_But as for you!_--The apostle points us from heathendom to Christendom. From the men of blinded understanding and impure life he turns to the cleansed and instructed. “Not thus did _you_ learn the Christ”--not to remain in the darkness and filth of your Gentile state. The phrase is highly condensed. The apostle, in this letter so exuberant in expression, yet on occasion is as concise as in Galatians. One is tempted, as Beza suggested[118] and Hofmann insists, to put a stop at this point and to read: “But with you it is not so:[119] you learned the Christ!” In spite of its abruptness, this construction would be necessary, if it were only “the Gentiles” of verse 17 with whose “walk” St Paul means to contrast that of his readers. But, as we have seen, he has before his eye a third class of men, unprincipled Christian teachers (ver. 14), men who had in some sense learnt of Christ and yet walked in Gentile ways and were leading others back to them.[120] Verse 20, after all, forms a coherent clause. It points an antithesis of solemn import. There are genuine, and there are supposed conversions; there are true and false ways of learning Christ. Strictly speaking, it is not _Christ_, but _the Christ_ whom St Paul presumes his readers to have duly learnt.[121] The words imply a comprehending faith, that knows who and what Christ is and what believing in Him means, that has mastered His great lessons. To such a faith, which views Christ in the scope and breadth of His redemption, this epistle throughout appeals; for its impartation and increase St Paul prayed the wonderful prayer of the third chapter. When he writes not simply, “You have believed in Christ,” but “You have _learned the Christ_,” he puts their faith upon a high level; it is the faith of approved disciples in Christ’s school. For such men the “philosophy and vain deceit” of Colossæ and the plausibilities of the new “scheme of error” will have no charm. They have found the treasures of wisdom and knowledge that are hidden in Christ.