To “learn Christ” is an unusual phrase that occurs no where else. The changed life begins when you learn Christ. Paul describes the changed life in four ways:Ī. The changed life begins by coming to know Christ personally (4:20-21). The changed life stems from the transformation that God works in us through the gospel as we put off the old life, are renewed in our minds, and put on the new life in Christ.įirst, Paul shows the changes that God works in us through the gospel (4:20-21) and then he shows us how the process of changes works in our ongoing experience (4:22-24).ġ. That bleak picture describes each of us before we met Jesus Christ.īut now (4:20) Paul draws a sharp contrast: “But you did not learn Christ in this way.” He g ives us a brief sketch of the changed life that every believer should be experiencing. While not all unbelievers are as bad as they possibly could be, they all live “in the futility of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart” (4:17b-18).

In Ephesians 4:17-19, Paul paints a grim portrait of how unbelievers live.

God changes us radically at the moment of salvation by imparting new life to us, but this is followed by a lifetime of changing into the image of Jesus Christ (2 Cor. Becoming a Christian requires turning from your sin to God (repentance). If you claim to believe in Christ, but are living just as you did before you believed in Him, you need to examine whether you truly believe in Him. When it comes to the subject of changing our lives, we all feel the same as we feel about going to heaven: We’re all for it, but we’d rather not go through what you have to go through to get there! The idea of change sounds good, but when it gets right down to it, we think, “You mean I actually have to live differently? No way!”īut the Christian life is fundamentally a changed life.

Death saved my life real person