Mark the singular expression with which this text begins. 'Ye have not
so learned _Christ_.' Now, we generally talk about learning a subject, a
language, a science, or an art; but we do not talk about learning
people. But Paul says we are Christ's disciples, not only in the sense
that we learn of Him as Teacher--which follows in the next clause--but
that we learn Him as the theme of our study.
That is to say, the relation of the person of Jesus Christ to all that
He has to teach and reveal to the world is altogether different from
that of all other teachers of all sorts of truth, to the truth which
they proclaim. You can accept the truths and dismiss into oblivion the
men from whom you got them. But you cannot reject Christ and take
Christianity. The two are inseparably united. For, in regard to all
spiritual and to all moral truth--truth about conduct and
character--Jesus Christ _is_ what He teaches. So we may say, turning
well-known words of a poet in another direction: 'My lesson is in
Thee.'
But that is not all. My text goes on to speak about another thing: 'Ye
have learned Christ if so be that ye have _heard Him_ and been taught.'
Now that 'If so be' is not the 'if' of uncertainty or doubt, but it is
equivalent to 'if, as I know to be the case,' or '_since_ ye have heard
Him.' Away there in Ephesus, years and years after the crucifixion,
these people who had never seen Christ in the flesh, nor heard a word
from the lips 'into which grace was poured,' are yet addressed by the
Apostle as those who had listened to Him and heard Him speak. They had
'heard Him and been taught.' So He was Lesson and He was Teacher. And
that is as true about us as it was about them. Let me say only a word or
two about each of these two thoughts.
I have already suggested that the underlying truth which warrants the
first of them is that Jesus Christ's relation to His message and
revelation is altogether different from that of other teachers to what
they have to communicate to the world. Of course we all know that, in
regard to the wider sphere of religious and Christian truth, it is not
only what Christ said, but even more what He did and was, that makes His
revelation of the Father's heart. Precious as are the words which drop
from His lips, which are spirit and are life, His life itself is more
than all His teachings; and it is when we learn, not _from_ Him, but
when we _learn_ Him, that we see the Father. But my text has solely
reference to conduct, and in that aspect it just implies this thought,
that the sum of all duty, the height of all moral perfectness, the
realised ideal of humanity, is in Christ, and that the true way to know
what a man or a nation ought to do is to study Him.
How strange it is, when one comes to consider it, that the impression
of absolute perfection, free from all limitations of race or country or
epoch or individual character--and yet not a vague abstraction but a
true living Person--has been printed upon the minds and hearts of the
world by these four little pamphlets which we call gospels! I do not
think that there is anything in the whole history of literature to
compare with the impression of veracity and historical reality and
individual personality which is made by these fragmentary narratives.
And although it has nothing to do with my present subject, I may just
say in a sentence that it seems to me that the character of Jesus Christ
as painted in the Gospels, in its incomparable vividness and vitality,
is one of the strongest evidences for the simple faithfulness as
biographies, of these books. Nothing else but the Man seen could have
resulted in such compositions.
But apart altogether from that, how blessed it is that we have not to
enter upon any lengthened investigations, far beyond the power of
average minds, in order to get hold of the fundamental laws of moral
conduct! How blessed it is that all the harshness of 'Obey this law or
die' is by His life changed into 'Look at Me, and, for My love's sake,
study Me and be like Me!' This is the blessed peculiarity which gives
all its power and distinctive characteristic to the morality of the
Gospel, that law is changed from a statuesque white ideal, pure as
marble and cold and lifeless as it, into a living Person with a
throbbing heart of love, and an outstretched hand of help, whose word
is, 'If ye love Me, keep My commandments, and be like Me.'
Christian men and women! study Jesus Christ. That is the Alpha and Omega
of all right knowledge of duty and of all right practice of it. Learn
Him, His self-suppression, His self-command, His untroubled calmness,
His immovable patience, His continual gentleness, His constant reference
of all things to the Father's will. Study these. To imitate Him is
blessedness; to resemble Him is perfection. 'Ye have learned Christ' if
you are Christians at all. You have at least begun the alphabet, but oh!
in Him 'are hid all the treasures,' not only 'of wisdom and knowledge,'
but of 'whatsoever things are lovely and of good report'; and 'if there
is any virtue, and if there is any praise,' we shall find them in Him
who is our Lesson, our perfect Lesson.
But that is not all. Lessons are very well, but--dear me!--the world
wants something besides lessons. It has had plenty of teaching. The
trouble is not that we are not instructed, but that we do not take the
lessons that are laid before us. And so my text suggests another thing
besides the wholly inadequate conception, as it would be if it stood
alone, of a mere exhibition of what we ought to be.
'If so be that ye have _heard_ Him.' As I said, these Ephesian
Christians, far away in Asia Minor, with seas and years between them and
the plains of Galilee and the Cross of Calvary, are yet regarded by the
Apostle as having listened to Jesus Christ. We, far away down the ages,
and in another corner of the world, as really, without metaphor, in
plain fact, may have Jesus Christ speaking to us, and may hear His
voice. These Ephesians had heard Him, not only because they had heard
about Him, nor because they had heard Him speaking through His servant
Paul and others, but because, as Paul believed, that Lord, who had
spoken with human lips words which it was possible for a man to utter
when He was here on earth, when caught up into the third heaven was
still speaking to men, even according to His own promise, which He gave
at the very close of His career, 'I have declared Thy name unto My
brethren, and _will_ declare it.' So, though 'He began both to do and to
teach' before He was taken up, after His Ascension He continues both the
doing and the tuition. And, in verity, we all may hear His voice
speaking in the depths of our hearts; speaking through the renewed
conscience; speaking by that Spirit who will guide us into all the truth
that we need; speaking through the ages to all who will listen to His
voice.
The conception of Christ as a Teacher, which is held by many who deny
His redeeming work and dismiss as incredible His divinity, seems to me
altogether inadequate, unless it be supplemented by the belief that He
now has and exercises the power of communicating wisdom and knowledge
and warning and stimulus to waiting hearts; and that when we hear within
the depth of our souls the voice saying to us, 'This is the way, walk ye
in it,' or saying to us, 'Pass not by, enter not into it,' if we have
waited for Him, and studied His example and character, and sought, not
to please ourselves, but to be led by His wisdom, we may be sure that it
is Christ Himself who speaks. Reverence the inward monitor, and when He
within thy heart, by His Spirit, calls thee, do thou answer, 'Speak,
Lord! Thy servant heareth.' 'Ye have learned Christ if so be that ye
have hearkened to Him.'
II. Secondly, mark the condition of learning the Lesson and hearing the
Teacher.
Our Authorised Version, in accordance with its very frequent practice,
has evacuated the last words of my text of their true force by the
substitution of the more intelligible '_by_ Him' for what the Apostle
writes--'_in_ Him.' The true rendering gives us the condition on which
we learn our Lesson and hear our Teacher. '_In_ Him,' is no mere
surplusage, and is not to be weakened down, as this translation of ours
does, into a mere '_by_ Him' but it declares that, unless we keep
ourselves in union with Jesus Christ, His voice will not be heard in our
hearts, and the lesson will pass unlearned.
You know, dear brother, how emphatically and continually in the New
Testament this doctrine of the dwelling of the believing soul in Christ,
and the reciprocal dwelling of Christ in the believing soul, is insisted
upon. And I, for my part, believe that one great cause of the
unsatisfactory condition of the average Christianity of this day is the
slurring over and minimising of these twin great and solemn truths. I
would fain bring you back to the Master's words, as declaring the
deepest truths in relation to the connection between the believing soul
and the Christ in whom it believes:--'Abide in Me, and I in you.' I wish
you would go home and take this Epistle to the Ephesians and read it
over, putting a pencil mark below each place in which occurs the words
'in Christ Jesus.' I think you would learn something if you would do it.
But all that I have to say at present is that, if we would keep
ourselves, by faith, by love, by meditation, by aspiration, by the
submission of the will, and by practical obedience, in Jesus Christ,
enclosed in Him as it were--then, and then only, should we learn His
lesson, and then, and then only, should we hear Him speak. Why! if you
never think about Him, how can you learn Him? If you seldom, or
sleepily, take up your Bibles and read the Gospels, of what good is His
example to you? If you wander away into all manner of regions of thought
and enjoyment instead of keeping near to Him, how can you expect that He
will communicate Himself to you? If we keep ourselves in touch with that
Lord, if we bring all our actions to Him, and measure our conduct by His
pattern, then we shall learn His lesson. What does a student in a school
of design do? He puts his feeble copy of some great picture beside the
original, and compares it touch for touch, line for line, shade for
shade, and so corrects its errors. Take your lives to the Exemplar in
that fashion, and go over them bit by bit. Is _this_ like Jesus Christ;
is _that_ what He would have done? Then '_in_ Him,' thus in contact with
Him, thus correcting our daubs by the perfect picture, we shall learn
our lesson and listen to our Teacher.
Still your passions, muzzle your inclinations, clap a bridle on your
will, and, as some tumultuous crowd would be hushed into silence that
they might listen to the king speaking to them, make a great silence in
your hearts, and you will 'hear Him' and be taught 'in Him'.
III. Lastly, the test and result of having learned the Lesson and
listened to the Teacher is unlikeness to surrounding corruption.
'Ye have _not so_ learned Christ.' Of course the hideous immoralities of
Ephesus are largely, but by no means altogether, gone from Manchester.
Of course, nineteen centuries of Christianity have to a very large
extent changed the tone of society and influenced the moral judgments
and practices even of persons who are not Christians. But there still
remains a _world_, and there still remains unfilled up the gulf between
the worldly and the godly life. And I believe it is just as needful as
ever it was, though in different ways, for Christians to exhibit
unlikeness to the world. 'Not so,' must be our motto; or, as the Jewish
patriot said, 'So did not I, because of the fear of the Lord.'
I do not wish you to make yourselves singular; I do not wish you to wear
conventional badges of unlikeness to certain selected evil habits. A
Christian man's unlikeness to the world consists a great deal more in
doing or being what it does not do and is not than in not doing or being
what it does and is. It is easy to abstain from conventional things; it
is a great deal harder to put in practice the unworldly virtues of the
Christian character.
There are wide regions of life in which all men must act alike, be they
saints or sinners, be they believers, Agnostics, Mohammedans, Turks,
Jews, or anything else. There are two ways of doing the same thing. If
two women were sitting at a grindstone, one of them a Christian and the
other not, the one that pushed her handle half round the circle for
Christ's sake would do it in a different fashion from the other one who
took it from her hand and brought it round to the other side of the
stone, and did it without reference to God.
Brethren, be sure of this, that if you and I do not find in ourselves
the impulse to abstain from coarse enjoyments, to put our feet upon
passions and desires, appetites and aims, which godless men recognise
and obey without qualm or restraint, we need to ask ourselves: 'In what
sense am I a Christian, or in what sense have I heard Christ?' It is a
poor affair to fling away our faithful protest against the world's evils
for the sake of receiving the world's smile. Modern Christianity is
often not vital enough to be hated by a godless world; and it is not
hated because it only deserves to be scorned. Keep near Jesus Christ,
live in the light of His face, drink in the inspiration and instruction
of His example, and the unlikeness will come, and no mistake. Dwell near
Him, keep in Him, and the likeness will come, as it always comes to
lovers, who grow to resemble that or those whom they love. 'It is enough
for the disciple to be as his Teacher, and for the slave to be like his
Lord.'