Walk as children of Light, Eph, 5:6-10

Good morning. We're privileged this morning to be able to study through God's Word. And in Ephesians chapter 5, 6-10, we're continuing on through this section of Scripture that deals with application. And one of the things we've noted as we go through is that it doesn't mean he's leaving addressing our position in Christ, because he continues to remind us of it, but that he applies it then to truths are to be lived out day by day. All right, let's take a look at it here. As we have done in the past, we're going to divide it up into two sections in order to kind of give us some room for some notes and to look at it systematically.

Before we do that, I want to draw out something here. And if you're joining us here today for the first time, I just want to point out this is the page number on your handout, so you can track with us. If there's no page number, it's not in your handout. Write fast. OK.

We want to point out that as we have begun in this section, we began in chapter 4, where Paul begins giving some imperatives, things that are a must, things that are a logical conclusion, the sole logical conclusion that come out of our position in Christ.

He does that three times in this passage. The first two are negative imperatives. That is, they're imperatives connected with a negative. You must not or do not. and the last one is an imperative, then positively you must walk. We'll note that in more detail as we go through. Note also one other thing, and the first half is kind of a warning. The first half is a caution.

This is what is not to take place in your life because of who you are in Christ. The second half is an urging. is saying, because of that, this is what should take place. This is what is the only logical conclusion that can take place because of who you are. This is the only way that the life of Christ is displayed in the believer.

The key to the passage here is this. Paul is making a stark difference between the believer and the unbeliever. There's a day and night or night and day difference between an unbeliever and a believer. That's the core. That's what he's spelling out. So the first half is going to be the night. The second half will be the day. Now, one of the other things that he wants to make clear is there's a dividing line.

You don't have half believer and half unbeliever. If you've ever talked to somebody who may be interested in things of what Scripture has to lay out in the Gospel, they're kind of transitioning. They're either at a point of believing or not. Scripture doesn't create a half-breed, a half-believer. Scripture doesn't have the animal equivalent.

You don't get this. By the way, this thing really, really doesn't understand why it keeps jumping in the water, and it really doesn't like it either. You don't get this combination here. That doesn't happen either. And neither do you get this one. Grrrr! And thank heaven, not this one either. None of that.

Spiritually speaking, you don't get the equivalent of these critters that you just saw, okay? There is no spiritual cross between a believer and an unbeliever, okay? You're not a 40% believer and a 60% unbeliever, okay? You don't get mixtures of the two. There's no mixture of darkness and light in who you are in Christ, and that's his focal point here in this passage.

So let's go ahead and step through the doorway, if you will, walk through the details of this passage and see what the Apostle Paul by inspiration is spelling out to us here this morning. The first phrase that strikes us there, let no one deceive you.

And the truth is this set of words comes out even more definitively in the Greek. The let is almost sort of a don't let it happen. But the reality is with the imperative there, it hits more in the sense of this is a must. No one must be continuing to deceive you. From this point forward, this just can't happen. That's the way he's spelling it out. It's not simply an allowance. He says it makes no sense at all.

Based on who the believer is, there's no basis for your partaking with them. There's a dividing line put here. These hybrid critters that we saw don't describe the position of the believer. There's no mixture of the believer and the unbeliever that makes any sense at all.

And he says, well, how are they going to deceive you? They're going to deceive with what he says, empty words. From a human standpoint, they may sound very persuasive. Their ability to use rhetoric may be outstanding, but their words are spiritually empty. That's his point. It's empty content. This kenos lagos, the word lagos is a focus on communication content. The content of what they say is empty. It's words that don't mean anything.

And he calls them deceivers. He says, no one deceived you. It must imply that there were deceivers of various kinds. And in truth, we have multiple warnings about that in Scripture. It doesn't matter whether what they're saying is persuasive. It doesn't matter if what they're saying is pressuring the believer.

Either way, the words are empty. The words have no spiritual significance They don't have any content to them. Now, the content of what they are conveying is entirely inconsistent with who you are in Christ. The words will disappear. Who you are in Christ will not. It is like this. The deceptive words are like somebody coming and just saying the spiritual equivalent of blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They're empty. They don't mean anything. And it might be something like this.

In the context of the culture, one of the things that they would do is they would have guild meetings, and the people who were in the various crafts, whether it was stone work or whether you were involved in metal work of some kind, they would have guild meetings, okay?

And in these guild meetings, they would have the guild meetings not in some public hallway, they'd have them in the pagan temples. So if you went to one of the guild meetings, You were involved in all the temple sacrifices and everything else that went on there. And so a lot of the Christians had a real fork in the road, didn't they? They had to decide, am I going to go to this pagan temple and get involved in the sacrifice in order to be involved in my craft?

And some of them had really tight thumbscrews on this. They said, you're not involved in the guild. We're going to kick you out. You can't do your craft anymore. Nonetheless, they'd make an appeal like this. We haven't seen you at the guild meetings at Paphris. You were made to join with us in the sacrifices. You did the best toast when you were there. We miss it so much. Here's this appeal.

Paul says it's this. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Or it might be a pressure like this. Some other guy comes up and says, we haven't seen you at the brothel lately, Silas. You've got a reputation to keep up, you know, and it's been slipping. They're saying the basic spiritual content of that is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, okay? Empty words. And so that's how he sums it up. He says, because of these things. Now, which things is he talking about? These things? Okay. Now, parents, it's not these things. That mess on the floor, that's not the things he's talking about, okay?

Here are the immorality, impurity, and greed that Paul spoke about in the passage we looked at last week, 3, 5 through 3. He summarized them entirely in verse 5 as idolatry. It's those words. It's because of those expressions of the sin nature that he's talking about these things. Those are the things he's referring to.

And the unbeliever, you've got to look at it. The unbeliever is simply acting out the sin nature, and they have no choice but to do so. The unbeliever has but one choice, and that is to come to a place of belief. That's the only latitude of option. Other than that, they're stuck with the nature. That's all they can act out. They can act out the sin nature and nothing else. So, he's saying for the believer, however, that's not who you are in Christ. Those things that you saw there, That's characteristic of the sin nature, but in Christ, you are in Him. That's who you are. That's your character. Now, we've got this phrase, the wrath of God. We've got to take a look at that.

It has some strong patterns in the New Testament. It's only found as such in the New Testament that by that I mean it's not in the Old Testament, other writings, but the New Testament, not the Old. There are written, and I need to correct something in your handout, it has ten passages, should be nine where they occur. And so what's interesting is there are several verses that have it, and then we proceed into Revelation where there are several of them.

And so he spells that out. This is a very potent set of words that he lays out, which shows up in John 3, 36, right after, some verses after he said, for God so loved the world, He gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believes on him should have everlasting life. Now, he said, who believes in the Son has eternal life, but who does not obey the Son will not see life, but wrath of God abides stuck there on him. Notice the present tense.

Romans 118, for the wrath of God is revealed, present tense, from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. You see, one of the things that we're finding in here is scripture is consistent on this, isn't it? The wrath of God is something that is upon the unbeliever. It's upon the continuous expression of the unbeliever. In here, it's those who express the truth in Romans 119.

We have this present passage here in 5.6. And Colossians 3, 6, it also includes the phrase, notice I've used the New King James Version rather than the New American Standard, and the reason is it conveys the present tense. And that's in our handout here, you've got the New American Standard. It says, is coming, present tense, it is right now continuing to come upon the sons of disobedience.

The things that we see in the epistles and in the gospels is that the wrath of God isn't just some future thing. It is a right now thing and a future thing, as we'll see here in Revelation. Now, one of the things we have to look at is he points out here the wrath of God is coming upon the unbeliever. It is not to come upon the believer. And that is a distinction that we made when we were studying through Revelation. And we want to make that distinction again here now, even though we won't go into detail on it.

Romans 5.9, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through him.

1 Thessalonians 1.10, Jesus who rescues us from the wrath to come. This is the future wrath then.

And 5.9 there, for God has not destined us for wrath but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.

The other point that we make, this phrase wrath of God which shows up in Revelation here, You can see other references to the wrath of the Lamb in Revelation as well. Aside from the phrase the wrath, every reference to the wrath of God in the book of Revelation is during the tribulation period.

And one of the things we've included at the end of your handout, you can study it on your own at your own time, is that there is a specific and distinct word pattern in Revelation. Feel free to look at that later on. I think you can probably study it for hours, looking up passages and things. We won't do that here this morning, because we've got the rest of the Ephesians passage to cover, just for your interest there.

Now he's got this phrase, sons of disobedience. This is not the first time that he has used this phrase. He used it before when we were looking at Ephesians 2.2, and that's when he was spelling out, remember he used this word formerly, Formerly, you were in this condition. You walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air and to the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Notice the present tense. This spirit that is now the one energizing the sons of disobedience.

We have the Ephesians 5-6 passage here, and then Colossians is another one that Isn't it interesting? There's the parallel and a reason for studying them together. Colossians also uses the same phrase, and it's very similar to the passage we're looking here at Ephesians 5, 6. And notice one other thing, too, that as we looked at Ephesians 1, 19 through 2, 2, the Lord is energizing, that's this word working, the Lord is working in the believer, okay? the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.

So those who are unbelievers have a spirit energizing them, and we as believers have a spirit energizing us. It's not the same spirit, and there is no mixture of the two. He's explaining here a sharp contrast. We as believers are energized by the Lord.

That's the message that we got out of Ephesians 1.19. Those who are unbelievers are energized by the Prince of the Power of the Air. A sharp contrast.

It is part of what he's referring to as he begins using some of these words and terms and phrases that he's already spelled out. What he's wanting to do is to bring up some of those words in brief to call to mind what he's taught them so that when they look at application, they're remembering that every application biblically depends on your position in Christ. It is not something that we are called to do to find out what do I do and now I go do it. We are called instead to do everything on the basis of our position. And that's why he reminds even as he's giving application about our position, keeps calling us back to that and reminding us of it.

Sons of disobedience here. Son of is a Jewish expression. I know that we have some people who use it in a derogatory sense here in our culture, but son of is a Jewish expression initially. It means to have an intimate connection with and a character of the noun that followed. Son of God, for example, an intimate connection with God and the character of God. That's the meaning of it.

You see it used in the Gospels in that way. You see it used in the epistles in that way. That character, being of the sons of disobedience, is fundamental to all of Adam's descendants. All of Adam's descendants are disobedient to God by nature. That's the mode in which they're stuck because of their descendancy. Their genealogy puts them there. Son of also implied a maturity that puts someone at a point of responsibility, enough maturity that there is a responsibility for the action taken, a responsibility for the decisions made.

Now, therefore, and you notice we've run across this word before, because you have no basis for being deceived by empty words, is what he's telling them, Because you are not by your nature among the sons of disobedience. You're not by nature among them. Those are the ones upon whom the wrath of God is coming and will come. But you're not by nature of them.

Remember, wrath of God here for the sons of disobedience, only in, remember, verses 1 and 2 of chapter 5? We were their beloved children. Beloved children. Now, here's wrath. The beloved children don't receive wrath. The sons of disobedience, those get the wrath. There's the distinction. So he's actually showing a contrast here. We as beloved children are those who will not expect it.

We have a different current position with the Lord and we also have a different future with the Lord. He says, you are now and will continue to head in a different direction from them. Your direction is different. Your identity is different. the world in which you stand. Because we're creatures of the new creation, the world in which you stand is different. He's making all the distinctions possible here.

Do not be partakers. This is a present imperative. This is another one of those negative imperatives. It's a present imperative with a negative connected with it. You must not be continuing to be partakers. It has an implication that at least some of them, maybe a lot of them, had been joining together with them.

You know, here's something that's real interesting. There is a tendency on our part to look around and we say, well, I'm wearing pants and shoes and, you know, I'm losing my hair and just like that guy over there, I must be an awful lot like him. But that's the superficial measure. What Paul is working to try to get them to understand, and the Holy Spirit is bringing it home to their hearts, That no, they are very different and the superficial comparisons end there. That they are very different. What's similar ends on the outside appearance.

You must not be continuing to be partakers. You are different from them because remember, you have the promise of Christ. That's the believer's position. being active partakers with the sons of disobedience makes no sense at all. It's as conflicted as these crossbred creatures that we saw earlier. What sense does that make? I'm not sure what you would think if you saw that, but Paul's trying to make that kind of a connection. He's saying, for you to be with them doing these things, it makes as much sense as this kind of crazy crossbreed.

He had told us before in chapter 3, we are fellow partakers of the promise in Christ through the gospel. We don't have to search for promises or to transfer God's promises from Israel. We don't have to make promises. We are partakers of the promise. That's good enough. He wants us to stand on that. With them. Now who's them? Who's the them that he's talking about here? These are the sons of disobedience. They're the ones who, by character, are the ones who are practicing the immorality, the impurity, the greed, the idolatry of the heart.

By character, by nature, they're stuck in that rut and the rut runs deep. Their wheel cannot get out of it, of their own doing. They must behave according to that nature. These are the ones upon whom God's wrath is focused, because the sin nature is not something that God can reconcile with. The sin nature, you see, is a tyrant. It's a despotic ruler over them.

It calls all the shots, no exceptions. It determines absolutely everything that that unbeliever will do. He says, they do not share the identity with you. They don't have the life that you have. That's why they do that. Don't be partakers with them. It doesn't make any spiritual sense.

See, the unbelievers in this spot, they're out there in this dry, crusty desert, saying, I've got to find water here. And they wander around and find a different crusty desert, but it's still the same dry, crusty desert, spiritually speaking. They wander and it changes a little bit, but it's still dry and there's still no water. And you come to them and you say, look, I found the source of water.

It's wonderful. But they don't understand. They say, no, I've got to find the water here. It's got to be here. I've got to keep looking here. This is the only place where I can get the water. I don't understand your water. I have to drink from the water from right here, only here. And so they insist. They insist in dependence upon the water that is not, the water that is not there.

They look for life in these things here on planet Earth. I must get life from this stuff. I must get life from the stuff I put in my mouth. or put in my veins or anything else. I must get life from those things because that's all I can see, that's all I can hear, that's all I can taste, that's all I can touch, that's all I can smell. That's where they look for life. They're stuck with looking for that water where there is none.

He says, For you were formerly darkness, but now you are a light in the Lord. You want to take a look particularly at verse 8 there. And he says, you were formerly darkness and that was your position. You lived that out. That's the way you were. He says you were that. He admits it. He didn't say you never were that. He says that's exactly what you were. But you were. It's past tense. But now you're a light in the Lord. Now that you have a character that is based in your position in Christ. Walk as children in the light. It's the only logical conclusion. What other logical conclusion could you reach? but that you walk in the light. It's the only thing that makes spiritual sense. Anything else is spiritual insanity. It says, you are formerly darkness.

That's a word that we saw before in chapter 2 of Ephesians and in Ephesians chapter 1. We've seen previously as we've looked at this word that it's a word that's consistently used in the New Testament, even beyond Paul, for the life of the believer before they believed. For who you were before you came to believe. It's not, this Greek word is pate, it's not that liver stuff, okay? Instead here, it's a word that consistently through the epistles refers to that life before coming to belief.

You see, he said back in Ephesians chapter 2, first few verses there, you were formerly, and then he goes on for several verses there explaining, but now. What he has done here in verse 8 is to summarize that passage, and just as he did before here, now he says, but now, after formerly, just like he did then. It's parallel in summarizing the prior passage. You were formerly what?

Darkness. He's told them earlier in the same passage here, we studied it several weeks ago, that they had a darkness of the mind. The mind is darkened. These people look into the spiritual realm and the lights are out. It's black. They see nothing. No discernment, no distinction.

He's going to continue talking about darkness as we go through the rest here. Just the next time we get into this passage here, we're going to see him bring up darkness again. And then we get into chapter 6, we're going to see how do we stand against the powers of darkness. And we'll touch on that.

It's also something we talked about previously in Colossians 1.13. So it's not a subject he's going to drop. It's one, in fact, that he's just begun in the book of Ephesians. But now. This is the great divide, isn't it?

As we're going through chapter 2, he says, you were all this in your former life, but now God has done something different. He makes the contrast there as he did in chapter 2. The position that they have now is in such sharp contrast with the position and condition that they had then. Now, you are different by God's doing. That's what he's appealing to here. And now he points out, he says, you are light. And he does it three times here in this passage. We're going to take a quick look at each and then take a little bit more detail in there.

Greek word there is phos, there's no definite article, so the focus is on character. That's the signal in the Greek that you're looking at the character. You are by character light, is what he points out there. The character that you have is in Christ, in the Lord, in Him. Notice here, we have the character of light by position in the Lord, who is the light. That's where the character comes from.

We walk as children of light because we have a call to a lifestyle. Children of, it's based on intimate relationship. It's intimate connection. It's personal. Children of, we have a descendancy from the Lord now. And the fruit of light, that's the expression of it. That's how it goes out. That's how it gets expressed from the intimate connection that we have with the Lord. From that eternal relationship we have with the Lord who is himself the light.

He says, walk as children of light. Now Paul, as you notice, keeps talking about walking. You notice that? We've noticed that before. So he says, as beloved children, walk in love. That's the point that he made several verses earlier. Walk in love. Now he says, walk as children. is continuing on with this connection from verses 1 and 2, isn't he?

It's a present imperative here. We must logically order our lives as children of light. It makes no sense to do anything else. Being children has a similar sense of being son of in that it implies a connection with, an intimate connection, having a character of light. And we know from 1 John 1 there, 5-7, God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. It's the same message that Paul's delivering here.

Now, fruit of the light, Galatians 5.22, the fruit's expressed there singularly, as he does here, even though the words that describe it are plural.

Notice that? Same pattern. The word fruit is given in the singular both places. The words that describe it are plural. Here it's described as goodness and righteousness and truth. No definite article, so what's the focus on? Character. Focus is upon character of the fruit. There is a singular fruit.

It has all these descriptions of character. Goodness and righteousness and truth are the words that he draws forth there. These are characteristics, as we see in other passages, of God Himself. God is light. You're children of the light. That's the character that you should have, and that's the character of God. It makes sense, doesn't it? His character is of light. We have a descendancy from and a close relationship with Him. The only thing that makes sense is these things, because that's His character. That's our connection.

Now, this next phrase here, trying to learn, documento. I would call this translation unfortunate. A number of other translations don't go there. And the reason is this. The same word and another related word pops up in Romans 12 too, and that's urestos, which is translated acceptable or pleasing. That shows up there, and it's not trying to learn. It's a proving out. It's a proving out.

Now, this word URS-DOS that has nothing to do with this thing, okay? It's not this URS-DOS thing here, okay? All right, not that. No, what he's talking about here is a demonstration, okay? I was trying to think, you know, how could you put this in modern terms? And I started thinking about those instruments I used to make. I said, they won't relate to all that electronic stuff.

So instead, I looked at a Ferrari. Every time you go to buy a Ferrari, right? Every time you go to buy a Ferrari, you don't just walk up to the showroom floor and say, that's great, I'll take it and write out a check, right? You want a demonstration first before you pay for the Ferrari. Okay.

So what you want is a demonstration. And when you get in to the Ferrari to get the demonstration, you are expecting to have a good result, right? A good outcome. You don't want a demonstration and the salesman is not there to demonstrate it for you because he knows it's going to just drop into a bucket of bolts. He expects a good outcome from the demonstration, and in fact, you want to be impressed before you pay the price that they ask for, believe me.

So that's what he's making the point of here, and what we see as we look at it from other translators is the idea of putting to the attest and approving, like documento means in so many other places. It's approving out. You're testing it with a view to approval. That is the idea that he's carrying out here. or let's put it in expanded and explained terms, your walking is giving a live demonstration with a view to the display of the underlying character and worth. You are going to be living it out. as God intended. Is it a test? Yes, it's a test. But it's a test done with a view to approval.

Just like you would do a demonstration on something that you want to say, I want to make sure this really works, but I expect that it will. And the salesman, believe me, expects that it will too. As we look at this passage here, I'll go through this expanded and explained thing only in the last little line. It says, what is pleasing to the Lord, What's pleasing to the Lord?

You know, see, it's really easy to look at, okay, I've got my list of ways I'm supposed to behave and not behave, and I've got my list down, and I've studied it well enough that I know my rules. You behave like this, not like that. You do this, you don't do that. I've got my rules down. God's happy, right? No. Why?

It goes back to the energizing issue that Paul brought up earlier. What God wants to see is not our best effort, but His life. What God wants to see is His life lived through us. That's glorifying to Him, and that fulfills what we looked at in chapter 3, God's eternal purpose. God looks at the believer, who is, in fact, depending upon Him, who is, in fact, living out His life, who is, in fact, energized by the life of Christ, He looks at that and He goes, yes!

I'm exaggerating a little bit, but you get the idea. God is satisfied. God is pleased. Not that we look at the list of rules and say, boy, I did it right and I didn't do that other stuff. But when he looks at it, like we look in the mirror, and he sees himself, he says, yes, that's what I want. That's exactly what I had in mind. I'm pleased.

That's what the Lord's looking for. He says, walk as children of light, those who are children of Him, energized by Him, independence upon Him, and therefore looking like Him. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you as we look at this passage. You are just doing marvelous things. And what you have made us is so greatly different from the world, regardless of superficial similarities. We thank you for that. We thank you for what you have accomplished. Lord, you are so marvelous, and we give you praise for it. In Jesus' name, amen.