if indeed you heard about him and were taught in him, just as the truth is in Jesus.
The last verse mentioned learning about Christ. Here we are being told how that happens. It happens through hearing, not seeing. Christ does not need to come to the world again and live for us to learn Christ; we can hear about Him.
Consequently faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the preached word of Christ.
There is power in hearing.
Have you heard about Christ? What have you heard about Christ? If whatever you have heard about Christ is from Scripture, then it is the truth.
Christ is not a character you can come up with. God dying on the cross, shedding His blood and that somehow becoming the salvation for the believers seems like a disjointed narrative. That is the point. It is unique. It cannot be mimicked. It is the truth.
That is why Peter said that what he taught about Christ is not a carefully constructed fable.
For we did not follow cleverly concocted fables when we made known to you the power and return of our Lord Jesus Christ; no, we were eyewitnesses of his grandeur.
There may be nothing attractive to the casual observers about Jesus on the face of it, but when you get to the resurrection and the ascension, spoken about by eyewitnesses, then maybe the eye will light up, or you might say the writers are delusional.
Paul is well aware that “the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Corinthians 1:18).
The gospel, by its very nature, creates a dividing line; the line is not sociological or class-based, nor is it gender-based or age-based; rather, it is belief-based. Do you believe?
The Ethiopian eunuch heard and believed (Acts 8:26–39); the Philippian jailor heard and believed (Acts 16:25–34).
No one can explain why this person believed, and the other person did not, except that the gospel picked its believers. Paul said God opened some people’s hearts to believe (Acts 16:14).
But that is not the end. Believe is different from “learn.” “Believe” can be in a moment; “learn” takes some time.
Paul, in this verse, is talking about teaching, learning and talking about the truth. That is the foundation of the Christian life.
Paul said the church is the pillar and ground of truth (1 Timothy 3:15), and the truth is not just information or awareness of facts, not just knowledge; rather, it is a Christ-centered focus.
Of the 87 verses until now in this book, only 30 do not have words like “Christ,” “Jesus,” “Lord,” and pronouns or words like "Son" referring to Him. So, for every verse Paul did not explicitly refer to Jesus, we have two in which he did. Christ is it; He is the direction, the focus, the endpoint, the means; He is the process.
What does it mean to be taught in Him? It means the teaching you receive after you become Christian feels different.
What does it mean to hear about Him? It means the message of the gospel brings you to believe in Christ.
The believers heard about Him; now they are supposed to be taught in Him. Again, the proclamation of Christ is different from being taught in Christ. For example, Philip proclaimed Christ in Samaria so that they would believe (Acts 8).
How are they to call on one they have not believed in? And how are they to believe in one they have not heard of? And how are they to hear without someone preaching to them?
That is to reiterate that hearing has to do with the salvation call and with believing in him. Therefore, it is not enough to hear; you have to call upon Him to be saved, just as the Ethiopian eunuch, having believed, said, ‘Look, here is water! What is stopping me from being baptized?’ (Acts 8:36), and the Philippian jailer asked, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” (Acts 16:30–34).
Again, it is not enough to hear; you have to believe and call on Him to be saved.
Similarly, it is not enough to be taught in Christ, meaning being taught now that you are in Christ; we need to have a life that flows in that direction, a life that is a break from the former pattern of life.
In my exploration of the last verse, I emphasized the importance of learning Christ. Now I want to emphasize that the seed of His truth should bear fruit. And for me, the connector is repentance, by which we are in a humble position. The scripture says God gives grace to the humble (James 4:6; 1 Peter 5:5). We need that grace.
I believe the connector between hearing about Christ and a changed life is repentance, following a principle I call aggressive repentance, where nothing is too small to repent of and ask God for mercy, and no amount of time is too much to repeat that in a day.
We want to have the commendation Jesus gave a tax collector in one of His parables, not the Pharisee’s condemnation (Luke 18:9–14).