argument is: ‘If you know Christ you will forsake sin, because he is holy—truth, i. e. moral excellence is in him. If you have been taught any thing in virtue of your communion with him, you have been taught to put off the old man.’
Another interpretation supposes καθώς to mean as, expressing the manner. ‘If ye have been taught as the truth is in Jesus,’ i. e. correctly taught. But this requires the article even in English—¢he truth, mean- ing the definite system of truth which Jesus taught. In the Greek, however, the article necessary to give colour to this interpretation is wanting. Besides, the expression “the truth is in Jesus” is obscure and un scriptural, if truth be taken to mean true doctrine. And more than this, this interpretation supposes there may be a true and false teaching dy, or in communion with, Christ. This cannot be. The apostle’s hypothesis is, not whether Christ has taught them correctly, but whether he has taught them at all.
A third interpretation makes the following infinitive the subject of the sentence ; ‘Truth in Jesus is, to put off the old man.’ The meaning of the whole passage would then be, ‘If you know Christ ye cannot live as the heathen, for truth in Jesus is to put away sin,’ i. e. true fellowship with Christ is to put off, &e. But this violates the natural construction of the passage, accord- ing to which the infinitive ἀποθέσθαι depends on ἐδι- δάχθητε, ‘Ye have been taught to put off, &e.’? And the expression, ‘It is truth in Jesus to put away sin’ is in itself awkward and obscure. The first mentioned