In His thirty-three and a half years on earth, the Lord Jesus formed the mold, the pattern, to which all those who believe in Him are to be conformed. According to the record of the four Gospels, the life of the Lord Jesus was a life of truth. Truth is the shining of light. Light is the source, and truth is its expression. As Hebrews 1:3 says, the Lord Jesus is the effulgence of God’s glory. This means that He is the shining of God who is light. Because in every aspect of the Lord’s living on earth there was the shining of light, His life was a life of truth, a life of the shining of God Himself. That life of truth was the very expression of God. For this reason Paul says that we learn Christ as the truth is in Jesus. In other words, we learn Christ according to the mold of the life of Jesus. The mold of the life of Jesus is the truth.
After Christ established this mold, He passed through death and resurrection, and in resurrection He became the life-giving Spirit. As such a Spirit, He comes into us to be our life. When we believed in Him and were baptized, God put us into Him as the mold, just as dough is placed into a mold. By being put into the mold we learned the mold. This means that by being put into Christ, we learn Christ. On the one hand, God put us into Christ; on the other hand, Christ has come into us to be our life. Now we may live by Him according to the mold in which we have been placed by God.
Not many of us may realize the influence the four Gospels have on us. When we read in the Gospels of the mold formed by the Lord Jesus, that mold spontaneously influences our living. As we love the Lord, contact Him, and pray to Him, we automatically live Him according to the mold described in the Gospels. In this way we are shaped, conformed, to the image of this mold. This is what it means to learn Christ.
Learning Christ in this way is altogether different from taking Him as an objective example and endeavoring in our natural life to imitate Him. God has put us into the mold formed by the life of Jesus on earth. Simultaneously, Christ as the life-giving Spirit has come into our being as life. The more we love Him and contact Him, the more we live Him according to this mold. As a result, we are spontaneously conformed to the image of that mold. Therefore, with Paul we can say, “For to me to live is Christ” (Phil. 1:21). We live Christ in the form of His own life, in the form recorded in the Gospels.
We must distinguish this kind of living from that according to the modernistic teaching regarding imitating Christ as our example. The modernists falsely teach that Christ is not God, but a man who established the highest standard for us to follow. This teaching requires that we exercise our natural life to imitate Christ and to live up to His standard. Such a teaching is heretical. It has absolutely nothing to do with the truth as it is in Jesus. It denies the fact that a true believer is in Christ and has Christ in him. In contrast to this heretical, modernistic teaching, we say according to the New Testament that when a sinner repents and believes in Christ and is baptized into Christ, God puts this one into Christ as the mold. At the same time, Christ as the life-giving Spirit comes into him to be his life. Thereafter, this believer is to live by Christ as his life according to the mold. The more he lives by Christ, the more he will be spontaneously shaped into the form of the mold. This is a life in Christ and also a life of Christ in us. We are in Christ as the mold, and He is in us as our life. In this way we learn Christ as the truth is in Jesus.
Ephesians 4 covers three items concerning a life worthy of God’s calling: keeping the oneness (vv. 1-14), growing up into the Head (vv. 15-16), and learning Christ as the truth is in Jesus (vv. 17-32). Concerning the learning of Christ as the truth is in Jesus, Paul firstly exhorts us and testifies to us that we should no longer walk as the Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind (v. 17). Instead, we should walk in the life that is according to the truth in Jesus. The Gentiles walk in the vanity of their mind, but we walk in the reality expressed in the life of Jesus recorded in the Gospels. In His life we see reality, truth, the shining of light, the expression of God. As the believers in Christ, we are to walk in such a reality.
Verse 21 says that we have been taught in Christ as the truth is in Jesus. Verses 22 and 24 show us what we have been taught: that we have put off the old man and have put on the new man. We were taught this when we were put into the mold, that is, when we were baptized. In baptism we were taught that our old man has been crucified and that he is to be buried by baptism. Furthermore, we were taught that as we come out of the water, we are resurrected into the new man. Therefore, by baptism we were taught that we have put off the old man and have put on the new man.
At this point we need to consider Romans 6:3-5. Verse 3 says, “Are you ignorant that as many as have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death?” To be baptized into Christ Jesus means to be put into Him. Furthermore, through baptism we have been buried into Christ’s death. In verses 4 and 5 we see the mold. These verses indicate that through baptism we were taught that we have put off the old man and have put on the new man. This is the normal Christian experience.
Normally, as we preach the gospel to sinners, we tell them of the life, death, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus. Then we encourage those who are willing to believe in Christ to receive Him into them as their life. The next step is to baptize them. This indicates that we put them into Christ as the mold. Thereafter, they are to live by Christ according to the mold. By baptism they have been taught that they have put off the old man and have put on the new man. By being buried through baptism, they learned Christ as the truth is in Jesus.
We should not try to understand verses such as 4:20-24 through the exercise of our natural mind. Rather, we need to consider them in the light of our Christian experience. If we do this, the light will gradually shine upon us, and we shall see the truth. The truth here is that when we were baptized, we were taught that we have put off the old man and that we have put on the new man. Notice that Paul does not say that we have been taught to put off the old man and to put on the new man. No, we have already put off the old man and have put on the new man. Our old man was buried in the waters of baptism. Hence, we have put off the old man. Furthermore, as we rose up from the water in resurrection, we were clothed with the new man. Hence, we have also put on the new man. Therefore, we have been taught in Christ as the truth is in Jesus that we have put off the old man and put on the new man.