Taught by Him (Santamaria)

Ephesians 4 is where Paul turns the jewel in his hand and lets the light hit it from a different angle. The first half of the letter has been singing about what God has done—election, redemption, sealing, resurrection-life, union, peace, one new man. Then chapter 4 begins to press the gospel down into shoe-leather: walk worthy… not as the Gentiles walk… put off… put on… speak truth… forgive… love.

Right in the middle of that moral “therefore,” Paul drops a sentence that sounds like a classroom, but behaves like an earthquake:

εἴ γε αὐτὸν ἠκούσατε καὶ ἐν αὐτῷ ἐδιδάχθητε, καθώς ἐστιν ἀλήθεια ἐν τῷ Ἰησοῦ.
If indeed you heard Him, and in Him you were taught, just as truth is in Jesus.

That verse is a quiet revolution against the most common religious fraud on earth: the idea that Christianity is mainly learning about Christ rather than being taught by Christ.

And the Greek is doing more work here than we usually let it.

Paul begins with εἴ γε (ei ge), “if indeed,” a conditional phrase that’s less doubtful than it sounds. It’s the kind of “if” that assumes the reality while still forcing the listener to look themselves in the eye. Not “if, maybe,” but “if—as you claim—this is true.” It’s spiritual honesty with the gloves off. Paul is not entertaining the possibility that the Ephesians are pagans; he is reminding them that the new life is inseparable from a certain kind of hearing and a certain kind of learning.

Then he says: αὐτὸν ἠκούσατε (auton ēkousate): “you heard Him.”

Not “you heard about Him.” Paul could have used language for that. Greek has easy ways to say “you heard concerning him” (περὶ αὐτοῦ), or “you heard the message about him.” But Paul puts the pronoun αὐτόν in the direct object slot. The grammar makes the point blunt: Christian conversion is not merely receiving data; it is encountering a Person.

That should make us a little uncomfortable—in the best way—because we love to hide in secondhand religion. We love the safety of commentary. “I listened to a sermon.” “I read a book.” “I studied theology.” Those can be good things, even necessary things. But Paul is aiming at something deeper than the microphone and the page. He’s saying: beneath whatever human voice carried the gospel to you, did you hear Him?

Not with your eardrums only—those can be tickled by a thousand things—but with that inward hearing where the conscience wakes up and realizes the voice addressing it is not merely persuasive speech. It is a summons. It is a claim. It is Christ insisting on you.

Then comes the phrase to focus on: καὶ ἐν αὐτῷ ἐδιδάχθητε (kai en autō edidachthēte).

The verb ἐδιδάχθητε is aorist passive indicative, 2nd person plural: “you were taught.” Passive. Received. Not self-generated. Not self-certified. The Christian does not graduate because he gave himself a diploma. Someone taught you. Something acted upon you. The verb refuses to let the ego sit at the head of the table.

Now—here’s the delicious detail—Paul does not explicitly say “you were taught by him” with the normal agent marker ὑπό (hypo, “by”) + genitive. If Paul wanted the plain “by Him,” he had the tool. Instead, he uses ἐν αὐτῷ (en autō): “in Him.”

That little preposition ἐν is a theological trapdoor.

Because ἐν most naturally signals location/sphere: where something happens, the realm in which it occurs—“in,” “within,” “in union with.” So the phrase is not merely “Christ taught you” in the sense of an external instructor delivering a lecture. It is “you were taught in Him,” as though Christ Himself is the classroom, the atmosphere, the living context of the instruction.

That’s why some translations render it “taught by Him” anyway: the passive verb practically begs for an agent, and contextually Christ is obviously central. But Paul’s wording won’t let us flatten it into mere agency. He’s doing something more intimate and more severe: he’s saying the teaching that makes a Christian happens inside the sphere of Christ—inside belonging to Him, inside being joined to Him, inside the reality where His life and His truth are not objects you look at but a world you live in.

Put it like this: you can be taught about a shepherd while still being a wolf. But you cannot be taught in the Shepherd and remain what you were.

That is the distinction Paul is guarding.

You can learn doctrines the way you learn astronomy—facts at a distance. You can recite orthodox phrases the way a parrot recites human language. You can become an expert in Christian vocabulary and still be untouched at the level of self. Wolves can do that. Wolves love that. It’s camouflage.

But Paul’s grammar won’t permit Christianity to be reduced to religious literacy. ἐν αὐτῷ ἐδιδάχθητε implies a kind of teaching that is participatory. Not merely information transfer. Formation. Reorientation. A new “in-ness.” A relocation of the soul.

Then Paul adds: καθώς ἐστιν ἀλήθεια ἐν τῷ Ἰησοῦ (kathōs estin alētheia en tō Iēsou): “just as truth is in Jesus.”

Again: ἐν.

Truth is not presented as an abstract commodity you possess, like coins in your pocket. Truth is located—“truth is in Jesus.” Not merely “Jesus speaks truth,” though He does. Not merely “Jesus teaches truth,” though He does. But “truth is in Jesus,” as though truth has an address, a body, a name, a lived reality.

And notice Paul’s wording: ἐν τῷ Ἰησοῦ—literally “in the Jesus,” using the article. It’s not “in a vague Christ-idea.” It’s in Jesus—the historical, particular, crucified, risen one. The one with a real lineage, real wounds, real words. Truth is not floating above history like a philosophy. Truth has hands.

This is why the phrase “taught by Him” is both true and, if we aren’t careful, too small.

Yes—Christ is the Teacher. But Paul’s language presses us to say: Christ is not merely the Teacher who stands outside you holding a chalkboard. He is the Teacher whose lesson is Himself, whose classroom is Himself, whose method is union with Himself, and whose “curriculum” is truth embodied—truth that does not merely inform you but unmakes you and remakes you.

That demolishes a very popular form of religion: the kind where you keep your old self intact and simply add Christian concepts as decorations.

Paul won’t allow it. He’s about to say “put off the old man… be renewed… put on the new man.” The ethics that follow are not mere “try harder” morality. They’re the outflow of a different school entirely: the school of Christ, where the lesson is not just what is right but who is true.

So what does it mean, existentially, to be “taught in Him”?

It means the gospel didn’t just give you answers; it gave you a new teacher of the heart. It means Christ became authoritative to you—not as an idea you selected, but as a Lord who claimed you. It means your conscience began to learn a new accent. It means sins that once felt like freedoms started to taste like chains. It means you began to sense, sometimes with pain, that the old patterns were not merely “bad habits” but a whole former life that didn’t fit the air of Christ.

It also means you can’t finally outsource your spiritual formation to mere externals.

Books are good. Sermons are good. Study is good. The church’s teaching is a gift. Paul himself is teaching as he writes this. So skepticism here must be honest: the New Testament does not despise instruction; it commands it.

But Paul is drawing a line between education that informs and teaching that transforms.

You can sit under ten thousand sermons and remain fundamentally untaught by Christ if the hearing never reaches the soul—if you never “hear Him,” if the truth remains “about Jesus” but never becomes “in Jesus” for you.

That’s not an insult; it’s a warning full of mercy. Because religion is one of the easiest places to hide from God. You can hide behind activity, behind identity, behind tribe, behind correct positions. You can even hide behind Greek.

So Paul’s Greek, ironically, is trying to save you from using Greek as a hiding place.

He forces the issue: Christianity is not merely that you heard news. Christianity is that you heard Him. Christianity is not merely that you were taught facts. Christianity is that you were taught in Him, where the truth is not separable from Jesus Himself.

And once that happens—once you’ve been taught in Him—the rest of Ephesians 4 stops being a list of moral demands and becomes the description of a new creature learning to walk.

You don’t put off the old man to earn union with Christ. You put off the old man because you’ve been taught in Christ, and the old clothes don’t belong to that climate. You don’t speak truth because you’re collecting merit. You speak truth because truth has moved from being a concept you admire to being a reality you inhabit—“truth in Jesus.” You forgive because you’ve been relocated into a kingdom where mercy is not a tactic but a family resemblance.

This is why the phrase “taught by Him” matters so much. Because it quietly insists that the Christian life is not self-repair. It is discipleship to a living Christ. It is being acted upon by the Teacher who does not merely advise but recreates.

And that has one last implication that’s both sobering and sweet:

If the teaching is “in Him,” then you don’t graduate out of needing Him.

You don’t move from Christ-as-beginning to Christ-as-optional-add-on.

The lesson never becomes “how to be a Christian without Christ.” The lesson is always Christ—deeper, truer, closer. The more you learn, the more you realize the classroom walls are not walls at all but a Person you keep discovering from the inside.

That is not mystical fog. It is Paul’s plain grammar: ἐν αὐτῷ ἐδιδάχθητε… because ἀλήθεια ἐν τῷ Ἰησοῦ.

Christianity is not only the truth you affirm.

It is the truth you live in—because you live in Him.