The Fruit of Light
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Introduction
Introduction
We are back in our series today on the book of Ephesians. Paul’s letter is all about reframing the activity of the church around our identity as a united people under the reign of Jesus and as citizens of the kingdom of heaven. This is an important theological truth that I need you to see here, that heaven and earth in the Bible are not these separate physical realities (up there, down here), but spiritual kingdoms. And God created heaven and earth to be both under his rule; but the first humans revolted and rebelled against their king, because they wanted to rule for themselves. And that rebellion fractured the kingdom, because God rules by love and grace, not by fear and violence. God’s mission has always been to restore the fractured kingdom, not to punish or destroy it. What that means for you, if you are a believer in Jesus, if you’ve confessed with your mouth and believe with your heart that Jesus is lord, then your citizenship has been transferred to the kingdom of heaven, and you have all the benefits of being a part of that kingdom, and it’s not for later, it’s for now. Paul says in Ephesians 1 that the riches of grace have been poured out on you, and that you have an inheritance of deep and abundant life, and the Holy Spirit acts as a down payment of that inheritance, meaning that inheritance pays out now in you as you filled up with him and you experience the deep joys of God’s kingdom.
But, as a citizen of heaven, the boundaries and laws of what is right and good and beautiful have been reframed. Really, they’ve been restored back to what it was always meant be. AND as a member of God’s kingdom, you have been enlisted into the King’s service, to go and herald the once and for all coming of King Jesus to unite all things under this rule. In Christ, you have a new identity, but you also have a new mission. And that’s the theme I want to explore today.
PRAY
DEFINE MISSIONAL
Core Value: Mature Members Multiply
The Missional Corrective
The Missional Corrective
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.
This is a missional corrective that we need to hear. Before you go out on mission to reach your friends and family and neighbors, you have to be prepared to resist, to encounter without engaging, and to withstand without withdrawing.
What’s Paul saying here? Let no one deceive you with empty arguments. There’s a similar phrase to this “empty arguments” language back in Ephesians 4, where as followers of Christ, we longer live our lives with “futile thoughts“ like the rest of the world does. Our friends and neighbors who do not know Jesus, who are “excluded from the life of God,” are darkened in their understanding (Eph. 4:17-19).
There will be people in your school, or in your workplace, or even in your own home who are turned from God and are fumbling around in the dark. They are ruled by greed (money), idolatry (power), and a broken and twisted version of human intimacy (sex). And because darkness is all they know, they will argue and fight to reason and justify everything that they understand and believe to be true. And you know this because there are times when you have stumbled back into the darkness yourself and succumbed to these powerful forces yourself—this is why I know this to be true. The reality we all face here is that each one of us has at one point or another in our lives have given into the strange comforts of the dark, turned away from the purifying, but also convicting, light of Christ.
But if you know Jesus, and if you are in him, you also know that you can’t turn back anymore. You know how destructive those forces can be to your relationships with others, and even to your very core, because the way of darkness, however we justify and validate and rationalize, is a short-lived happiness. We consume, only to be consumed.
It’s a devil’s deal, and it breaks God’s heart. When we talk about God’s wrath, there is anger, but it’s a different sort of anger. As a dad, I know there are times I get angry with my kids and it’s for stupid and selfish reasons, and I apologize for my kids for being impatient and irritated when I have no right be. But there are times I my “anger” is a particularly parental sort, the kind that takes place when my child sees him or herself as unworthy or unloved, as a devalued person riddled by guilt and shame. I get angry when my child does or says something that twists their identity as loved creations into something merit based, where my love (or anyone’s love) for them requires certain conditions to be met. There is a special kind of wrath housed within moms and dads that is made for righting this kind of wrong.
The wrath of God is this parental sort of anger. It is a hatred of the hurt that sin causes to God’s creation and to his beloved people. And we don’t go back there anymore, we don’t turn back towards the darkness; specifically, Paul says do not partner with it. That word “partner” means to be a joint owner with someone else. This word is actually used only one other time in the New Testament, and it’s just a couple chapters earlier:
Ephesians 3:6 (CSB)
The Gentiles are coheirs, members of the same body, and partners in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.
What Paul is saying here is that you are a joint owner in the promise of Jesus. You share in the good grace of Christ. So don’t renounce that. Don’t partner with darkness anymore. Instead…
The Missional Way
The Missional Way
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.
The missional way is to shine light into the darkness.
Dive a bit deeper into Paul’s words here. You were once darkness—just as you were one dead, just as you were once cut off from life with God—but now you are light. Notice Paul doesn’t say you have light, or you are in light. He says you are the light. The imagery here is like being consumed by something. When you live in darkness, you live as darkness—it’s like you don’t know where the darkness ends and you begin. It’s the same with light. the light consumes you, every part of you, so when you live in light, you live as light, reflecting the source of light on to others. I used to think of it as a mirror, we you reflect light, but it’s more like a window, where light shines through you, and it is as if you are the source of light yourself.
Paul makes it clear though, you are not the source. Jesus is the source (anytime you see that word “Lord,” Paul’s taking about Jesus as King).
Now there’s two things here that make mission possible. Because I feel like so often there are these two tensions when it comes to the Christian walk (i.e. Walking as children of light). It’s the tension of resisting sin and also drawing near to the sinner. Because if I am prone to sin, if I am drawn to darkness, I should not be near “the darkness,” those who are consumed by it, right? This is why Paul is so adamant at the beginning of Ephesians 4 that the body of Christ, the church, is to be built up and matured for ministry. Because without it, you will be swayed by rationalized arguments and empty words. You will be blown and toss about by the wind.
So how do you resist? Do you walk into the dark and hope the darkness doesn’t eat you? Do you just pray and hope you aren’t caught in the snare?
The answer is somewhat surprising, but simple.
1. Walk as children of light: Go about your life fully consumed by the love and life of Jesus pouring into you at all times. You are not a dark creature who knows about the light. You are now light. You are a whole new creature, a new creation, with a new source of life flowing through you.
2. The fruit of light consists of goodness, righteousness, and truth: these are characteristics of God himself. God is good, and every that God creates is good. So when we bear the fruit of goodness, I mean simply walking out life as God intended, to share instead of take, to work instead of steal, to love instead of hate. Goodness is others centered love, promoting and cultivating a life that builds up rather than tears down. God is also righteous, meaning he wants a relationship with you that isn’t self-serving or full of betrayal and heartache. To be righteous is simply to be on good terms with God, to accept his love and grace and live in it every day. And God is truth, meaning everything lines up with him, he is the standard by which we know things to be straight and fair and right. But truth in the Bible also means faithful, you can count on him, you can rely on him, that he will never fail. Those fruits are borne in the children of light. Watch what Paul says here carefully: the fruit of light is goodness, righteousness, truth. You are the light. So what grows in you and through you, what you produce in the world, is goodness, righteousness, truth. You resist darkness by producing the fruit of light.
3. Test what is pleasing to the Lord: all this means is that as we go, as we live out our lives, we consider our words and our actions. Do they produce goodness, righteous, and truth? If not, go back to the source of life. Spend more time with Jesus. Read your Bible not as a self-help manual of do’s and do not’s but as God speaking to you, getting to know you, diving deeper into your soul. Immerse yourself in the truths of God. Know him and know his life. Spend time with the community of saints. Be encouraged and built up. Let others consider your actions and give you counsel and encouragement. Then go out and start living. If the fruit you bear is the fruit of light, guess what? Darkness has no hold over you. You are a child of the light.
This is the missional way. We reach our world when we walk as light. That’s the corrective, that’s the way, but, what is the heart of the mission?
The Missional Heart
The Missional Heart
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.
The missional heart is to transform darkness with the fruit of light.
This is important, and before you go out on mission, I need you to get this point. I’ve felt at times that as a church, we promote a shallow discipleship, a cheap grace, and then we require and mandate evangelism and outreach. And what takes place is something other than what Jesus intended when he sent you out to go and make disciples. So follow along carefully.
Don’t participate in the fruitless works of darkness, but instead expose them. The light bears fruit like goodness, righteousness, truth, but darkness is fruitless, futile, empty. It’s like plants; without the sun, they don’t grow and they don’t produce or multiply. Plants that are cut off from light die. So how do they live? They get exposed to the light!
Now, we have taken this word ”expose” and twisted into something else. Often the idea of exposing something or something is the form of public denouncing. We protest sin, in whatever form we hate and to the degree that we hate it. Somehow we have taken upon ourselves the responsibility of pointing out the failings of others, indulging in criticism of the moral failings of family members or neighbors. And then we flatter ourselves that we are exposing the deeds of darkness.
That’s not the exposing we are called to. When you set up to publicly and self-righteously denounce the sins of others, you are not a window, you are a magnifying glass. And instead of giving the withering plant life, you set it on fire.
There’s a reason why Paul says it is shameful even to mention what is done by them (meaning children of disobedience, people of darkness) in secret. The word for “shameful” here is the same word in in chapter 5 verse 4 that is translated “obscenity.” Think about that for a moment. Paul says right before this that obscene talking does not fit into the life of a Jesus follower. And it’s not because the words themselves are inherently shameful, but our verbal protests are arguments serve to tear down rather than build up, to destroy rather than to give life, to multiply shame instead of removing it.
The church does not multiply when it works to cultivate shame and fruitless arguments. It multiplies when it cultivates goodness and fruitful lives that radiate out and touch others with life.
See, there is a redemptive aspect to our exposing. What Paul says here is almost mind-blowing to me, and I hope I get this across to you. Remember how I said that our we bear the fruit of light within us? That‘s the light of Christ shining on a withered and dying plant that restores it to life and causes fruit to bear once again.
Now, when Paul says to test what is pleasing, to consider the fruit that is being born, it is not a fruit that is in you. You are not the plant. You are the light. You testify to the light of Christ that consumes you and empowers you to walk as light. You walk in light, you bear the fruit of light, but you also work to produce in others the fruit of life.
So what if we are to expose deeds of darkness, not so much by denouncing them as by letting the light of God shine in and through us, by announcing the good news of God’s grace in Christ and by living in such a way that this good news shines forth. The fruit of the light, after all, is found in all goodness, righteousness and truth. We are to live in such a way that deeds of darkness are seen to be fruitless in comparison to the abundant fruit of light that grows in our lives.
We bear witness to the gospel, to God’s grace in Christ, to the story of God that ends with God putting all things back together in Christ.
PRAY