“But you have not so learned Christ, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught in Him, as the truth is in Jesus.” Ephesians 4:20-21″
By observing the Lord’s life on the earth, we can become more familiar with the Lord’s life within us. The one unique life that is described in the four Gospels is the very same life that is now living in us. By studying the Lord’s life in the Gospels, we are not merely considering something objective to us, but something that is also subjective in our spirit. His life lived out in the Gospels is what is now being reproduced in us by His indwelling.
As Christians we can have the assurance that the Christ who was once outside of us is the same Christ who is now inside of us. Furthermore, the way Christ lived on the earth is precisely the same way He is living in us. We must see that the kind of life He lived in the flesh is not something different from the life He now lives in us. This is a basic biblical principle — learning how to apply the Lord’s life in the flesh to our own experience of Him in the spirit. To “learn Christ” is to learn Him by His example in the four Gospels. “The truth . . . in Jesus” means that Jesus lived a life of truth, or reality, by always doing things in the Father, with the Father, and for the Father. This was the truth in Jesus demonstrated and recorded in the Gospels. Now as believers having Christ as our life and being taught in the realm of our union with Him, we learn that the relationship He had with the Father in the flesh is the same kind of experience being repeated in us in the spirit. We “have heard Him and have been taught in Him.” Thus, to adequately learn the indwelling Christ in our experience, we need two things: to study the Lord’s example in the Gospels, and to watch how that same life is being worked out in us in the details of our daily life.