The School of Christ

Ephes. iv. 20, 21

Bat ye have not so learned Christ; if so be that ye have hctrd him, and have been taught by him.

HP HE direct and immediate purpose of these words is -*” to show the irreconcilable contradiction between a course of life such as that of other Gentiles, and the Christian discipline and instruction which these Ephesian believers had received. The Apostle draws a dreadful picture of heathenism, which we might profitably hang up by the side of the flattering portraits of “elegant mythologies” which we meet with in these days, when there is some danger that the study of the philosophy of mythology may blind us to the moral and spiritual effects of idolatry. Here is the estimate formed by a man who had looked at the thing with his own eyes, sharpened and cleared by fellowship with God — “In the vanity of their mind, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them — past feeling, have given themselves over to lasciviousnesS) to work all uncleanness with greediness.” I

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He starts back, as it were, with quick recoil of abhorrence from such a hideous picture as that — “But ye have not so learned Christ.” The diametrical opposition between so foul a life, and the principles in which you have been trained, needs no more words. And then, as is natural to so fervid a disposition, in which logic is blended with emotion, he seems for a moment to forget his more immediate purpose, and to branch off into what, brief as it is, is yet almost a complete view of the school of Christ — the scholars, the teacher, the theme, the process of education, and the purpose for which it is all given.

The words are very remarkable; carrying, as I think, some very precious lessons, and opening up regions of truth not so familiar as they should be to much of our popular religious thought. With this general idea, that the words of my text are a description of the School of Christ, I wish to consider them a little more particularly now. If we look at them and those which immediately follow, we shall see that they present Christ Himself as the great lesson learned in His school — “Ye have not so learned Christ;” that they regard Christ himself as being the teacher as well as the lesson — “Ye have heard him;” that they contemplate the learning as a gradual process of tuition, which takes effect on condition of union with Christ — “Ye have been taught in him,” not “by him,” as our translation inaccurately has it; that they further define the form and manner of the teaching as being in accordance with truth in Jesus — embodied as it were in Him, and that they put the whole purpose, or possibly ir another aspect the whole substance, of all this educational process as being the investiture of the scholars with a new nature made like God, and the divesting them of their ancient evil — “That ye put off the old man, and put on the new man, which, after God, is created in righteousness and true holiness.”

It would lead us too far to attempt to cover all this ground to-day. But we may consider together these three points contained in our text in a somewhat different order, and deal briefly with The Teacher; The Process of Instruction; and The Theme.

I Notice that we have here distinctly affirmed that The living voice of Christ himself is our teacher.

“Ye have heard Him” says Paul. Do not water down these plain and strong words as if they meant only “Ye have heard about him,” and were nothing more than a strongly figurative way of speaking. We do, indeed, say of men long gone, the mighty dead who “rule our spirits from their urns,” that “being dead they yet speak.” In their books, in the records of their lives, in the influence which still vibrates from their deeds, we may be regarded as hearing them still. But it is no vague prolongation of influence from the shadowy past that Paul is thinking of, when he says that these Ephesians had heard Christ. Neither is it any literal listening to His words when He spake on earth that could have place in the experience of these men, who were “worshippers of the great goddess Diana, and of the image which fell down from Jupiter,” when he lifted up the gentle voice that was not heard in the streets. Remember that the New Testament everywhere represents Christ as still working and teaching in the world; remember that He himself promised the prolongation of His great work of declaring the Father beyond the limits of His earthly life, and that no more in proverbs, but plainly. Remember that He has pledged Himself to send that teaching Spirit of truth, in whose coming Christ Himself comes, and all whose illuminations and communications are showing and imparting to us the things of Christ. The ever-living Saviour, in His continuous energy and real presence in the midst of the Church, which is His school, teaches us, not as men who are gone do; not merely in that He is the theme, but also in that He is the living breath and inspiring power of all the means by which we learn of Him. Every living soul may have, and every Christian soul does have, direct access for himself to the living Lord, the Eternal Word. Christ is the Teacher, the only Teacher, the Teacher for all men, the Teacher of all truth. He only is our Master, and gathered at His feet all we are brethren. It is His living influence that flows to us through the channel of His word. It is His voice that speaks to us in all providences. It is He who makes the syllables that come from human lips eloquent to reach our understanding, and to calm and gladden our hearts. In every region of Christian culture and tuition, the real source of all the blessing is Christ Himself, and the real Master, Example, and Authority, Instructor and Trainer is that ever-living Lord, who speaketh from heaven, who speaketh in his servants’ hearts, who uses as His medium the Book which records His life and death, and subordinately the events of life and the tongues of men — but is Himself the breath which breathes through these all.

Dear friends, is not this great and yet simple principle one that we sorely need to be reminded of, and to grasp more firmly? We think far too much of that Lord as a Lord gone from us, whose influence consists only in what He was and did. Blessed be His name! His influence is all built upon what He did once which lives for ever, and the record of that is the great means which He uses for our instruction in righteousness. But it is no merely past Saviour that we have to look to for teaching, but the presence of an ever-living Lord — that active presence in the souls of all believers, that pleading approach to the souls of all who hear of His love — -who hour by hour is seeking to bring us all closer to Himself. We have heard Him — whether we know it or not. Let not the loud noises of earth, the strife of tongues, the hubbub without and the discords within our spirits, deaden our ears to His loving low tones. We have heard Him — whether we have listened and obeyed, or have turned away. Let us answer when He calls, with all our yielding spirits bending to His will, and our hearts opening to His voice — “Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth.”

II. Then notice, secondly, that Those who are in Christ receive continuous instruction from Him. “And have been taught in Hun.” These words, which next follow in our text, seem to imply the conditions and the gradual process of Christ’s schooling. “Hearing Him” may refer rather to the initial act by which we come under His instruction, and then this clause will apply to the whole subsequent process. His teaching is not one act, but a long, loving patient discipline. The first feeble motion of faith enrolls us as disciples, and then there follows through all the years the “teaching to observe all things, whatsoever He has commanded.” It is to be further observed that the Apostle does not say, as our translation makes him say, “Ye have been taught by Him,” but “Ye have been taught in Him.” There are, then, these two considerations to be touched upon here — that the condition of receiving His schooling is to be in Christ, and that that schooling is imparted by a gradual process.

I suppose I need not occupy much of your time in dilating upon that first thought. It is, I may say, the very key-note of this Epistle to the Ephesians, which is penetrated throughout by that idea of our living union with Christ, and indwelling in Him. It is expressed in many metaphors. We are rooted in Him as the tree in the soil, which makes it firm and fruitful. We are built into Him as the strong foundations of the temple are bedded in the living rock. We live in Him as the limbs in the body. The union of wedded love is but a feeble type of that “great mystery concerning Christ and His ChurcK” That thought underlies every exhortation, is alleged as the basis of every duty, crowns the summit ot every hope. For illustration turn for a moment to the first chapter of the Epistle, and mark the reiteration with which the words “in Christ” are used, and indwelling in Him regarded as the condition of everything that a Christian possesses, of everything that he can expect He writes to “the faithful in Christ fesus.” He blesses

God who “has blessed with all spiritual blessings... in Christ:” we have been chosen in Him. “In the beloved God has bestowed his grace upon us.” And, more remarkable still, “/« Htm we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins” — words which in their fulness complete the doctrine of redemption with a very needful element, often overlooked and neglected. We have not said the whole truth about pardon when we have said, “We have forgiveness through his blood.” Neither have we said the whole when we say, “In whom we have redemption.” Both clauses are wanted. “In him” is the personal source and fountain. “Through his blood” is the channel or means. We have not redemption in His work without His person, nor in His person without His work. We have not redemption through His blood unless we are in Him, joined to Him by that deep and true union effected by faith, which is the condition of that mighty work done for us, being applied to us. Still further, aspects of the same profound thought occur in that first chapter — in Christ all things in heaven and earth are to be gathered together; in Him we have obtained an inheritance; and so we might travel through the whole letter, and be met everywhere by the same representation of the whole Christian life being Life in Christ

We surely do not reach the whole depth of such words when we regard them as a mere metaphor, or take them to imply nothing more than yielding our will and understanding to our Teacher. It is something much deeper than that The indwelling is reciprocal, and its very

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nature, as well as its blessed results, implies the true divinity of that Lord who can enter human souls in all ages by a path that no finite creature can traverse, and who can gather the homeless hearts of all the race beneath the shadow of His wings, and hide them in the depths of His own heart in an intimacy of which our closest friendships here are but pale shadows. They tell us that no two atoms ever really touch; some film of air is ever between them. And after all sweetness of closest society there is a gap between the most loving souls. But we can be joined to Christ in real perfect union.

The indwelling, we say, is reciprocal. He is in us, and we are in Him. He is in us as the source of our Being; we are in Him as filled with His fulness. He is in us all-communicative; we are in Him all-receptive. He is in us as the sunlight in the else darkened chamber; we are in Him as the cold green log cast into the flaming furnace, glows through and through with ruddy and transforming heat He is hi us as the sap in the veins of the tree; we are in Him as the branches. “As a branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine, no more can ye except ye abide in me.”

And how is this interpenetration which people call mystical, as if that meant fanatical and unreal, forgetting that there is a true “mysticism” — how is this interpenetration of my spirit and the Spirit of Life in my Lord brought about, so as that all through my darkness there shall be shot rays of His brightness, and all through my stained evil there shall glow the lustre of His light, the brightness of His righteousness? The analogies of our closest earthly unions, though they reach not to the depth of this wonderful indwelling, may help us to some part of the answer. What is the solvent that makes human spirits flow together? Is there not one force which goes far to throw down the dark barriers that separate man from man, and man from woman — one mighty emotion whose breath makes them melt like wax, and souls blend together, and be one in thought and will, in purpose and hope? And when that one uniting force in human society — Love built upon Confidence — is diverted from the poor finite creatures, and transferred from one another to Him, then His Infinite Energy, which is ever around us whether we know it and open our hearts to it or no, flows into our being, and becomes an indwelling guest which fills our souls. They that love are one. “He that is joined to the Lord is one Spirit.” And as the prophet in the wonderful old story laid himself down on the dead child, hand to hand, mouth to mouth, lip to lip, and heart to heart, that the throbbing heart might move the pulses, and the warmth might steal into the dull cold frame, so, but with a contact closer, more real, more all-embracing as is the difference between man and God, between spirit and flesh, Christ lays His life to our death, and in Him we too live and move. In Him we are quickened together and raised up together. Christ’s dwelling in us, and we in Him, is the secret and the condition of all our spiritual life. Christian men and women! beware that nothing weaken or break that Divine union. He is in us, except we be reprobate. We are in Him, except we be dead. “Ye have been taught in Him.”

And this closeness of real union, made possible by faith and love, and in its nature miraculous, supernatural, involving a new energy of the divine will within the iron limits of the natural order, — this union is the condition of all learning in His school Of course; for Christ’s teaching is no outward communication of cut-and-dried notions which may be given, if only the scholar’s understanding comes in contact with the teacher’s; it is no impartation of outward commands which may be given if only the disciples’ will yield to the master’s; but His teaching is essentially the communication of Himself, and that is only possible where, by reason of trustful dependence and the attachment of the whole throbbing being to Him, the barriers between us and the influx of that divine river of light and wisdom have been all swept away.

And then there is another idea on which I may touch for a moment, and that is the gradual process by which this education in union with Him is effected. “Ye have been taught in Him.” Step by step, by the slow unveiling of that which we received, thank God! when, howsoever dimly, we apprehended His perfect beauty, and all commanding authority over us; step by step these are unfolded to our consciences, to our hearts, to our whole being. And so, dear brethren, do not you fancy that it is enough, when you have been entered in Christ’s school Do not you fancy that you have said enough when you have said, as a great many people do say, “I am a Chris tian; I was converted ten, twenty, thirty years ago; I neard Christ speak.” Very likely. But has the point been drawn out into a line? Have you gone on as you began? Has the gradual tuition followed upon the initial submission? Have you been learning of Him, as well as listening to Him once, a long, long while ago? Why, how many amongst us are there — I speak now to the more matured in years of my congregation, and the older in Christian character — how many of us that have got any new gleams either of theological or practical wisdom from Christ for years past? How many of us that have got deeper constructions of our duties than we used to have? How many of us that keep open heart for all new thoughts that shall shine upon us from Christ’s truth and Christ’s teaching? And how many of us are like great overgrown boys, whose education has been neglected, sitting upon the lowest form with their spelling books in their hands when they are men, and having learnt next door to nothing, in all the years we have called ourselves Christians? Paul felt it to be a gradual process. Has it been a gradual process with you and me, dear brethren? Is it not true that we are angry rather than thankful when some new thought comes to us out of His word, disturbing all the rest, just as when you get a new piece of furniture into your house, you have to arrange and re-arrange all the other pieces in order to get it straight? How many of us have formularized our imperfect knowledge of Christ into an absolute creed that we brandish in everybody’s face, and declare there is nothing beyond but cloudland, and no verities for thought nor maxims for practice that we have not made clear to ourselves already? We talk about progressive instruction, going on to the end of our lives. Ninety-nine hundredths of us believe not only (what is true) that we have got all when we have once grasped Christ, but that all which sve have got when we have once grasped Him is open to our consciousness in the very beginning of our Christian course. It is not so. He puts not bread into our hands but seed corn; and although we carry away the full sack whenever we go to our Brother and ask Him to feed our hungriness, it is germinal principles that He gives us rather than loaves, and we have got to cultivate them and watch them, and patiently too, in the belief that He will bless the springing thereof, and after many days we shall find seed for new sowing, as well as bread for the eater! III. This gradualness and slowness of instruction is brought out still more distinctly if we look at the third idea which is contained in these words, as to the substance of the instruction — The theme of the Teaching is the Teacher. “Ye have not so learned Christ.” Then our lesson is — not thoughts about the Lord, but the living Lord Himself, not the doctrine of Christianity only, but Christ the theme as well as the teacher. Not that I mean to say that doctrines — dogmas if you like — which are nothing more than the principles of God’s revelation put into as good logical shape and form as man’s poor understanding can put them — not that they are

to be disposed of in the fashion that too many people do dispose of them nowadays. I do not know any way by which we can attain to the knowledge of the living person but by the truths about Him, which some people despise as being” dogmatic theology.1*

But putting that on one side, what I wish to insist upon is this, that in that Christ, the man Christ Jesus, the Son of God, there lie the thoughts for all our knowledge, the master principles of all our conceptions, the light of all our seeing; that in Him, His person, His deeds, His utterances, His relations to men, His relation to God, there is the formative basis of everything that is worth thinking about and knowing in regard to every subject which does not belong to the mere material life of man. All philosophy, all ethics, all reasonable history of humanity, the principles of all the communities into which men shall aggregate themselves, light upon the nature of man’s spirit, light upon the relations of man to God, the hopes that burn bright with immortality in the midst of the darkness of the grave, and if there be any other theme above the level of the beasts that perish and the wants that are like theirs, they are all to be found in Him — in whom, by no hyperbole, are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Gather off your beech trees in the budding spring days a little brown shell, in which lies tender green leafage, and if you will carefully strip it you will find packed in a compass that might almost go through the eye of a needle, the whole of that which afterwards in the sunshine is to spread and grow to the yellow-green foliage which delights and freshens the eye. So in Christ — to be unfolded through slow generations, in accordance with human experience and wants, is all that men can know or need to know concerning God and themselves, and the relations of both — their duties, their hopes, their fears, and their love.

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If that be true, and if in Him, and in living contact with Him, there be light for the understanding and absolute commandment for the will, which really desires to be commanded and not to have its own way; changeless and perfect love for the heart, which really longs to twine round that stay which is never to be taken up nor cut down, the fruition of all the sensitive desires, and the adequate and sufficient refuge in every changing circumstance, — if that be so, then, as a matter of course, an endless process of tuition must needs go on in order that even partially and inadequately, and yet in such degree as the finite is capable of the infinite, we may possess Christ and be finished scholars in His school. Because, then, He is our theme, we cannot die nor pass away till we have learned Him all, and therefore they that love Him and trust Him must live for ever and ever, growing in grace and in the knowledge of their Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ

The same idea might substantially be suggested by that somewhat enigmatical and difficult phrase which closes the words of our text — “If we have learned, and been taught, as the truth is in Jesus;” our knowledge should, and sometime will, correspond to the absolute truth that resides in Him, and not until between our perceptions of Him and the reality of what He is there is an equilibrium, not until then has that tuition come to its close.

Finally, our text has one distinct purpose in all the depth and grandeur of its scope, and that is to set forth the practical issue of all those lessons that are taught in the school of Christ. He speaks, and we hear Him.

Patiently and day by day He teaches us. Joined to Him we are recipients of His tuition and His discipline. We advance in His knowledge, appropriating ever more and more of Himself, and becoming more and more conscious that He is the basis of our action, and the ground of our hope. And it is all for what? That we may be happy? Yes. That we may be wise? Yes. That we may escape hell? Yes; if we know what hell means. That we may go to heaven? Yes; if we understand what heaven is. And perhaps you will find the definition of both best if you read on in the text, and learn that all this sedulous training and blessed growth is for this purpose — that we may “put off the old man,” wherein is damnation, and that we may “put on the new man, which, after God, is created in righteousness and true holiness.”

And so, then, dear brethren, what we have to do is simply to yield up our understandings, our wills, our hearts, our consciences, and all the activities of our lives to Him; to be commanded, to be cleansed, to be enlightened, to be filled with His love, to be conformed to His likeness, for the voice that spoke from the heavens speaks to us yet — “This is my beloved Son, hear ye HimI*