Ephesians 5:3-14

Walking as Children of Light

The Apostle Paul has been contrasting two radically different lives or walks.  In fact, these two lives are so radically incompatible with one another that Paul uses the metaphor of light and darkness to describe each of the different lives.  Paul does this so that you will be even more thankful to God as you are reminded of the radical salvation which has delivered you out of the kingdom of darkness and into the kingdom of God's marvelous light (Col. 1:12-13; 1 Pet. 2:9).  Darkness, which is a synonym for total depravity, describes the lifestyle of the unbeliever who walks in darkness (cf. 2:1-3, 11-12; 4:17-19, 22; cf. Rom. 1:18ff). 

We have said earlier that this darkness begins with original sin in a fallen mind in Adam which affects the will and emotions of man so that he performs sinful deeds in his flesh which lead to death and condemnation.  The man outside of Christ, or the unconverted Gentile, walks in the emptiness and vanity of his own mind, which is darkened by sin.  This "futility" is often understood in relation to idolatry (5:5).  It is the result of having one's life disconnected from God (2:12).  Without being in a true relationship to God the mind of the pagan has lost all touch with reality and is left to its own, fumbling in the dark, without any purpose or direction in life.  Upon realizing the emptiness of his life, the pagan wants to make sense of his life and the only thing he can do is live according to his own carnal, fleshly desires.  All he has left is to live for himself.  He is a idolater because he becomes his own god to whom he offers up all devotion and passion in worshipping the creature rather than the Creator. 

When man in alienated from God, who is the source of all life, then there is no meaning in the world but what man finds in himself by fulfilling his own self-centered desires.  He is so hardened by a lack of purpose-in-life that his sole purpose becomes himself.  Now, separated from God he becomes so calloused and hardened by the darkness of his sin that he has lost the capacity to feel shame and to discern between good and evil.  He is a man without any moral restraints so that he not only lives for his own carnal desires but that he does so with continual greediness or with a continual lust and hunger for more debauchery.  However, this self-centered, hedonistic life is ultimately deceitful (cf. v. 22) and vain becomes it promises happiness, pleasure, and fulfillment when in the end it only brings death and destruction.  Paul says "the wages of sin is death."

In v. 5 Paul reminds you that the unbeliever has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.  Notice that Paul doesn't limit this to the future only.  The unbeliever presently "has" no inheritance in the kingdom.  Again, in v. 6 Paul says that the wrath of God comes upon these sons of disobedience for this very self-centered lifestyle ("these things"). 

When a man is so darkened by sin and blinded by the continual, but never satisfying desire to fulfill the lusts of his flesh, how can he possibly turn from that vicious, fatal cycle of death and destruction?  He has to be made alive or what we call in theology "regenerated" (cf. 2:4-6).  This is not something he can do for himself but something that must be done to/for him.  The man outside of Christ is so helpless that even the very instrument that God uses to give salvation to him must also be given as a free gift (2:8; cf. 4:20 with 2:4). 

Light has now shined in the darkness and our minds are being renewed and transformed by God's grace so that we now have the mind of Christ (5:8; 1 Cor. 2:14-16; we are no longer "outsiders," 2:19-22).  This is why Paul can now speak of our new walk in Christ as being consistent to the life of Christ (4:1-3).  Through union with Christ and empowered by his Spirit we no longer live according to our own self-centered desires (for ourselves) but we are enabled to live sacrificially for others to do those good works which have been prepared beforehand by God so that we might walk in them (2:10).  Because the old clothing of the old man, Adam, has been removed, with its works of the flesh, and we have now been re-clothed with the new man, Christ, whose works are righteousness, holiness, and truth, we are now enabled to walk in a life that is consistent to the life of Christ (cf. 5:1-2).  Paul has already begun to describe how this looks (4:25-5:2) as we relate to one another as fellow members in the body of Christ (4:4-6, 13, 15-16, 25).  He will also have much more to say in how we live out our union with Christ in our many different relationships in the body of Christ.  But before he turns to further describe how our new life is to be lived as we walk in the Spirit, he gives us one more exhortation to walk faithfully in Christ (4:1; 5:8-9).

Paul realizes what even nature tells us is true.  Bad morals corrupt good behavior.  Those who live their life in a manner that is radically inconsistent to our new life in Christ will have an affect upon us if we wallow in their lifestyle.  As my mother used to say, "If you lie down with the pigs you will get up smelling like them."  Therefore, Paul reminds us how we are to relate to those who not only live in the world but live their lives in a manner that is consistent with the world.  Paul had to remind the Corinthians:

Do not be bound together with unbelievers; for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness? 15 Or what harmony has Christ with Belial, or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever? 16 Or what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God (2 Cor. 6:14-16).

In v. 7, Paul tells us not to be "partakers" with unbelievers.  Paul uses that word "partakers" to speak of that very intimate fellowship or relationship that we should have uniquely only with other fellow believers, whether they are our spouses or close friends, because these relationships are ultimately eternal.  However, our relationship to unbelievers is only temporal and will end with the passing away of this present age and therefore is never to be one of such close intimacy to the degree that their lifestyle begins to be the pattern for ours.  (Very important to teach our children this lesson!).  Our relationship to unbelievers is always the one described by Paul in 2 Tim. 2:10:

For this reason I endure all things for the sake of those who are chosen, that they also may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus and with it eternal glory.

Or 1 Corinthians 9:19-23:

For though I am free from all men, I have made myself a slave to all, that I might win the more. 20 And to the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might win Jews; to those who are under the Law, as under the Law, though not being myself under the Law, that I might win those who are under the Law; 21 to those who are without law, as without law, though not being without the law of God but under the law of Christ, that I might win those who are without law. 22 To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak; I have become all things to all men, that I may by all means save some. 23 And I do all things for the sake of the gospel, that I may become a fellow partaker of it.

Paul will have more to say about this in vv. 11-14.

But Paul says that not only should be refrain from being "partakers" with unbelievers, we should even be more careful not even to making their awful lifestyle a subject of conversation.  In v. 3 Paul says that it is shameful to even speak of the things that unbelievers do in darkness, those things done in secret (v. 12).  In v. 4, Paul further explains how such things are often mentioned, each having to do with speech:  filthiness or speaking in and about obscenities, and silly, foolish talk or vulgarity and finally, coarse joking, or degrading jesting.  All of these speak of what we might normally describe as "bathroom humor."  Why should we as Christians, as saints of Light refrain from even talking about such behavior?  Is it just old-fashioned "Victorian" or "Puritanical" customs that we are trying to preserve?  Are we afraid that if we "even speak" about such that we are contributing to an already fallen culture?  No!  The reason Paul gives for this is because we are a different people (v. 8). 

The Apostle John tells us that "God is light and in Him there is no darkness at all" (1 John 1:5) and that Jesus came into the world as the Light of men:

All things came into being by Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.  In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.  And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it . . . He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him (John 1:2-5, 10-11).

Paul told the Colossians that Jesus has now:

qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.  For He delivered us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins (Col. 1:12-14).

Because we have now been clothed in the Light of Christ, we are now enabled by God to live or walk as children of Light or to produce the fruit of the Light (or what Paul calls elsewhere the "fruit of the Spirit"), which is goodness, righteousness, and truth (vv. 8-9).  We are to become what we already are in Christ.  Now because our life has been and is being transformed into the life of Christ the focus of our entire life is now redirected from wanting to fulfill our own self-centered, fleshly desires to now living our whole life in thanksgiving to God (v. 4).  The whole life of the Christian is one of gratitude to God from whom all blessings flow.  Paul told the Colossians:

And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body; and be thankful. Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father (Col. 3:15-17).

But does this mean that as believers we will never fall back into the kinds of horrible sins that Paul has been describing in chaps. 4-5?  No.  Even our Confession states:

Nevertheless, they may, through the temptations of Satan and of the world, the prevalency of corruption remaining in them, and the neglect of the means of their preservation, fall into grievous sins; and, for a time, continue therein: whereby they incur God's displeasure, and grieve his Holy Spirit, come to be deprived of some measure of their graces and comforts, have their hearts hardened, and their consciences wounded; hurt and scandalize others, and bring temporal judgments upon themselves (WCF 17:3).

But Paul is not speaking in vv. 5-6 of believers who may from time to time fall into such sins.  Rather, as one commentator states, Paul is speaking of:

those who have given themselves over to immorality, impurity, and greed . . .  [and] who has given himself or herself up without shame or repentance to this way of life . . . not to those who commit the occasional act of disobedience but to men and women whose lives are characterized by disobedience.  They do not submit to God's authority; instead, they prefer to rule their own lives and go their own way (O'Brien, 363, 365).

But note that even though Paul sees us as being raised in Christ to sit with him in the heavenlies, he is also solemnly realistic about the trials and temptations of this life.  That's why he not only tells us to refrain from being partakers of unbelievers but he even reminds us of their ultimate end, which ultimately proves futile and is deceitful.  By showing us that the life of the unbeliever is in the end "deceitful," because though it promises a life of pleasure and happiness it only ends in death, then Paul wants to motivate us to not even want to participate in their deeds knowing where that life ends.  

Rather than be partakers of unbelievers so that their lifestyle might become our own, Paul says that as the children of the Light of the Lord we should expose them (v. 11, 13).  It's interesting how Paul says that.  What Paul is most likely saying here is that by "living" or "walking" as children of Light, by the very nature of our living out our radically new and different life in Christ that we "expose" or shine the Light of the Lord upon these unbelievers.  Jesus told us:

You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 “Nor do men light a lamp, and put it under the peck-measure, but on the lampstand; and it gives light to all who are in the house. 16 “Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven (Matt. 5:14-16).

Note the evangelistic tone of the call to Christ in v. 14.  Many scholars believe this is an early baptismal hymn which would have been sung to celebrate the glorious deliverance of those who had been translated out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of Christ at their baptisms.  Not only are the believers to remember what God has gloriously done in their own life, but as Paul says, they are now to become all things to all men that by all means they might save some. 

It is always our prayer that as we continually die to that old man and put away the deeds of the flesh and now by God's grace we walk in the Spirit to produce the fruit of the Spirit that the light of our new life in Christ will shine brightly before all men so that they may see our good works and glorify our heavenly Father who is in heaven by "awaking from their sleep and arising from death that Christ might shine upon us all."

Amen!

-SDG-