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. 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. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ!—assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.—Ephesians 4:17–24 

Introduction

I diagram sentences. That’s where you draw lines and put words on the lines to show how each word fits together to form a sentence. I first learned how to diagram in second grade. Miss Laughlin was my teacher. One reason I can remember this is that while I was being snarky in class—probably about how unexciting it was to diagram sentences—Miss Laughlin came up behind me. I didn’t notice her until she stopped next to my desk. She stood there for a moment for effect. I knew what she was going to do because she had done it to me before and to other classmates as well. She slowly put her hand on my ear and then held it tight. Then she twisted my ear pulling up at the same time. If a student didn’t stand up, he was sure she was going to pull the ear right off his head. The pain was significant. The lesson was learned.

I continued to learn how to diagram increasingly complex sentences as I got older and passed from one grade to another. It wasn’t my favorite thing to do. But in my first class at Bethel College with Pastor John (who I only knew as “Dr. Piper” at that time) something really strange happened—I fell in love with sentence diagraming! I was a brand-new believer and anything that helped me know the Bible better was worth trying. Dr. Piper explained that the value of sentence diagramming is that it forces the reader to understand how every word fits together to communicate a thought. I want to share with you something he wrote decades ago that I found to be utterly compelling.

An evangelical believes that God humbled himself not only in the incarnation of the Son, but also in the inspiration of the Scriptures. The manger and the cross were not sensational. Neither are grammar and syntax. But that is how God chose to reveal himself. A poor Jewish peasant and a prepositional phrase have this in common: they are both human and both ordinary. That the poor peasant was God and the prepositional phrase is the Word of God does not change this fact. Therefore, if God humbled himself to take on human flesh and to speak human language, woe to us if we arrogantly presume to ignore the humanity of Christ and the grammar of Scripture. [Taken from John Piper’s booklet: Biblical Exegesis: Discovering the Meaning of Scriptural Texts.]

I don’t know too many people who have linked sentence diagraming to Christmas and the Incarnation!

Today, 42 years later, I not only do sentence diagraming, but I teach our students in Bethlehem College & Seminary how to diagram sentences. Even crazier—I teach them how to do it in Greek, the language the New Testament was originally written in. In fact, in a couple weeks I will teach our first-year seminary students how to diagram. Ephesians will be our laboratory and the first sentence they will diagram just happens to be the longest and most complex sentence in the Greek New Testament—Ephesians 1:3–14. Here it is:

[show sentence diagram]

The reason I’m telling you about sentence diagramming is two-fold:

1) Whether or not you ever resurrect the diagramming skills you learned in grade school, I am eager to encourage you to go as deep in your Bible reading as possible in 2020. It is worth your best efforts. Along with your broad reading of the Bible (did you know you can read the whole Bible in a year by reading only 3–4 pages a day?), I want to encourage you to read a verse or two a day meticulously. No, you don’t need to diagram it, but read that verse in context. Reflect on the most important words and what they mean. Maybe even memorize it so you can meditate on it during the day. And most important, pray its truth and application into your life.

2) The second reason I told you about sentence diagramming—and the main reason—is because of something I saw some time ago while I was sentence diagramming Ephesians 4. It captured me, and I want to help you see what I saw and the significance of what I saw.

Turn with me to Ephesians 4:20.

But that is not the way you learned Christ!

We’ll look at this verse in its context at the end of the message. But first I want to point out what captured me. Within this verse there are three words I want us to focus on: “you learned Christ.” The subject of this little clause is “You” that is, the Ephesian believers, and by extension, all believers including everyone in this sanctuary who believes in Christ. The verb is “learned.” And the direct object is “Christ.” The subject is doing the action, the verb “learned” is the action, and the direct object is what or who is acted upon. “You learned Christ.” What is so unique about these three words is that a person is the direct object of the verb “to learn.”

We usually speak of learning facts, learning ideas, learning information, learning your abc’s, learning a song, learning math, learning philosophy, and so forth. But in Ephesians 4:20 Paul writes, “you learned Christ.” There is no other place in the Bible where the verb “to learn” is followed by a direct object that is a person. In fact, this is the first time in the history of the Greek language where a person is the direct object of “to learn.” Now, I’m not the one who has searched all of Greek literature in preparation for this sermon, but it can be done and has been done. With the aid of computer technology, all of Greek literature from the 8^th century before Christ to the time of the apostles (and beyond) has been entered into a database, and the database has been searched to find every instance of the relatively common verb “to learn.” Not a single instance exists where the direct object of this verb is a person!

When I realized this, it made me want to ponder all the more what Paul means when he writes: “you learned Christ.” What does it mean to learn a person? What does it mean to learn Christ? And who is this Christ who is to be learned? I want to learn him. I want you to learn him. I want my children and my grandchildren to learn him. I want my neighbors to learn him. I want the nations to learn him.

What does it mean to “learn Christ?” To be sure, it means to learn facts about him. Of course, it includes learning what he has taught. This can be seen clearly in the first part of the very next verse, verse 21:

“… assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him.”

When the apostles and church planters came into a city, they preached that Jesus is the promised Messiah, that he came into the world to save sinners, that he died for our sins on the cross, and that he conquered death through his resurrection. He taught them that he was returning and that we would reign with him forever in the new heavens and the new earth. He taught us how to live a life pleasing to God, and he taught us to teach others to observe all that He commanded until all the nations heard the gospel. So to learn Christ definitely includes learning all that he did and said.

But notice that it goes on to say we “were taught in him, just as the truth is in Jesus. Jesus not only taught true things, but truth is IN HIM. Truth and Jesus are not two separate things, but truth is in Jesus. Remember John 14:6, one of our favorite verses? Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me.” Jesus not only gives life. He is the Life. Jesus not only shows the way, he is the Way. Jesus not only teaches us the truth, he is the Truth.

Truth is in Jesus. We are taught in him. The apostle Paul’s favorite phrase in his letter to the Ephesians occurring almost 40 times is “in Christ” (and its parallels “in Christ Jesus,” “in the Lord,” “in the Lord Jesus,” “in him,” “in whom,” “in the Beloved,” etc.).

Before I comment on what this phrase means, let me show you another thing I like to do when I study a book of the Bible. I like to play with the font-size and put the whole book, when possible, onto a single page, sometimes a really big page. Then I like to color-code the repeated words or phrases that I see. Here’s my color-coding of Ephesians. [show color-coded Ephesians]

You can’t see it from where you’re sitting, but I have color coded in red every place that Jesus is mentioned, and I have put a box around every place the phrase “In Christ” is found. When I do this, I can see visually that Jesus is central in God’s plan. In Ephesians 1:10, Paul writes that God’s purpose that is set forth in Christ is “a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.” Jesus’ centrality permeates Ephesians. It permeates his other letters too. Perhaps the clearest statement is found in Colossians 1:15–20.

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

One more thought about truth being in Jesus: Paul uses Jesus’ name 198 times in all his letters. Usually, it’s in combination with other designations, for example, “The Lord Jesus,” “Lord Jesus Christ,” “Christ Jesus,” “Jesus Christ,” “Jesus Christ our Lord.” “Christ” seems to emphasize Jesus as the promised Messiah; “Lord” seems to emphasize Jesus’ reign and divinity, and “Jesus” seems to emphasize his humanity.

All the titles are gloriously true, and combining the titles brings together the totality of who he is. But when Paul uses “Jesus” alone, he seems to be emphasizing his humanity. Everywhere in Ephesians, Jesus occurs with another of his other designations, but here in 4:21 it simply says, “the truth is in Jesus.” This encourages my faith that the historical Jesus from Nazareth, son of Mary, the baby who was born in a stable and placed in a manger and who got whisked away to Egypt when Herod was seeking to kill him, who when he was 12 years old was separated from his parents at the feast in Jerusalem, who was trained as a carpenter—one who got tired after a long journey, one who got hungry after fasting, one who cried real tears, one who was tempted like we are yet without sin, one who felt every scourging of the metal studded whip and the thorn of crowns puncturing his head—the searing pain of the nails in his hands and feet, the thirst while hanging on the cross, and the breathing out of his last breath—truth is in this Jesus.

He really lived in time and space. He is not a figment of our imagination. He really took on human flesh and dwelt among us. And this same Jesus who really claimed to be One with the Father—he welcomed the worship of Thomas who put his hands in Jesus’ resurrected wounds and cried out, “My Lord and My God.”

Is there anyone here who doesn’t believe in this Jesus? Anyone who doesn’t believe that the truth is in this Jesus? I have prayed for you that you will see him as true and trustworthy. I’ve talked to many unbelievers lately who have an idea of a Jesus who seems kind of cool to them, someone who accepts them and their preferred lifestyle. They like him, but they certainly don’t like the church or anyone who says there are absolutes. They can’t fathom that Jesus grieves over their partying and their sexual pursuits outside of the covenant of marriage.

C.S. Lewis, the Oxford scholar who came to embrace Christ later in his life, realized that Jesus made radical claims that must be considered.

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. [Taken from Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis.]

Is truth really in Jesus? Jesus claims it when he said, “I am the truth” (John 14:6). Paul says it when he claims truth is in Jesus. Do you agree with Jesus and Paul? To sum up C.S. Lewis, either Jesus is a liar, a lunatic, or the Son of God. The importance of answering this question cannot be overstated. To anyone in this room who is struggling to answer this question, we would love to talk with you, listen respectfully to your questions, and humble sharing our own journeys of faith.

In closing, I want to briefly look at the immediate context of the verses we have been focusing on. We find our verse in the context of an amazing change that can happen in a person’s life. As we prepare to move from 2019 to 2020, I want to help us think about new beginnings, about the possibility of change. No matter how we evaluate 2019, there are not many people here who don’t long for change, for something to be different in this coming year. For some of you, it may be the radical change from being a person who hasn’t believed that truth is in Jesus to becoming a person who does. For others, you may believe that truth is in Jesus now, but in the moment of temptation, your desires deceive you into thinking the pleasure of sin is greater than the pleasure of life with Christ at the center.

Notice that v. 20 of our text begins with a “but”: “But you have not learned Christ in this way.” Paul is comparing the futility of the thinking of the Gentiles before they come to Christ with the renewed mind that is ours in Christ. Notice the layers of our lostness without Christ.

Let’s look at it from the bottom up: In v. 19, it says that apart from Christ our hearts are hard and impenetrable. This results in our ignoring who God is—in Romans Paul says we exchange the truth of God for a lie. This ignorance results in alienation from the life of God, and this alienation results in living in darkness, which in turn brings about a futile way of thinking. This futile way of thinking results in walking in ways that dishonor God.

These ways are summed up in verse 19: “They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.” What a bleak picture of ourselves apart from Christ. Then Paul says, but this is not the way you learned Christ. Learning Christ changes everything. Truth is in him. The specific truth that is highlighted can be seen in vv. 22–24. Those who have learned Christ have already put off the old self that characterized our former manner of life. Our minds are being renewed, and we have put on the new self that God has created that leads us into a righteousness and holiness produced by truth—the truth that is in Jesus.

Paul’s letter to the Ephesians has much to say about change. The change he is writing about is not the nostalgic change that we tend to think about as one year rolls into the next. Neither is he thinking about superficial change that often is the focus in New Year’s resolutions. Rather, Paul’s focus is on the radical change that takes place when the grace of God penetrates our lives.

The truth that is in Jesus is that a fundamental change has already taken place when we were born again. Ephesians 2 says we were dead in our trespasses and sins, but God made us alive. In our passage, it says that God has changed our clothes, the old self has been taken off, the new self has been put on. We don’t have to first change ourselves. God in his mercy does that for us. After our new birth we by his grace, by the power of his Spirit, we become in our daily living what we became when God’s grace penetrated our lives and made us alive in Christ.

Jesus is central to all of this. God the Son took on human flesh and really lived. What seemed so ordinary turned out to be the most extraordinary Reality we could never have imagined. And yet God has done it. May he be the center of your life in 2020 and beyond. May the Christ you have learned be the center of your learning and living.

Let’s pray.