Ephesians 4:20

20. In sharp contrast with this picture of heathen degradation St Paul puts the moral ideal of the Gospel. This illustrates afresh the manifold applicability of St Paul’s fundamental truth. As ‘in Christ’ we are brought into unity with the Father, and with our brethren, so we each find the law of our individual development, and the power to fulfil it ‘in Him.’ Christ is not the Truth only, He is also the Way and the Life.

Ὑμεῖς δὲ οὐχ οὕτως ἐμάθετε τὸν χριστόν. οὐχ οὕτως, cf. Luke 22:26, where, as here, it marks the contrast of the old ideal and the new. Christ is here the lesson, not as in Matthew 23:10 the Teacher. Matthew 11:29 is a real parallel in thought, all the more noteworthy from the echo of the same text in Ephesians 4:2. Cp. also Philippians 4:9. There is an ideal Messianic character as well as office and work pourtrayed in O.T. See Romans 15:3 f. Cf. Matthew 12:18 f., and perhaps 2 Thessalonians 3:5 and 2 Corinthians 10:1. In any case the thought here is of ‘the Christ’ as embodying a moral ideal binding on all His members. It is the application to the individual conscience of ‘the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.’ Grammatically ‘learning’ Christ is correlative with preaching and proclaiming Christ, Galatians 1:16; Philippians 1:15 f. In 1 Corinthians 1:23 and Colossians 2:6 the additional definitions soften the strangeness of the phrase.