Children of Light

Among the many superlative offerings to the Christian faith the late Dr. R.C. Sproul authored there was a set of children’s books meant to teach the principles of the Gospel to children in simple allegories that they can grasp. One of these books is The Lightlings. The premise of the story is that the King of Light creates the lightlings to inhabit His garden of light. Not only was the garden full of light, but the lightlings reflected the light of the King. But the lightlings weren’t content to live the way the King of Light asked them to live and decided to do what they wanted instead. When they did this, the light in the garden and in them faded. Ashamed of what they had done, the lightlings fled the garden into the woods and the darkness - and there they lived in deeper and deeper darkness until they couldn’t tell the difference between day and night. And every lightling that was born continued to live in this condition.

Now that’s not where the story ends, but for our purposes this morning it is where I’m going to stop at least for now. This allegorical tale fits very well into the passage we’re going to be examining this morning - a passage that is a mere eighteen words long but literally drips with theological significance. My goal this morning is to wring this passage out, to expose for our eyes the richness of what it teaches and to magnify the God that is at the center of these great truths. Please join with me as we dive in and plumb the depths of this passage. We’ll be reading from Ephesians 5:6-14 but we will focus in on Ephesians 5:8 alone. Please follow along in your Bibles as I set this great verse in its context.

Ephesians 5:6–14 CSB

Let no one deceive you with empty arguments, for God’s wrath is coming on the disobedient because of these things. Therefore, do not become their partners. For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light— for the fruit of the light consists of all goodness, righteousness, and truth— testing what is pleasing to the Lord. Don’t participate in the fruitless works of darkness, but instead expose them. For it is shameful even to mention what is done by them in secret. Everything exposed by the light is made visible, for what makes everything visible is light. Therefore it is said: Get up, sleeper, and rise up from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.

Paul is going to continue to challenge the Ephesian believers to deepen their walk with Christ in this passage. You will recall that the word walk has played a significant role throughout Ephesians as Paul has been teaching the Ephesians the implications of their new life in Christ. Earlier in chapter 5 Paul tells the Ephesians to walk in love and now here in this passage this morning he will add to that charge, telling them to walk as children of light. Before he gets to that point though Paul delivers the Gospel in a succinct, pithy statement. In so doing he reveals the total depravity of man, the redemption provided through Jesus Christ, the monergistic nature of salvation and the work of sanctification.

Paul begins this next section with two indicative statements that reveal to the Ephesians what they were and what they are and then an imperative that tells them what they must do. This is something we would do well to learn from Paul - we have a wonderfully bad habit of simply telling people what they must do rather than revealing to them either what they are or why they must do what it is that we think they must do. In so doing we aim more for behavioral modification - moral behavior - rather than true heart change. This is the only kind of change that will have any lasting significance or impact on the person’s life and it should be the aim of our teaching. Paul is going to set up a contrast between what the Ephesians were and what they now are and in the process is going to reveal our true original natures, our new condition and finally the mission that we are to fulfill.

Our Origination

In 2017 country singer Luke Bryan released the song “Most People Are Good”. The song ascended the charts of Billboards Country songs and eventually sat at number one in 2018. The song says “I believe most people are good; and most mama’s oughta qualify for sainthood, I believe most Friday nights look better under neon or stadium lights; I believe you love who you love ain’t nothing you should be ashamed of; I believe this world ain’t half as bad as it looks, I believe most people are good.”

In 2021 Psychology Today released an article entitled Are Human’s Naturally Good, or Intrinsically Evil? The article concludes that “humans may be inherently good but we have assembled a horrifyingly long rap sheet over the past five thousand years, and it is not getting any shorter.”

Of course you might say - that’s just the world. But is it? Do we really believe that people are inherently bad, inherently evil or is it just that we do bad things? Deep down if we’re honest with ourselves many of us would whole heartedly affirm that we are born in darkness and that when Christ saves us that we are brought out of that darkness into the light. But in most respects people are good people who just make bad decisions. Until this last week many of us would probably have said something to that effect about Will Smith. Then he walked up on stage and slapped Chris Rock. And you could even excuse that and say that proves our point - he’s a good person and he just made a bad decision. Who are we to judge?

We might even be willing to qualify his actions. He’s under a lot of stress. We are very good at explaining things for people. We live in a society that has embraced the crutch of victimhood and uses it to explain away any manner of bad behaviors. We list sexual abuse, physical abuse, in-utero drug exposure, your parents didn’t hug you enough, you’re the wrong skin color, you’re the right skin color, you’re the wrong gender - we have all kinds of excuses for people’s behavior to the point where they are not responsible for the decisions that they made because they are the outworking of some event in their life.

But now here comes Paul and he takes all of our qualifying and all of our opinions of man’s inherent goodness and throws them aside. Look at what he writes here - for. He writes this to show that he is going to continue the discussion that he has just started regarding Christians not being deceived by empty words, that we shouldn’t be swayed by the cunning ideas of the world because there is really nothing to them. That as Christians we should be convinced of something higher and keeping our eyes on that not be deluded into thinking that actions don’t matter. That we will be okay, that God will save all of us in the end. We shouldn’t give in to a Love Wins sort of idea that is basically fundamental universalism - that everyone is going to get to Heaven in the end so our behaviors in this life don’t ultimately matter.

And his next statement is the really controversial one. He writes for you were once darkness. Um, wait a minute Paul - don’t you mean that we were once in darkness. Or that we were once under the power of darkness? Surely you can’t possibly mean that we were darkness. This is a typo Paul - you can’t say this to people. They’ll never believe it and no one’s going to get saved that way. Remember God loves the sinner and hates the sin - calling people darkness doesn’t really fit that. And Paul would respond - no it doesn’t. Paul is reminding us that we aren’t sinners because we sin, we sin because we are sinners by nature. He is laying out the doctrine here of total depravity.

The idea of total depravity is this - that mankind is completely corrupted as a result of the influence of sin in our lives. It does not mean that we are as bad as we could be but rather that sin has affected every aspect of our being - the body, the soul, the mind, the will, etc. It is the concept that there is no part of the human that is good at all. In his book “What is Reformed Theology” R.C. Sproul describes total depravity as radical corruption writing “to say that mankind is radically corrupt is to say that sin penetrates to the root or core of our being.” There is no separation between the man and sin because it is intrinsically mixed into our nature.

Writing to the Roman church Paul would describe the human condition this way Romans 3:10-18 “as it is written: There is no one righteous, not even one. There is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. All have turned away; all alike have become worthless. There is no one who does what is good, not even one. Their throat is an open grave; they deceive with their tongues. Vipers’ venom is under their lips. Their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and wretchedness are in their paths, and the path of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

As a result of Adam’s fall sin became a part of the nature of man such that David could write in Psalm 51:5 “Indeed, I was guilty when I was born; I was sinful when my mother conceived me.” There is nothing good in us at birth. We are not corrupted after birth but are born with a sinful nature. It is a good thing that babies are born small, helpless and cute because if they weren’t they would certainly be trying to fight or kill us. Voddie Baucham got in trouble for this - and it was a joke - but he called babies “vipers in diapers” and he is right. Let me ask you this - those of you who are parents - how many of you ever taught your children to hit? I was thinking about this yesterday - it is an indicator of the existence of sin in each of us from birth that we have to teach children to hug but we don’t have to teach them to hit. That happens naturally whenever they don’t get their way. If they could they would kill you and hang you on their walls like a trophy. “How’d you take that one?” “Oh he was surprisingly easy that one. Got him from 300 cm away. He never even knew I was there, he was on his cell phone the whole time.”

Paul says we were darkness. That everything that comes out of us in a pre-conversion state is tainted by darkness. I made the statement last week that there is only one race and I stand by that biologically. Spiritually though there are two races in God’s economy - the saved and the unsaved. We are either completely dark or completely light.

This is the danger for kids that grow up in the church - they often don’t have a concept of how bad they really are. They are - most of them anyway - are good moral kids that follow most of what their parents tell them and don’t really commit those “big” sins and so for some of you the concept that you were actually darkness and not simply in darkness is shocking. But in a pre-converted state we are darkness. We are the personification of darkness.

Jesus, speaking to His disciples, described the human heart this way Mark 7:20-23 “And he said, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of people’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immoralities, thefts, murders, adulteries, greed, evil actions, deceit, self-indulgence, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness. All these evil things come from within and defile a person.”” This is what comes out of the darkened heart of mankind.

Charles Spurgeon commenting on the depravity of man said

2,200 Quotations from the Writings of Charles H. Spurgeon: Arranged Topically or Textually and Indexed by Subject, Scripture, and People (Depravity)

311You may walk over a grassy hill and think yourself perfectly secure. Yet underneath there may be a slumbering volcano, liable to break out at any moment. By the Word of God we are faithfully warned that there, is a sink of iniquity within our soul—a black and foul spring—a foul generator of everything that is evil in the very fountain of our nature.

Paul will tell the Ephesian believers later in this same passage, we read it just a few minutes ago, don’t participate in the fruitless works of darkness and you may say - see Chris, that proves the point. Paul is telling them that there really is something good in them and that it is really simply the fruits of darkness that cause the rift between them and Christ. And I would say - no. Paul didn’t misspeak when he called them darkness and said that they were once darkness. In the intervening sentences Paul is going to illumine them as to how it is that they can be rescued from their darkened state.

Our Condition

He says but now you are light in the Lord. Paul writes but now and in six letters wraps in the whole doctrines of justification and regeneration. He says you were this, you were darkness but now you are that - you are light. You cannot come to Christ and not have a fundamental, complete change of nature. Yes you may still sin but the pleasure you once derived from it will be gone. And even some of the sins that you once excelled in, that you were once well known for will be gone.

Notice here that Paul doesn’t really care about the process - he doesn’t say that in one brilliant moment nor does he say that by slow process you became - he is only interested in the fact that it does happen. You were, you are. There is no debate that a change has taken place. You were this, you are that. You were darkness, you are light. You were the old man, you are a new creation. You were dead in your sins, you are alive in Christ.

I quoted this a few weeks ago but Dr. Steven Lawson recently said this “If you claim to know Christ and He has not changed you life, you can be assured that you have never met the risen, enthroned Christ.”

If you can say that you have met Christ and still think that you can live an ungodly lifestyle, that you can claim to be in the light and yet still live in the dark, this passage this morning would tell you that you are wrong.

Paul tells us that something has changed. That we are no longer darkness but that we have been regenerated through the shed blood of Christ into something new. There first has to be justification. In our previous state existing as darkness we existed under the condemnation and just wrath of God. We were completely incapable of changing our status with Him - in fact we didn’t want to change our status. We were comfortable, we were happy to live dark. And yet God humbled Himself to take the very skin of man to take the very form of man in order to save him. The light came to the darkness and the darkness knew it not. John 1:11 “He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.” Despite its best efforts, the darkness could not overcome the light - John 1:5 “That light shines in the darkness, and yet the darkness did not overcome it.”

This happened at the perfect time - Galatians 4:4 “When the time came to completion, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law,” - so that all would take place in accordance to the plan of God the Father. Christ died on the cross and then rose from the dead defeating death and sin - defeating the darkness and passing His victory on to all those who He had chosen before the foundation of the world to receive forgiveness and salvation through Him. But regeneration also has to take place. We have to be made awakened from our spiritually dead state by the work of the Holy Spirit to receive the forgiveness that is offered to us. This cannot happen of our own volition. To quote Martin Luther in “The Bondage of the Will” “Nobody who has not the Spirit of God sees a jot of what is in the Scriptures. All men have their hearts darkened, so that, even when they can discuss and quote all that is in the Scriptures, they do not understand or really know any of it. They do not believe God, nor do they believe that they are God’s creatures, nor anything else - {for} “The fool has said in his heart, there is no God”…the Spirit is needed for understanding all of Scripture and every part of Scripture.”

So yes, faith comes by hearing but hearing comes by the Word of God and understanding comes by the Spirit of God. This salvation that is offered to man is not a work done of his own volition that any man could boast, but rather is the sole work of God alone. Notice what Paul writes here - but now you are light in the Lord. We are not simply light on our own as if someone had flipped a switch within us and the lights flew on. We are not like so many rooms around our buildings where a switch can be thrown and the lights come on. No - our very position has to be changed, our very nature as I have already said has to be altered until we are no longer what we were but we are something new. Writing to the churches of Colossae Paul would write this Colossians 1:13-14 “He has rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son he loves. In him we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” We have been rescued from our darkened condition and transferred into the Lord and into His light. Make no mistake though - if it were possible for us to be removed from within Him we would not remain in the light but would rather immediately revert back to our previous condition of darkness. Oh praise God that true salvation cannot be lost.

Instead of telling the Ephesians what they are to do in relation to their new status in Christ, here Paul is simply telling them what they are. That they are light. The implications of this new station will come in the next phrase but here he simply desires to inform them and maybe remind them of the glory of their new life. He has been rather practical for the last several moments of this letter - all the way back to the beginning of what is in our Bibles chapter 4 where he begins this very practical portion of the letter writing Ephesians 4:1 “Therefore I, the prisoner in the Lord, urge you to walk worthy of the calling you have received,” and continues on until now. But here, as he highlights why the Ephesians are not to be swayed by the futile thinking of the world, he reminds them of the grand theological heights that he took them to in the earlier portions of the letter as he says you were darkness but now you are light. That is a statement that we would do well just to meditate on in our own lives. That when things seem dark and it seems like nothing is different in our lives - if we have truly repented and put our faith in Christ that we are light in the Lord.

That change has and is continuing to take place. But of course we cannot simply remain in that meditative state, we must get up and do something.

Our Mission

Paul continues his challenge to the Ephesians to walk as children of the light. The challenge embodied in this statement is two fold. The first aspect of it is a challenge to continued maturity and growth in Christ - a process called sanctification. It is interesting the metaphors that Paul and the other writers of the Bible chose to use when describing the life of a believer - there is only one positive reference to the infant believer. In Hebrews 5:12-13 “Although by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the basic principles of God’s revelation again. You need milk, not solid food. Now everyone who lives on milk is inexperienced with the message about righteousness, because he is an infant.” and in 1 Corinthians 3:2 “I gave you milk to drink, not solid food, since you were not yet ready for it. In fact, you are still not ready,” the references to milk for the believer refer to the immaturity. Only in 1 Peter 2:2 “Like newborn infants, desire the pure milk of the word, so that by it you may grow up into your salvation,” but even here it is used as a charge to grow up into your salvation.

The work of sanctification is one that lays side by side the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man. We are, of our own power incapable of spiritual growth, but we are told throughout Scripture to be a participant in our own spiritual growth. Paul writes to the church in Philippi Philippians 2:12-13 “Therefore, my dear friends, just as you have always obeyed, so now, not only in my presence but even more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God who is working in you both to will and to work according to his good purpose.” It is God who does the work but we are to work out our own salvation in His power. We are to be actively working. Walk here is both in the present and active tenses of the verb - meaning the activity described is currently going on and it is being performed by the subject of the statement - in this case believers of all time. If we are not seeking to grow in our faith and Christian life then we are dying. There are no other options.

Our sanctification is one of the avenues which God chooses to work through to draw other men to Him. As we are grown more into His likeness men can’t help but notice the change within and are compelled to ask - what’s so different about you? You can face anything - you get a diagnosis and your world doesn’t collapse. You lose your job and your world doesn’t cave in. You miss out on a promotion and you’re smiling. You get a promotion and you’re smiling. What is it that’s so different about you?

We have a new nature that can’t be hidden. That’s why Christ uses the illustration of a city on a hill to describe how Christians are to be in the world. We are not supposed to be mum about our faith - like one certain nominee for a certain public position recently said that she was uncomfortable talking about her faith and that each person needs to make up their own minds…no that’s called universalism. The idea that my faith is good for me and its a private thing is completely foreign to the idea of walking as a child of light. I once read a fantasy series where there was a group of characters known as the children of the light. Now they weren’t any sort of example of what Christians should be except in one way - everywhere they went everyone knew who they were because they stuck out. In the books it was the pristine white tunics they wore - in the world we live in it should be our behaviors and attitudes that set us apart.

Charles Spurgeon said this

“Do you know what Bible the wicked and worldly man reads? He does not read the Bible at all. He reads the Christian. “There” says he, “that man goes to church, and he is a member; I will see how he lives, I will read him up and down,” and he watches him and reads his conduct. “If he is bad,” he says, “religion is a farce” but if he is a man who lives up to it, he says “There is something in religion after all.” Wicked men do not read the Bible; they read Christians; they read professors and members.”

May we be true professors and true members of Christ as children of the light, walking in a manner worthy of His calling and living in the light of the Lord. You see even the lightlings in RC Sproul’s story return to the King of Light. At one point in the story a light appears in the distance and a group of them go to see what it is. It turns out to be a child that has been born - the Son of the King of Light. Those who interact with Him begin to reflect His light and go back to share it with the others. They stand out because they are shining where the others aren’t. They have had an encounter with the King of Light and it can’t be hidden. If you’ve had a true encounter with Christ - you cannot hide it. If you are a child of light then it will be reflected in your life.

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