Have You Learned Christ?

HAVE YOU LEARNED CHRIST?

Unpacking and applying Ephesians 4:17-24

By Pastor Brian Wilbur

Date: January 11, 2026

Series: The Basics of the Christian Faith

Note: Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

INTRODUCTION

We come now to my first contribution to our “Basics of the Christian Faith” study course. I like that word ‘basics’, which a dictionary defines as ‘the essential facts or principles of a subject or skill’.[1] Well, our subject is the Christian faith. If you want to pair that subject with a skill, the skill is being a disciple or student of the Christian faith. After all, this study course is deliberately called a discipleship course, designed to help us actually follow Jesus in the light of His Word. Jesus commissioned His first followers to go into all the world and make more disciples. And so, when it comes to being a disciple of the Christian faith, we must know the basics – the basic ideas, the essential facts, the fundamental principles.

One of these essential principles is that genuine salvation is characterized by a profound and fundamental change in the convert’s life, by a radical turnaround and transformation.

You and I need this radical turnaround and transformation because we, like all human beings, are born with the wrong bent, facing the wrong direction, in bondage to sin, going the wrong way. When we speak of salvation and of Jesus as the Savior who saves us, we are referring to our need to be saved from our sin, from the spiritual and everlasting death that results from sin, from God’s righteous judgment that is against us because of our sin, from the guilt and shame and fear that sticks to us in our sinfulness. One teacher, D. A. Carson, put it like this:

“If God had perceived that our greatest need was economic, he would have sent an economist. If he had perceived that our greatest need was entertainment, he would have sent us a comedian or an artist. If God had perceived that our greatest need was political stability, he would have sent us a politician. If he had perceived that our greatest need was health, he would have sent us a doctor. But he perceived that our greatest need involved our sin, our alienation from him, our profound rebellion, our death; and he sent us a Savior.”

Salvation doesn’t just refer to God forgiving us for our sins. Salvation isn’t just God sparing us from the penalty and punishment that our sins deserve. Salvation involves quite a bit more than that. When God saves sinners, He saves them from the penalty and the power of sin; He saves them from the condemnation and the domination of sin; He liberates them from their bondage to sin and sets them free to walk in faith, hope, and love; He makes them alive with new spiritual life and draws them to Himself.

Right in the middle of this saving grace is what we call repentance. Repentance involves movement. Alistair Begg rightly calls it ‘an about turn’. Repentance is turning around: you are going the wrong way, and you suddenly realize it, and so you turn around: you turn away from your sin, and you turn to Jesus. Just last week I was driving to someone’s house and I missed the turn. Once I missed the turn I was going the wrong way. And so I found another road a little further on, and I turned around. I did a complete 180-degree turn. I repented, if you will.

The New Testament word ‘repentance’ literally means ‘change of mind’, but it’s not a theoretical ‘change of mind’; it is, rather, an urgent ‘change of mind’ that prompts you to turn around and face a new direction. Repentance is retreating from your sin and running to Jesus. Repentance is forsaking your sin and setting your face and your faith upon Jesus. Repentance is abandoning your sin and anchoring yourself in Jesus. If you remember in Luke 15 that prodigal and reckless son who walked away from his father and made a journey into a far country and wasted his precious life until he was reduced to poverty in a pigsty, repentance is coming to your senses and returning home and going to your father again, and thus putting yourself sinful and shameful self into the care of the merciful and gracious father. That is repentance. It is fundamentally relational. It is returning home to the Father. It is turning away from all the gunk and junk that keeps you from the Lord, and it is turning to the Lord. When God saves a sinful human being like you or me, He extracts us from our sin and draws us to Himself through the bridge of heartfelt repentance.

Now with this basic idea in mind, I would like to explore Ephesians 4:17-24. In this passage, Paul gives instruction to Christians about how they are supposed to live their life as Christians, and Paul anchors this instruction in the profound turnaround that took place at the very beginning of the Christian life, when they became Christians in the first place. This initial turnaround, this fundamental reorientation, this profound change subsequently shapes your entire life as a Christian person. Since most of you are already Christians, it will be helpful to look at this particular description of conversion, because it is designed to remind Christians what they had already experienced and how that experience was supposed to shape the rest of their lives. However, at the same time, this message is very relevant to any non-Christians in our midst, for through this Scriptural passage God may be calling you into His gracious salvation on this very day.

THE SCRIPTURAL TEXT

Holy Scripture says:

¹⁷ Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds.¹⁸ They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. ¹⁹ They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. ²⁰ But that is not the way you learned Christ!— ²¹ assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus,²² to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires,²³ and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, ²⁴ and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. (Ephesians 4:17-24)

UNPACKING AND APPLYING EPHESIANS 4:17-24

Let me unfold my message in four steps.

A privileged purpose: God has a wonderful design for human beings

First, this passage teaches us God’s wonderful design for human beings, God’s wonderful design for you and for me. God made us to be participants in His life, to live in communion with Him, to enjoy friendship with God. When Paul describes these unbelieving pagans as those who are “alienated from the life of God”, the assumption is that they shouldn’t be. These unbelieving pagans have veered off course, as all sinners do. But if they hadn’t veered off course but were actually in the sweet spot of God’s design for their lives, then they would not be “alienated from the life of God” (v. 18); instead they would be acquainted with the life of God, and more than that, they would be partakers of the life of God. God alone possesses life in Himself, and is not dependent on someone else for it, and He possesses it eternally; God alone is the Creator and Sustainer of life; God alone is the source of life for all creatures who derive their life from Him. “[The] life of God” isn’t mere existence: God’s life is qualitatively good, wholesome, beautiful, holy, gracious, full of lovingkindness, relational in view of the eternal love shared by the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and eminently creative and productive. We were created to live in fellowship with the living God, to draw life and nourishment from Him, and to live in a way that reflects His beauty and grace.

God’s wonderful design for your life and my life is also seen in verse 24 when Paul refers to “the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.” Although Paul is quite obviously talking about the newness of salvation that comes to folks who turn to Jesus, the concepts of verse 24 are rooted in the original creation. Remember, Genesis 1:26-28 teaches us that God made human beings “in his own image” (Genesis 1:27): all human beings are made in the likeness and image of God (Genesis 1:26, 27). What does it mean to be made in God’s image? It can be distilled into four Rs: (1) Human beings are made for relationship with God; (2) human beings are made to reflect God’s character; and (3) human beings are made to represent God’s authority and rule as God’s steward. We represent God’s authority when we rule our own little spheres of responsibility in a way that honors God and echoes His character – “in true righteousness and holiness”.

So, God’s wonderful design for us human beings is that we be partakers of His life and reflectors of His character. This most basic, high, and noble calling rests on each and every one of us.

A dreadful predicament: humanity has plunged itself into darkness

But that brings us to a second consideration, namely, that the human race has drifted far away from this wonderful design, and has plunged itself into darkness. If you want to know why the world is such a mess, it is simply because human beings have become estranged from God (they are “alienated from the life of God”), their character is corrupt, and consequently they exercise their authority in a way that reflects their ungodliness and their corrupt character.

The darkness of sinful humanity is given an elaborate description in our passage: apart from the redeeming grace of Christ, our minds are futile, empty, bankrupt (v. 17); our understanding is darkened; we are strangers to God’s life; we are ignorant of spiritual reality (v. 18). This ignorance is not a blissful ignorance; it is a dreadful ignorance. The Topical Lexicon on Bible Hub has a helpful short little paragraph about ignorance:

“In the apostolic writings, ἀγνοία describes a state of spiritual and moral unawareness that leaves a person estranged from God’s will. While sometimes rooted in simple lack of information, it is never morally neutral; it exposes a heart that has not yet come under the transforming light of the gospel.”[2]

We are not alienated from the life of God because of an innocent ignorance but because of a stubborn and hard-hearted ignorance: “due to their hardness of heart” (v. 18). Hard-hearted and callous, and thus strangers to the life of God and the light of divine truth, we throw our bodies into sinful pleasures (v. 19). Paul refers to the darkness of sinful humanity again in verse 22, where he describes the old self as that which “is corrupt through deceitful desires” (v. 22). Thus we have at least eleven concepts that describe sinful humanity: futile, darkened, alienated, ignorant, hard-hearted, calloused, sensual, greedy, impure, corrupt, and deceived.

When you take a good and honest look in the mirror, and when you review the history of your own life and the choices you’ve made, don’t you see the dark face of sin? Don’t you see the wrong bent? Don’t you see the need for a turnaround? Don’t you see the need for a Savior?

When you put Paul’s description of sinful humanity in Ephesians 4:17-19 side by side with his earlier assessment in Ephesians 2:1-3, it is plain that his description applies to each and every person who hasn’t yet experienced God’s gracious salvation. Here was his earlier assessment:

“And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the flesh and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.” (Ephesians 2:1-3)

We need to be saved from our spiritual deadness, from our moral corruption, from our separation from God, and from the displeasure and judgment of God that abides upon sinners who remain entrenched in their sin. As Paul writes in Ephesians 5:5-6,

“For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous (that is, an idolater) has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.” (Ephesians 5:5-6)

None of what I have said takes away from the fact that God has endowed human beings with great intelligence, and sinful people display their great intelligence on a regular basis. We can construct great buildings; we can build extensive roadways and railways and bridges over bodies of water; we can develop electrical power from the rich resources of the earth; we can build automobiles and airplanes and space shuttles and supercomputers and smartphones. Modern technologies are a marvel! When Paul says that the sinful human mind is futile and darkened and ignorant and deceived, he doesn’t mean that it is intellectually stupid. There is plenty of intelligence, sophistication, cleverness, and creativity in the sinful human mind. Sinful human beings produce books, movies, songs, and works of art that are often quite beautiful and compelling in many ways. But the tragedy is – and this is a real tragedy – the tragedy is that the main ingredient is always missing: the human mind ought to be God-centered, directed to God’s will and harmonized with God’s agenda; the human mind ought to love the knowledge of God and delight in God’s ways, the human being ought to be motivated by a supreme love for the Lord, and then also by a sincere love for people, for the Lord’s sake. With the main ingredient missing, we build an outwardly impressive world, but there is rot and corruption on the inside, moral ugliness on the inside, and so we’re racing unprepared toward the judgment. Remember the rich man in Luke 12 who built bigger barns to preserve his bumper crop, but Jesus said that the rich man was poor toward God. He died unprepared: his treasure was on earth and he couldn’t take that with him, and he hadn’t stored up for himself any treasure in heaven. That rich man is a picture of sinful humanity: rich and productive and clever in so many ways, but ultimately self-serving and woefully poor in the things of God.

Although we were created with a privileged purpose, apart from God’s gracious salvation we find ourselves in a dreadful predicament.

The turning point: Christ is the only way out

Moving now to the third point, we see the turning point at which a sinful human being may be redeemed and renovated by God’s grace. Remember Ephesians 2:5 – “by grace you have been saved” (Ephesians 2:5). God’s rich mercy and great love and saving grace come to a sinner and God makes the dead sinner spiritually alive. God turns the sinner around, from the inside out. Another way of describing this turnaround is to say that God’s kindness leads to the sinner’s repentance (Romans 2:4), such that the sinner is stopped dead in his tracks, is overwhelmed by his sin, and turns around and beholds the grace of God in the face of Jesus. There is nothing more beautiful, more glorious, and more compelling to behold.

Now where is the turning point in Ephesians 4:17-24? In this passage, of course, Paul is instructing people who are already Christians, people who have already been spiritually regenerated by God, people who have already repented and turned around and trusted in Jesus. Paul instructs them to “no longer walk” like the rest of sinful humanity does. But as he is giving this instruction, he draws their attention back to the beginning of their Christian life. Look at what he says in verse 20. After describing the way that unconverted sinners live, Paul says to his Christian audience: “But that is not the way you learned Christ!” (v. 20). Now he unpacks this concept of learning Christ in verses 21-24, but we need to slow down for a moment and ponder this remarkable phrase.

LEARNING CHRIST

Get this phrase into your mind: “the way you learned Christ”. If you are a Christian, a true Christian, a true follower of Christ, then “you learned Christ”. We don’t normally speak in terms of learning a person. We may say that we learned about a person, but rarely do we say that we learned the person himself. But this is how Paul speaks in verse 20. It points to the fundamentally relational nature of salvation, of conversion, of the change that is involved in becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ.

Let’s not rush past this phrase, but treasure it up in our hearts. Think of all the things that Paul doesn’t say. He doesn’t say: you learned morality, you learned the law, you learned religion, you learned piety, you learned the guiding principles, you learned a theological system, you learned an ethical and humane way to live. Now it is perfectly true that learning Christ involves learning some of these other things as well, but the center of it all, the heart of it all, the substance of it all, is learning the person Jesus Christ. Have you learned Him? The 19^thcentury J. B. Lightfoot put it so memorably when he said:

“Though the Gospel is capable of doctrinal exposition, though it is eminently fertile in moral results, yet its substance is neither a dogmatic system nor an ethical code, but a Person and a Life.”

And so I ask you this morning: have you learned Christ? Picture it like this: you are lost in your sin, your mind is spiritually empty and dark, you are perishing apart from God’s life, your heart is calloused, your body is addicted to cheap pleasures, you are in bondage to lies, religion has failed you and people have failed you and you have failed you, for even though you knew about the beauty of God’s moral law, you couldn’t keep it, and so you’ve got this train wreck of a soul, with guilt and shame and condemnation. And then amid the ruin and wreckage of your life, Christ shows up. Christ, full of grace and truth. Christ, full of compassion for me, a sinner. My sin, worse than the uncleanness of leprosy, didn’t keep Him from me. Christ, the Holy One, loved me and gave Himself for me. Christ, the Lord of glory, brought me near through His sacrifice on the cross, and He bought me with His precious blood. Christ, my dear Redeemer, paid the price to redeem me, to redeem me out of the house of slavery to sin, and to forgive all my sins. Christ, risen from the dead and seated at the Father’s right hand, came to me amid my shattered life, put me His lost sheep upon His strong shoulders, and brought me home to the Father. I didn’t learn a system, I didn’t learn a technique, I didn’t learn a religious philosophy, I didn’t learn three points and two applications, I didn’t learn seven steps to a better life. I learned Christ. He is the light shining into my dark, futile, and ignorant mind. He is the life bringing me into communion with the living God. He is the truth causing my deceitful desires to melt away like snow in the blazing sun. He is the Holy and Righteous One who compels me to walk away from my impurity and walk after Him. He is Gentle and Lowly One whose yoke is easy and whose burden is light, and He gives me rest.

Have you learned Christ? Has he proven to be the turning point in your life? Is He your true north, your light in the darkness, your truth in a world of lies, the one and only Savior who loved you and gave Himself up for you?

Lest there be any confusion, when the Bible says “Christ” it is not referring to your favorite fill-in-the-blank guru who has appeared under different names in different historical eras. There are false teachers who peddle this lie of a vague ‘Christ concept’. We don’t fall for that lie. We proclaim the truth concerning Jesus Christ, the true Messiah, foretold in the Old Testament, born of Mary the virgin in the town of Bethlehem in the days when Caesar Augustus presided over the Roman Empire, brought up in Nazareth, ministered in Galilee, was rejected by the leaders of first century Israel and suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified on a hill outside of the city of Jerusalem, was buried in the tomb of Joseph Arimathea, and was raised again in His body on the third day, and after appearing to His disciples over the course of forty days, He ascended into heaven and sat down at the Father’s right hand with all authority in heaven and on earth entrusted to Him, and from there He is coming again to judge the living and the dead. This Jesus Christ, and no other, is able to turn your life around. This Jesus Christ, and no other, is able to find you and bring you home to the Father.

“In tenderness He sought me,” the hymnwriter puts it:

“In tenderness He sought me,
Weary and sick with sin,
And on His shoulders brought me
Back to His fold again.
While angels in His presence sang
Until the courts of heaven rang.

“He washed the bleeding sin-wounds
And poured in oil and wine;
He whispered to assure me,
“I’ve found thee, thou art Mine;”
I never heard a sweeter voice;
It made my aching heart rejoice!

“O the love that sought me!
O the blood that bought me!
O the grace that brought me to the fold,
Wondrous grace that brought me to the fold!”[3]

Have you learned Christ in this way?

LEARNING CHRIST INVOLVES A RADICAL TRANSFORMATION

Moving forward from verse 20, Paul unpacks the reality of learning Christ in verses 21-24. The flow of thought runs like this: “you learned Christ” (v. 20), which means that you have “heard about him” or more literally heard Him or understood Him, and that you “were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus”.

So we have this cluster of concepts – learning Christ, hearing Christ, understanding Christ, being taught in Christ, indeed being taught the truth with the understanding that “the truth is in Jesus”, the truth is centered upon Jesus. In fact, He is the truth.

Now at this point Paul calls attention to a specific foundational truth that you learn when you learn Christ, when you are taught the truth that is centered upon Jesus. And what this specific foundational truth is, is that Jesus completely and radically changes your life from the inside out. In verses 22-24, Paul is directing the attention of Christian believers back to the foundational instruction that they received when they first learned Christ, and thus Paul is describing the fundamental transformation that has already taken place in the lives of true converts. In other words, the instruction that Paul articulates in verses 22-24 is instruction that the believers he is writing to had already received, had already entered into the reality of it, and had already experienced its transforming power.

Learning Christ always involves this radical conversion, this radical transformation. Those who have learned Christ have already put off the old self, the old man, their former manner of life (v. 22). Those who have learned Christ have already entered into a process of spiritual renewal that will continue until they go home to be with Jesus (v. 23). Those who have learned Christ have already put on the new self, the new man, the new life, the new creation reality (v. 24). The new man is “created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” and it restores what was lost when the first humans fell. That first pair of humans, the man and the woman in Genesis 1:26-28, were made in the image and likeness of God, but they fell into sin and plunged humanity into darkness. So the first humanity became the old sinful humanity which we must depart from. But God has graciously bestowed the new humanity, the new and restored way of being human, upon all who receive Christ. Notice that we aren’t the ones remaking or reinventing ourselves. God is the Creator of this new man, and we receive this new life, this new way of being human, as a gift from Him.

Learning Christ, coming to know Christ in this personal and transformative way, means being ushered out of the old and into the new. When Jesus says ‘repent and believe’ or ‘come, follow me’ or ‘deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me’, He is summoning you out of the darkness and into His light. When you heed His call, you are inducted into a brand new life. ‘If anyone is in Christ, behold, a new creation!’ The conversion of the Thessalonians is described this way:   “you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God” (1 Thessalonians 1:9). In Galatians 5:24 we are taught that “those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.” (Galatians 5:24)

And so it is that when the darkened sinner begins to realize that the light of Christ has begun shining upon him, he leaves the old life behind and clings to Jesus, following Jesus into newness of life. It is not a Herculean moral effort on our part. It is not something that we achieve in our own strength. It is not a formula or program, it is not a religious ropes course or climbing wall. But it is nothing less than a real turning, a transfer of affection and loyalty from our sin to the Lord, and by His grace we put off the old man, the old life, the old ways, and by His grace we enter into a renewal and renovation that touches that deepest point in our being, and by His grace we put on the new man, the new life, and immediately we have a brand new life with Him at the center.

Notice that the renewal, the renovation, is not a superficial thing, not a flash in the pan, not a momentary euphoria, not a calculating rearrangement of your mental furniture, but something that happens “in the spirit of your minds”: beneath all the ideas, all the fabricated identities, all the façades, all the pretense, all the intellectual back and forth, all the old stories that you used to tell about yourself, beneath all of that, at your innermost you, there is light and life and truth capturing your innermost self and bringing you into the freedom of Christ. The one who has passed through this believing repentance into new life, will never be the same again. And indeed, such a one “must no longer walk as the [unbelieving] Gentiles do”, but must now “walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4).

This fundamental change shapes the rest of your life. The fruit that flows from this initial conversion, this initial transformation, this initial turning to and receiving of Christ, is a lifestyle of repentance that affects our everyday life in hundreds of ways.

Personal application: live in accordance with your new life in Christ

So in verses 20-24 Paul communicates what it means to be converted, that is, what it means to have learned Christ and to have entered into a personal transformative relationship with Christ. Once that has happened, it directs the course of the rest of your life.

So starting in verse 25, Paul resumes his practical instruction. In verse 17 Paul had said: “you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do”. To state this instruction positively, you must now walk as someone who has met Jesus and been inducted into the new life that He obtained for you. What does this daily walk look like practically?

“Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another.” (Ephesians 4:25) Why do that? Because you have learned Christ, who is the faithful witness, the very embodiment of truth.

“Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil.” (Ephesians 4:26-27) Why do that? Because you have learned Christ, and He is your peace and strength.

“Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.” (Ephesians 4:28) Why do that? Because you have learned Christ, who used His resources for our benefit. Now we have a pattern to follow.

“Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.” (Ephesians 4:29) Why do that? Because you have learned Christ, who sacrificed His life in order to build His church. You’re not going to tear it down, are you?

“And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” (Ephesians 4:30-32) Why do that? Because you have learned Christ, who met you – a sinner, condemned, unclean – with grace, mercy, and kindness. Can you do any less for a fellow sinner?

“Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” (Ephesians 5:1-2) Why do that? Because you have learned Christ, and you admire Him, and you know that living a life of sacrificial love is the only worthwhile way to live. 

If you have learned Christ, then you know how to live. If you don’t know how to live, then why not learn Christ, and come to Christ, and close with Christ on this very day? See Christ, the spotless Lamb, full of tenderness, holding forth His wounded hands, offering life to such a one as you. Will you put your little hand in His?

ENDNOTES

[1] From Oxford Languages via a search on Google.

[2] From Topical Lexicon, part of the entry “52. agnoia” on Bible Hub. Available online: https://biblehub.com/greek/52.htm.

[3] From the hymn “In Tenderness He Sought Me” by W. Spencer Walton.