«　WEEK 12　DAY 4　»

　　Eph. 4:24 And put on the new man, which was created according to God in righteousness and holiness of the reality.

　　1 John 5:20 And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us an understanding that we might know Him who is true; and we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life.

　　The expression the reality is in Jesus [in Ephesians 4:21] refers to the actual condition of the life of Jesus as recorded in the four Gospels. In the godless walk of the nations, the fallen people, there is vanity, but in the godly life of Jesus there is the reality. Jesus lived a life in which He did everything in God, with God, and for God. God was in His living, and He was one with God. This is what is meant by the reality is in Jesus. We, the believers, who are regenerated with Christ as our life and are taught in Him, learn from Him as the reality is in Jesus. (The Conclusion of the New Testament, pp. 3426-3427)

　　In His daily walk the man Jesus was not only great but also very fine. For example, when He fed five thousand men with five loaves and two fish,… He instructed His disciples to gather the broken pieces left over that nothing may be lost, which amounted to twelve handbaskets full (John 6:12-13). The four Gospels reveal that in every detail of the Lord’s daily living, there is no vanity but only the reality. Moreover, in nearly every page of the four Gospels, we see a striking contrast between the reality in the godly living of Jesus and the vanity in the living of others around Him, such as His opposers as well as His disciples.

　　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. According to the record of the four Gospels, the life of the Lord Jesus was a life of reality. Reality is the shining of light. Light is the source, and reality is its expression. As Hebrews 1:3 says, the Lord Jesus is the effulgence of God’s glory. This means that He is the shining of God who is light. Because in every aspect of the Lord’s living on earth there was the shining of light, His life was a life of reality, a life of the shining of God Himself. That life of reality was the expression of God. For this reason Paul says that we learn Christ as the reality is in Jesus. In other words, we learn Christ according to the mold of the life of Jesus, which is the reality.

　　After Christ established this mold, He passed through death and resurrection, and in resurrection He became the life-giving Spirit. As such a Spirit, He comes into us to be our life. When we believed in Christ and were baptized, God put us into Him as the mold, just as dough is placed into a mold. By being put into the mold we learn the mold. This means that by being put into Christ, we learn Christ. On the one hand, God put us into Christ; on the other hand, Christ has come into us to be our life. Now we may live by Him according to the mold in which we have been placed by God. We are in Christ as the mold, and He is in us as our life. In this way we learn Christ as the reality is in Jesus.

　　In Ephesians 4 before Paul mentions grace, that is, the supply, he presents the reality, that is, the principle, the pattern, and the standard. The reality is the shining of light; as members of the Body of Christ under the Head, we should learn Christ as the reality is in Jesus. Yet in order to live out this standard of the reality, we must have grace. In verse 29 Paul relates grace to our speaking. This indicates that we need grace for the details of our daily life, not merely for what we regard as important matters…. For instance, in our daily conversation we may be devoid of grace…. If we have grace in this aspect of our living, we will have grace in every other aspect. In all things we need grace to live a life according to the reality that is in Jesus. (The Conclusion of the New Testament, pp. 3427-3429)

　　Further Reading: Life-study of Ephesians, msg. 46