Eph 4:20 But you did not so learn Christ, (21) If indeed you have heard Him and have been taught in Him as the reality is in Jesus, Phil 1:21 For to me, to live is Christ
In His thirty-three and a half years on earth, the Lord Jesus formed the mold, the pattern, to which all those who believe in Him are to be conformed. We must distinguish this kind of living from that according to the modernistic teaching regarding imitating Christ as our example. The modernists falsely teach that Christ is not God, but a man who established the highest standard for us to follow. This teaching requires that we exercise our natural life to imitate Christ and to live up to His standard. Such a teaching is heretical. It has absolutely nothing to do with the truth as it is in Jesus. It denies the fact that a true believer is in Christ and has Christ in him. In contrast to this heretical, modernistic teaching, we say according to the New Testament that when a sinner repents and believes in Christ and is baptized into Christ, God puts this one into Christ as the mold. At the same time, Christ as the life-giving Spirit comes into him to be his life. Thereafter, this believer is to live by Christ as his life according to the mold. The more he lives by Christ, the more he will be spontaneously shaped into the form of the mold. This is a life in Christ and also a life of Christ in us. We are in Christ as the mold, and He is in us as our life. In this way we learn Christ as the truth is in Jesus.
Bible verses are taken from the Recovery Version of the Bible and Words of Ministry from Witness Lee, Life-study of Ephesians, pp. 397-398. Both are published by Living Stream Ministry, Anaheim, CA. Please visit us at www.emanna.com. Send comments to: [email protected].
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