Eph 5:7–9 — You Are Light in the Lord

Ephesians 5:3-14 deals with the theme of moral purity and sanctity. In this paragraph, Paul exhorts us to live as God’s holy people who have been set apart in Christ from our former life of impurity and sin. The flow of Paul’s argument can be subdivided into three stages:

verses 3-4 are the thesis statement, where Paul lists off the sins that must not be named among the saints. Sins such as sexual immorality, impurity, greed, filthy talk, and coarse jesting have no place in the church. Such behaviors are not fitting for saints who have been redeemed, cleansed from sin by Christ’s blood, and set apart as holy unto the Lord. The rest of the paragraph, verses 5-14, sets forth a twofold motive, both positive and negative, to live as God’s holy people.

In verses 5-6 Paul gives the negative motive. We must avoid immorality because God’s eschatological wrath is coming upon all immoral and impure and greedy persons. No one who persists in unrepentant immorality or impurity or insatiable greed has an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ. Anyone who professes the name of Christ and refuses to repent of these sins, is demonstrating that in reality he is an idolater, for he is worshipping and serving his own lusts and desires rather than God. This is a solemn warning to those in the visible church who profess the name of Christ but who manifest their unbelief by such blatant immorality. Therefore, the first motive is a negative one, based on the solemn warning that immoral persons have no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ.

In verses 7-14 Paul gives the positive motive. Believers must not be partakers with the unbelieving pagan world in these sins, because we were formerly darkness but now we are light in the Lord. Our lives should be characterized by the light of Christ’s resurrection life, not by the shameful immorality and impurity. Don’t get involved in the unfruitful deeds of darkness. Instead, bring forth the fruit of the light. Walk as children of light. And in so doing expose the shameful deeds that the Gentiles do in secret. Let the light of Christ shine through you.

The essence of the motivation to not be partakers with unbelievers in their sins is the dramatic transfer that we have experienced in Christ from our former way of life in sin to our new life in Christ. It is not merely that we should not live the way we once did, but that we simply cannot. Such sinful behavior would contradict the reality of the decisive change that has occurred in Christ’s death and resurrection.

In verse 8, Paul makes a most profound statement that I want to dwell on this morning. [Read verse 8]

Paul’s “formerly, but now” language must be carefully understood. On the one hand, it is easy to make the mistake of assuming that Paul is talking exclusively about our conversion. Before we became Christians, we used to live in sin and rebellion against God. But when we were born again by sovereign grace and committed our lives to Christ, then our lives changed dramatically.

Now this interpretation is contains a measure of truth. The personal transformation of the individual sinner saved by grace is certainly involved in the “formerly, but now” contrast. However, to exclusively focus on the subjective experience of conversion would be to miss the redemptive historical character of what is really going on here. This is made clear when you notice the key phrase “in the Lord” in verse 8. The transition from darkness to light is not first and foremost a subjective change in my own heart and life, but an objective, historical transition that occurred “in the Lord.” It was at the bodily resurrection of Jesus from the grave that the darkness passed away, the light of the new creation dawned. The fact that the literal, historical event of Christ’s resurrection is in view here is made clear by noting the conclusion of Paul’s argument in verse 14 (read). Compare also the parallel text in Ephesians 2, where Paul said we were formerly dead in trespasses and sins, but now we have been raised up with Christ.

It is through our union with Christ in his resurrection that we have experienced this radical transition from darkness to light. We must begin with the objective historical experience of Christ. Only then can we move on to speak of the subjective experience of the believer united to Christ at conversion.

I have often spoken to you about the already and the not-yet, the overlap of the two ages. [Bulletin: explain the two age diagram.]

The age to come is not totally future. It is a present reality, and one that we participate in through our union with Christ.

Colossians 3:1-5.

It is essential for us to understand the NT perspective on eschatology. The reason is that the already/not-yet perspective provides the only proper context or motive for godly living in this present age. Notice that the already/not-yet point of view forms the backdrop of Paul’s exhortation here in the text before us.

The wrath of God is coming upon the sons of disobedience. This implies that the wrath of God is not coming upon us. It has already come upon us, for we have already experienced the full extent of God’s wrath when we died with Christ. We have already suffered an equivalent of an eternity in hell. The wrath of God is not coming upon us. We are not sons of disobedience. We are children of light. The darkness is already passing away. The true light is already shining. The divine light and eternal glory of the age to come dawned on the day when Jesus rose again from the dead on the first day of the week.

So the exhortation to not be partakers with unbelievers in their sinful lifestyle is grounded in an appeal, not to our own subjective conversion experience, but in an appeal to the objective transition that occurred in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead on the first day of the week 2000 years ago.

Why? Because my own subjective conversion experience is too frail of a basis for sanctification. My personal experience of God’s grace rises and falls from day to day, and week to week. One week I may be experiencing the joy of the Holy Spirit, walking in the full assurance of my salvation in Jesus Christ, knowing that I am a child of God and an heir of heaven. The following week, the darkness falls. I no longer feel right with God. I have no desire to pray and read the Bible. I am depressed, whether because of unconfessed sin, or because things aren’t going well in my life, or maybe because of a chemical imbalance in the brain.

Thanks be to God that in the midst of all this, my union with Christ does not change one iota. Nothing can snatch me out of his hand. Neither death, nor life, nor things present, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate me from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Even when I feel like all is darkness, yet even then I am light in the Lord. My life is hidden with Christ in God.

What a difference this makes! It provides an objective basis for Paul’s exhortation to not be a partaker with unbelievers. The shifting sand of my experience doesn’t make it clear or obvious that I must not participate in the sins of unbelievers. But the resurrection of Jesus, the decisive intrusion of the age to come, the transition from darkness of the grave to the light of resurrection life - that is a clear reason why we simply cannot continue in the sins of darkness. Since we are no longer darkness, but are now light in the Lord, let us walk as children of light.

Notice that Paul does not say that we once lived in the realm of darkness and have now been ushered into the realm of God’s light. That would be true, but not sufficient. Paul wants to get at something more fundamental. Instead, he says, we once were darkness but now we are light in the Lord. The issue is not merely the environment of light in which we now live, but the judicial fact of our new identity in Christ.

This is explained further in vv. 13-14. Christ himself is the light. He is the one of whom we read in the gospel of John:

“In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. He was the true Light which, coming into the world, enlightens every man … I am the Light of the world; he who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life.”

So Paul here quotes from Isaiah 60:1-2, which he interprets as an oracle concerning the coming of the Messiah. The coming of Christ will be the coming of the light and glory of God, rising upon us to illumine our darkness:

“Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD has risen upon you. For behold, darkness will cover the earth and deep darkness the peoples; but the LORD will rise upon you, and His glory will appear upon you.”

Thus, Jesus Christ himself is the light that Paul is referring to, when he makes the judicial declaration: “you are light in the Lord.” You are light, not because of your good works. You are light because you are united to the light, to Jesus Christ himself. It is an indicative statement, a statement of sheer, objective fact in Christ. It is true of you because it is true of Christ.

And this mighty indicative is followed up immediately by the imperative: “Therefore, walk as children of the light.” Be who you are. If you are indeed light in the Lord, if you have indeed passed from darkness to light, from the present evil age to the age to come, then let this fact work itself out in your day to day behavior. Your head in is heaven. But your feet are still on earth. Let your feet walk in accordance with that heavenly state that is yours in Christ.

Awake, sleeper! And rise from the dead! And Christ will shine his light upon you. Are you allowing the weariness of your daily life to get you down? Awake! Have you given up the fight against sin? Awake! Are you depressed because your life isn’t going the way you had planned? Awake! Awake to the reality of who you really are in Christ. Wake up from the slumber of this present age. Christ has shone his blazing light and glory upon you. You are no longer groping around in the darkness like the Gentiles who do not know God. You have become light in the Lord. You have been catapulted into life and light of the new creation. Therefore, walk as children of light.