Walk As A Child Of The Light: For The 4th Sunday Of Lent

Walk as a Child of the Light

Ephesians 5:8–14 NKJV

For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light (for the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness, righteousness, and truth), finding out what is acceptable to the Lord. And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them. For it is shameful even to speak of those things which are done by them in secret. But all things that are exposed are made manifest by the light, for whatever makes manifest is light. Therefore He says:

“Awake, you who sleep,

Arise from the dead,

And Christ will give you light.”

We now come to the 4th Sunday in Lent, a season of reflection and repentance which prepares us for Holy Week and Easter. If we look at the Gospel text for this Sunday from John 9, it talks about a man who was born blind whom Jesus healed. This man showed that he possessed a spiritual insight of which the Pharisees were blind even though they could physically see. It is this spiritual illumination we see this morning. May the Lord open our minds to His truth this morning and help us to apply it. Amen.

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We will be looking in particular at the epistolary text this morning which comes from Ephesians 5:8-14. Ephesians was one of the later epistles of Paul and was written after his epistle to the Romans. He was in prison at this time, which was often dark as far as light is concerned. Paul may also have suffered from poor eyesight. Despite his earthly status, he shows himself by the Lord’s grace to be most insightful. His mature thinking through many years of ministry and reflection on the Word displays itself brilliantly in this epistle. God saw fit that this epistle be included in the canon of the New Testament.

Ephesians is generally divided into two halves. The first is primarily doctrinal and covers the first three chapters. the second half (4-6) is the primarily practical application of Christian doctrine. As Martyn Lloyd-Jones noted, one must not start with chapter 4. We must first learn the doctrinal truths of Christianity before we can properly apply them. Herman Ridderbos refers to this as the indicative and the imperative.

This morning’s text comes from the second half which means it teaches us how to apply Christian truth, We read and learn Christian truth, and now we must apply it. This morning’s text begins with a reminder that we had once been in the dark and lived that way. This is an indicative statement of fact. Paul reminds us of another indicative fact that we who have believed in Jesus are now light in the Lord. This new reality stated here must now be lived out. We must conduct our lives in the light as children of the light.

Paul further explains walking in the light as showing the fruits of a Spirit-filled life which is in all goodness, righteousness and truth. Paul refers to the individual fruits and spiritual gifts throughout his epistles. Here, these gifts are not listed, but rather the proper motivations of how to use these gifts. Many have boasted of their spiritual gift(s) which would construe a misapplication of the gifts which are meant to give glory to God, the God we know who is good, righteous, and true. We apply these facts and truths to our lives.

We saw the fist imperative in Paul’s admonition for us to walk in the light. Now we come to a second and third imperatives. The first is to have no fellowship with the works of darkness which is unfruitful to the Christian life. The second imperative is to reprove these evil works. The question is how are we to reprove them? Should we like the prophets of old publicly proclaim judgment? The New Testament does not seem to take this approach often. There are lists of vices for the Christian to avoid. We don’t have en exposure of people by name, such as Nero. There is a general accusation for the sins of society we are to avoid. I think that the real exposure is the way we live. We have admonitions to pray for those who despitefully use and to not take vengeance. We suffer for Christ and do not repay evil for evil. The world sees the way we live as a rebuke of the way they live. This will cause them to ask us who once lived in excess and riot why we live by the new way, even to the point of enduring suffering, As Peter reminds us, they will then ask about the hope that is in us, to which we respond with fear and trembling. This isn’t a formal answer such as trained Christian apologists might give. Few of us can answer at this level. Yet, we can testify of our faith in Christ, a faith that endures humiliation and even violence against ourselves. We should do everything we can to learn the faith of Jesus Christ, but we must start where we are.