Weekly Pursuit – Week 4 of March
Verses:
Eph. 4:21 “if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught in Him as the reality is in Jesus.”
Excerpts:
When the Lord Jesus lived on earth as a man, in Him there was always the reality. In Jesus, that is, in His human living and His daily walk—whether He worked as a carpenter or carried out His ministry—there was the reality at all times. In order to understand the reality expressed in the living of Jesus as a man on earth, we need to read verse 17, where Paul exhorts the believers to “no longer walk as the Gentiles also walk in the vanity of their mind.” Here we see a contrast between the reality in Jesus and the vanity of the Gentiles’ mind. In the human living of Jesus there was no vanity but only the reality; however, in our godless society there is nothing but vanity of vanities. Everything in the daily living of the man Jesus is the reality. Not one of His words was vain.
Christ is not only life to us but also an example. In His life on earth He set up a pattern, as revealed in the Gospels. Then He was crucified and resurrected to become the life-giving Spirit that He might enter into us to be our life. We learn from Him according to His example, not by our natural life but by Him as our life in resurrection. To learn Christ is simply to be molded into the pattern of Christ, that is, to be conformed to the image of Christ. (The Conclusion of the New Testament, msg. 341)