But you did not learn about Christ like this,

Christ did not just die for you but became your example. That is such a powerful truth. Christians mean followers of Christ. In the next verse, Paul would mention being taught about Him.

Now that we have the four gospels, we see how Jesus lived, how He prioritized the will of the Father, how He was tempted but did not sin, how He was the unblemished lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world (John 1:29).

This verse also brings the importance of learning. What we are learning is important. There is power in what we are learning; it is exerting power over us; it controls us. We become, in a way, a slave to what we have learned.

For the Gentiles that Paul warned against, he tells us they have learned the wrong thing when he mentioned the futility of their thinking and darkened understanding.

He also hinted that their problem was that they had not learned the right things, as he mentioned the ignorance in them. The right thing that they cannot have access to unless they first believe in the Lord Jesus Christ (Ephesians 4:17-19).

And when he says we should lay aside the old man in verse 22, that could be seen as an unlearning process. So both learning and unlearning have to take place in the believer.

If you are learning Christ and not unlearning the old man's pattern of life, we have confusion; if we are not learning Christ and are trying to unlearn the old man's pattern, it becomes buried in my opinion, and we are classified as hypocrites. If we are not learning Christ and are not unlearning the old man’s pattern, that is an ugly sight.

That is why we read that bad company corrupts good morals (1 Corinthians 15:33): bad company is about pattern learning and reinforcement; whatever evil in us becomes compounded by bad company.

The problem is not the bad company. The problem is us. We are pattern matching machines. That is why there is a necessity of learning Christ (the 1 Corinthians passage mentioned the knowledge of God) and of not keeping the wrong company.

Going to a particular church may be bad company because what is taught from the pulpit endangers the soul. That is the truth.

God warned Israel that they must not learn the evil way of the nations around them (Deuteronomy 18:9), but they did.

Look at what Paul wrote when using Israel as an example:

That is why the writer of the book of Proverbs says that you should not go with an angry man because you can learn his way (Proverbs 22:24–25).

We can underestimate the power of what we are learning.

See, leaders are told to be an example to the flock (1 Peter 5:3); Timothy was told to be an example to the believers (1 Timothy 4:12); Paul said: “Follow me as I follow Christ” (1 Corinthians 11:1).

So not only are we learning from others, but others are also learning from us too.

So what should the leaders be busy preaching? Preaching about Christ. The antidote against continuing in the lifestyle of the Gentiles is not a 10-step improvement plan but learning about Christ.

But people don't want to learn about Christ, who humbled Himself (Philippians 2:5-11) and was struck in the face without responding (1 Peter 2:23).

They want to say He was uber rich because He rode on a donkey that He was gifted (Luke 19:30–35), and that the fact that His tunic was not divided when He died (John 19:23–24) means He was uber rich, in a false framing of that passage.

That is not the Christ Paul wants us to learn. That’s a false Christ. And so we suffer, unable to move away as we should from our gentile phase. And it gets worse; the evil in us gets magnified because of those teachings. That is the truth.

Those are not innocent messages; they create a phantom Jesus, not the one who said He does not have a place to lay His head (Luke 9:58), as people twist themselves into knots to say He did not say He was homeless. Really? They say He was rich, and they also say He was poor so that we can become rich (2 Corinthians 8:9) (in another twisted framing). Which is it?

What we have is not an innocent revision of who Jesus is; it is damnation to the souls of people who need desperately to learn, as we all are, about Jesus, about the true Jesus, so that they would not continue the way the Gentiles live.

We do not have a dearth of materials in scriptures for that, but no one wants to see Jesus for who He is; we are comfortable with an idolized version of Him (so we dodge some scriptures and emphasize others). We are comfortable with an idolized/caricatured version of Him that we find appealing and manageable, not the Jesus that calls us to hate our lives in this world (John 12:25), carry our cross and follow Him (Luke 14:27).

Not that Jesus. Even Peter did not want to see Jesus for who He is. Look at the audacity he had to rebuke Him when He mentioned His impending death (Matthew 16:21–23). Peter is all of us, in my opinion.

Who wants to see the Jesus that says the greatest shall be the servant of all (Mark 10:42–45)? We don’t want to learn about that one. That is the truth, so we develop itchy ears and heap to ourselves teachers who tell us what we want to hear (2 Timothy 4:3), and we say Ride on, pastor.

And learning about Jesus is about the way we live, not about the money we give. We should not confuse that.

It is the same people who will mention that the widow threw in her two mites (Mark 12:41–44), but would neglect to say that it was soon after He condemned those who, because of pretense, devour widows’ (plural) property (Mark 12:38–40).

One word from the mouth of Jesus is enough to power our lives; that is the truth. But He did not just say one word, but many, and He interacted with many people, and we can learn from those interactions.

His coming to save us from our sins (Matthew 1:21) also includes how He lived His life so that we can learn from Him. No one can wave Him aside; this is God in the flesh we are talking about. What more do we want?

The last verse mentioned callousness, indecency, impurity and greediness. What that means is that if we are not learning Christ, we might be sold to callousness, indecency, impurity and greediness. What that means is that we would say one thing and live another way.

We must learn about Christ!

Paul is saying these people have learned about Christ. But what about you, what about me? Have I learned about Christ?

Paul spent about three years with the Ephesians. If people spend three years in our church, would we be able to say You have learned about Christ, and that is enough to power you for the rest of your life? Because that is what Paul is saying here.

Again, learning about Christ is not just about His sacrifice but also about His life and His words.

To say Jesus spoke to people under the law as a reason to ignore His words is wrong. It’s a slippery slope to error in my opinion.

He spoke as God; let's put that in mind. He lived as God in the flesh, and we are to be His disciples. The command was: make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:19).

He is not dead; He is alive, and since He is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8), the words written about Him in the gospel are still valid today. He is the same. Don’t get that confused by false prophecies that tell you Jesus is now emphasizing something and not some other things in the name of an end-time move.

The resurrected Jesus is not different from the one who walked the earth, or from the God of the Old Testament. It is the same God. Put that in mind.

Remember, we have learned about what Christ means for our salvation in the first parts of this letter.

In this passage, after talking about the gift given by the ascended Jesus, which is an implication of his ascension, we are talking about our day-to-day life, telling us the implications of the life he lived for 33 years, becoming a frame for us to understand everything else about him.

All these things carry power; beholding Him, as the scriptures say, we are transformed into the same image from glory to glory (2 Corinthians 3:18). It is Christ and Christ all the way!

We were chosen in Him before the world began (Ephesians 1:4); now we live a new life in Him, not apart from Him.

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