That Is Not the Way You Learned Christ

by Doy Moyer

“But that is not the way you learned Christ!” (Ephesians 4:20).

We hear much about how people think Christianity is supposed to be from all sides. This is often debated ad nauseam through the lens of taking partisan sides. Christianity gets culturally hijacked and manipulated to fit a narrative of our own making, but the one thing consistently missing is the gospel itself.

We are fed stories through algorithms that divide and rip the hope from our hearts. Our culture is filled with despair. We are led into spirals where all we see and think about is death, blame, and more violence. Outrage floods social media as we scramble to make sense of why the next bad thing happens. It’s a never-ending doom scroll that sends us deeper down a path that can only give us the fodder for more anxiety, anger, and hopelessness. And we continue to do it.

That is not the way we learn Christ. Violence, immorality, worldly political divisions, and outrage do not produce the righteousness of God (cf. James 1:20). The context of Ephesians 4 shows the point. Becoming callous, given over to evil practices, corruption, and deceitful desires are set over against the new self “created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”

With all the outrage and division, I ask my fellow Christians, where is the gospel in our discussions? Are we trying to be beacons of light, spreading the good news about the truth of Jesus? We need to knock down the straw men, the idolatrous and false view of Christ and His message, so that we can see the light of His hope through forgiveness, transformation, and the love that only God can define and demonstrate. More violence and anger will not accomplish this.

We are continually tempted to be at each other’s metaphorical throats in front of a world that sees this and says, “Yep, that’s Christianity for you.” It’s as if the gospel has taken a back seat to the “real” discussions we ought to be having, wherein political walls and blame shifting are the norms. It’s almost as though we are telling the Lord, “You wait over there a minute while we fix this problem.”

Tragedy is occurring in the streets. Evil is having its day. Perhaps it is time to pause, lament the state of this corrupt world, humble ourselves before God, pray the Lord for mercy, and repent of anything that has contributed to our cultural and moral decline. This includes a failure to set the gospel message front and center in our lives, in our words, and in our hearts. Of the things we think about, this is most excellent and worthy of praise (see Philippians 4:8). It runs counter to the hopelessness and despair that the world provides.

This is not a time for “yes, but…” or “what about….” It is a time for reflection, repentance, and redirection so that we can see the path cleared for hope, forgiveness, reconciliation, and rebuilding.

We do need to know what is going on in the world. We need to stand for justice, defend the oppressed, and do what we can to be lights as we seek the welfare of where we live. I’m not saying we can’t have a voice and express opinions. However, the way we do that is just as much a part of our message as the words we choose.

And this is the critical point I am trying to make:

Interject the gospel into this corruption. Healing cannot happen on our own terms. We cannot look the Great Physician in the eyes, reject what He offers, and expect to fix things on our own when we ourselves are corrupted by the same culture we try to fight. Healing won’t happen that way. It can’t happen that way. This world needs Jesus as much as at any time, and Christians, who know that we don’t learn Christ through violence and worldly anger, are the ones who need to be spreading that news. Will we be those who can do that?

As a reminder, this has been done before. As our Lord said to His disciples:

“The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. Go your way; behold, I am sending you out as lambs in the midst of wolves” (Luke 10:2-3).

We may be lambs among wolves, but we are servants of the Lamb of God Himself, who is also the Judge before whom all will stand. The way we learn Christ in truth is also the way we need to teach others about Christ, and this is not accomplished through carnal, worldly tactics (II Corinthians 10:3-5).