it as futility, emptiness, a mind chasing what cannot satisfy. Then I trace it down like a physician tracing a sickness to its root. "Darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart" (Ephesians 4:18). Do you see the chain? A hard heart breeds ignorance; ignorance darkens the understanding; the darkened understanding cuts a man off from the very life of God. It does not begin in the mind, but in the heart that will not have God. And where that hardness runs its course, I wrote, men "have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity" (Ephesians 4:19).

I want you to feel the weight of that word — greedy. This is not the picture of a man tripping into sin. It is a man with an appetite that only grows the more he feeds it, forever hungry and never full. That is what a life without God finally becomes: not freedom, but a craving that enslaves. I have watched it. I have wept over it.

"But that is not the way you learned Christ!" (Ephesians 4:20).

Oh, hold onto that word — you learned Christ. Not, you learned about Christ. Not, you learned a set of teachings. You learned him. Christ is not a subject; he is a person, and to come to him is to come under a new teacher and into a new life. "Assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus" (Ephesians 4:21). The truth is in Jesus — not in an idea, not in a philosophy, but in a living Lord who was crucified for you and raised for you. When you learned Christ, you did not merely add a fact to your old life. You began a different life altogether.

And now I tell you what that learning contained — three things, and they belong together as one act of God worked out in you.

Put off "your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires" (Ephesians 4:22). That old self is the man you were in Adam, the man with the hard heart and the empty walk. Take him off like a filthy garment. Notice why his desires must go — they are deceitful. Sin lies. It promises life and pays out death; it swears it will satisfy and leaves you greedy for more. Do not trust those desires when they whisper. They have lied to you every time.

Then, "be renewed in the spirit of your minds" (Ephesians 4:23). Here is the heart of it, right at the center between the taking off and the putting on. Remember, it was the mind that was darkened, the understanding that was cut off. So God begins his work there — not by giving you sterner rules, but by making your mind new, teaching you to see God, and yourself, and sin, and glory as they truly are. This is the daily thing, beloved. Every morning your old mind will offer you its old lies. Every morning you go back to Christ, to the truth as it is in Jesus, and let him renew the way you think.

And put on "the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness" (Ephesians 4:24). Do you hear the echo? In the beginning God made man in his own image; now, in Christ, he creates you new after that same likeness, in righteousness and holiness that are true — not the pretended holiness of the play-actor, but the real thing, worked in you by the Spirit. This is not you climbing up to become someone impressive. This is God's new creation, and you clothing yourself in what he has already made you to be.

So what shall you do with this today?

Do not read it as a demand you must meet in your own strength — that is the very futility we have left behind. Read it as your Father telling you who you now are, and calling you to live as that person. When some old craving rises up dressed as a friend, name it what it is: a deceitful desire, part of a self you have taken off. When your thinking runs to the dark and empty grooves it has always run in, do not merely scold yourself — go and be renewed, sit again under Christ your teacher, let the truth wash the lie away. And when the day gives you its ordinary choices — a word to speak or swallow, an anger to feed or forgive, a purity to guard or surrender — put on the new self. Dress for who you are.

You have learned Christ. Then walk as one who has. The old man is a corpse behind you; the new man is God's own workmanship before you. Live today in the garment he has given you, in true righteousness and holiness, and you will find it fits — because he made it, and he made it for you.

Grace and peace be with you.