THE TWO HUMAN TYPES.
“But ye did not so learn the Christ; if so be that ye heard Him, and were taught in Him, even as truth is in Jesus: that ye put away, as concerning your former manner of life, the old man, which waxeth corrupt after the lusts of deceit; and that ye be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new man, which after God hath been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.”—Eph. iv. 20–24.
But as for you!—The apostle points us from heathendom to Christendom. From the men of blinded understanding and impure life he turns to the cleansed and instructed. “Not thus did you learn the Christ”—not to remain in the darkness and filth of your Gentile state.
The phrase is highly condensed. The apostle, in this letter so exuberant in expression, yet on occasion is as concise as in Galatians. One is tempted, as Beza suggested[118] and Hofmann insists, to put a stop at this point and to read: “But with you it is not so:[119] you learned the Christ!” In spite of its abruptness, this construction would be necessary, if it were only “the Gentiles” of verse 17 with whose “walk” St Paul means to contrast that of his readers. But, as we have seen, he has before his eye a third class of men, unprincipled Christian teachers (ver. 14), men who had in some sense learnt of Christ and yet walked in Gentile ways and were leading others back to them.[120] Verse 20, after all, forms a coherent clause. It points an antithesis of solemn import. There are genuine, and there are supposed conversions; there are true and false ways of learning Christ.
Strictly speaking, it is not Christ, but the Christ whom St Paul presumes his readers to have duly learnt.[121] The words imply a comprehending faith, that knows who and what Christ is and what believing in Him means, that has mastered His great lessons. To such a faith, which views Christ in the scope and breadth of His redemption, this epistle throughout appeals; for its impartation and increase St Paul prayed the wonderful prayer of the third chapter. When he writes not simply, “You have believed in Christ,” but “You have learned the Christ,” he puts their faith upon a high level; it is the faith of approved disciples in Christ’s school. For such men the “philosophy and vain deceit” of Colossæ and the plausibilities of the new “scheme of error” will have no charm. They have found the treasures of wisdom and knowledge that are hidden in Christ.
The apostle’s confidence in the Christian knowledge of his readers is, however, qualified in verse 21 in a somewhat remarkable way: “If verily it is He whom you heard, and in Him that you were taught, as truth is in Jesus.” We noted at the outset the bearing of this sentence on the destination of the letter. It would never occur to St Paul to question whether the Ephesian Christians were taught Christ’s true doctrine. If there were any believers in the world who, beyond a doubt, had heard the truth as in Jesus in its certainty and fulness, it was those amongst whom the apostle had “taught publicly and from house to house,” “not shunning to declare all the counsel of God” and “for three years night and day unceasingly with tears admonishing each single one” (Acts xx. 18–35). To suppose these words written in irony, or in a modest affectation, is to credit St Paul with something like an ineptitude. Doubt was really possible as to whether all his readers had heard of Christ aright, and understood the obligations of their faith. Supposing, as we have done, that the epistle was designed for the Christians of the province of Asia generally, this qualification is natural and intelligible.
There are several considerations which help to account for it. When St Paul first arrived at Ephesus, eight years before this time, he “found certain disciples” there who had been “baptized into John’s baptism,” but had not “received the Holy Spirit” nor even heard of such a thing (Acts xix. 1–7). Apollos formerly belonged to this company, having preached and “taught carefully the things about Jesus,” while he “knew only the baptism of John” (Acts xviii. 25). One very much desires to know more about this Church of the Baptist’s disciples in Asia Minor. Its existence so far away from Palestine testifies to the power of John’s ministry and the deep impression that his witness to the Messiahship of Jesus made on his disciples. The ready reception of Paul’s fuller gospel by this little circle indicates that their knowledge of Jesus Christ erred only by defect; they had received it from Judæa by a source dating earlier than the day of Pentecost. The partial knowledge of Jesus current for so long at Ephesus, may have extended to other parts of the province, where St Paul had not been able to correct it as he had done in the metropolis.
Judaistic Christians, such as those who at Rome “preached Christ of envy and strife,” were also disseminating an imperfect Christian doctrine. They limited the rights of uncircumcised believers; they misrepresented the Gentile apostle and undermined his influence. A third and still more lamentable cause of uncertainty in regard to the Christian belief of Asian Churches, was introduced by the rise of Gnosticizing error in this quarter. Some who read the epistle had, it might be, received their first knowledge of Christ through channels tainted with error similar to that which was propagated at Colossæ. With the seed of the kingdom the enemy was mingling vicious tares. The apostle has reason to fear that there were those within the wide circle to which his letter is addressed, who had in one form or other heard a different gospel and a Christ other than the true Christ of apostolic teaching.
Where does he find the test and touchstone of the true Christian doctrine?—In the historical Jesus: “as there is truth in Jesus.” Not often, nor without distinct meaning, does St Paul use the birth-name of the Saviour by itself. Where he does, it is most significant. He has in mind the facts of the gospel history; he speaks of “the Jesus”[122] of Nazareth and Calvary. The Christ whom St Paul feared that some of his readers might have heard of was not the veritable Jesus Christ, but a shadowy and notional Christ, lost amongst the crowd of angels, such as was now being taught to the Colossians. This Christ was neither the image of God, nor the true Son of man. He supplied no sufficient redemption from sin, no ideal of character, no sure guidance and authority to direct the daily walk. Those who followed such a Christ would fall back unchecked into Gentile vice. Instead of the light of life shining in the character and words of Jesus, they must resort to “the doctrines and commandments of men” (Col. ii. 8–23).
Amongst the Gnostics of the second century there was held a distinction between the human (fleshly and imperfect) Jesus and the Divine Christ, who were regarded as distinct beings, united to each other from the time of the baptism of Jesus to His death. The critics who assert the late and non-Pauline authorship of the epistle, assert that this peculiar doctrine is aimed at in the words before us, and that the identification of Christ with Jesus has a polemical reference to this advanced Gnostic error. The verses that follow show that the writer has a different and entirely practical aim. The apostle points us to our true ideal, to “the Christ” of all revelation manifest in “the Jesus” of the gospel. Here we see “the new man created after God,” whose nature we must embody in ourselves. The counteractive of a false spiritualism is found in the incarnate life of the Son of God. The dualism which separated God from the world and man’s spirit from his flesh, had its refutation in “the Jesus” of Paul’s preaching, whom we see in the Four Gospels. Those who persisted in the attempt to graft the dualistic theosophy upon the Christian faith, were in the end compelled to divide and destroy the Christ Himself. They broke up into Jesus and Christ the unity of His incarnate Person.