Pauls's Epistle to the Ephesians
Chapter Fifteen
ONCE DARKNESS—NOW LIGHT IN THE LORD.
"For this ye know, that no whoremonger, nor unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no man deceive you with vain words : for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience. Be not ye therefore partakers with them. For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light: (for the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth;) proving what is acceptable unto the Lord."- EPH. v. 5-10.

WHILE gracefully and graciously introducing or insinuating, as we have seen, into his warning against impurity of all sorts of covetousness or inordinate desire, the highest motives of Christian honour and expediency and gratitude; the apostle does not think it unnecessary to repeat the warning, in a very strong and startling way (v. 5-7). He puts it in a double form - First, you know what sort of things absolutely bar any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. They must do so. For, secondly, they are the things which bring down the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience. And between the two forms of it, in the middle of the warning, he says emphatically, "Let no man deceive you with vain words " (ver. 6).

Vain words! An empty boast or dream of indulgence or impurity; however you look at the matter; whether heavenward or hell-ward; whether as regards yourselves as God's dear children, or as regards the children of disobedience; whether in the line of your hope of heaven, or in the line of their desert of hell. Let no man deceive you with vain words, either way. They are vain words which would natter you with the notion that your Christian standing will procure for you impunity ; that you may safely venture upon certain liberties without forfeiting your title to heaven; or that their heathen and worldly state, if you should think of casting in your lot, or having fellowship with them, will be less hazardous in the issue either for them or for you ; that your companionship with them in their evil can shield them, or your Christian standing can shelter yourselves from the wrath of God that lies on the children of disobedience. The things themselves, the practices in question, are and must be fatal to you, if you give in to them; fatal, as excluding from any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God; fatal, as causing the wrath of God to come again upon you as it lies always on the children of disobedience. "Be not ye therefore partakers with them " (ver. 7).

Beware of vain words that might tempt you to be so. All the more beware of this, because "ye were once darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord" (ver. 8). Thus the apostle introduces for a practical purpose, for the enforcing of his lesson of holy abstinence from sin, the great contrast which he draws between what the Ephesians once were, and what, if not hypocrites and self-deceivers, they now are. It is the contrast between what we all are naturally, and what we become through grace. Once darkness - now light. And the transition is in the Lord; ye are light in the Lord. Now are ye light.

This mode of speech, this personal application of impersonal terms, this identifying of you personally with the sphere, or region, or atmosphere, of your spiritual life, is very emphatic and significant. It occurs elsewhere in Paul's writings; as when he says - "For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him" (2 Cor. v. 21). And the apostle John gives it the highest endorsement when he says, "God is light." It is to that idea, in fact, that we must appeal, if we would really understand the full force of the contrast here drawn. God is light. And now are ye light in the Lord Christ. But first, you were once darkness. Darkness! It is the concentrated essence of all the evils and abominations here denounced. They are, all of them, works of darkness (ver. 11); unfruitful works of darkness; for no fruit can come of what grows and works in darkness. And they are themselves the darkness. The darkness does not cover or excuse them; for they are it; these works of darkness are themselves the darkness.

And you were once that darkness; you were identified with it and swallowed up in it. The darkness was not only your sphere of life, but your life itself; not only your natural air and atmosphere, in which you had to live and move, but your very nature. You were once, not only in darkness, but yourselves darkness. Darkness was your nature as well as your condition. It was not darkness without, but darkness within. You were yourselves the darkness. So also now you are yourselves the light. Now are ye light. Not only do you see light and walk in light; you are yourselves light. It is not merely that light shines around you, and even into you, - the light of the knowledge of God in the face of Christ Jesus our Lord. It becomes part and parcel of your being. You are yourselves that light. It is your personal experience, your nature now, to be yourselves that light. It may well be if you are Christ's. For it is light in the Lord.

I. Ye were once darkness. Why does Paul run up all his varied and manifold enumeration of abominable Gentile, that is natural, corruptions, into this one idea of darkness, when he would have believers from among the Gentiles to shun these but too familiar outrages and excesses? For two reasons, as I think : first, that you may see what is really the one evil, in which all varieties of evil are concentrated; the quintessence of evil - darkness. And, secondly, that you may see yourselves to be naturally that darkness.
1. All evil, all forms and kinds of evil, may be comprehensively summed up in the one idea of darkness. Even natural or physical darkness, - the darkness of a sunless sky and a starless night, the darkness of a city's closes and deus unrelieved by any gleam of wholesome artificial illumination - is associated and identified with all manner of pollution, violence, and vice. Let the darkness flee away; comparatively speaking, purity and peace will immediately return. Much more in the moral and spiritual world will this identification of all evil, all sorts of evil, with darkness hold good. And the point and purpose of the identification is this. The evil is manifold; the darkness is one. Innumerable almost are the modes of wickedness that Paul here indicates, in strong terms, but not stronger than his age required; and ours requires at least as much. But lest the very multiplicity of his enumeration should give a loophole to this or that form of the spirit of self-righteousness, acquitting itself of some of the grosser vices condemned, and so slipping through into a more comfortable persuasion of innocence and immunity, he brings the diversified manifestations into one common source and centre - darkness. That is the essence of them all - the one name for them all - darkness. Wherever any of them are, there is darkness. And wherever there is darkness, there is no security against any, or all of them, coming in. They are all works of darkness. Darkness is their universal and invariable mark. They are summed up in the one word or thought, - darkness.

2. And you were once darkness; this very darkness. You were identified with it; it was your very nature. It was yourself; that which may be almost said in a sense to have constituted your personal individuality and identity; ye were darkness. The apostle's admonition or faithful testimony here is very emphatic. It is, I repeat, doubly so. First, he gathers up all the moral offences and abominations which he has been forced to name, with others which he cannot name, into one focus, as it were, one central point or capital head, one element or state summarily comprehending them all; it is darkness. And then he personifies the abstract idea. He makes the darkness personal in you. You were darkness. He does not do this with reference to the details of his black catalogue of heathen, or, as I may say, natural vices. He does not say, you were once uncleanness, or covetousness, or idolatry; or filthiness, or folly, or a jest. He does not thus connect you, or identify you as personally one with any of these forms of iniquity. But he fastens upon the one feature which characterises them all, - the one element or atmosphere in which they all live and move and have their being - darkness. And he identifies you as one with that. And the darkness - what is it? The darkness which not only shrouds these excesses under its convenient cloak, but is itself their very essence - the spirit or mental habit that makes it possible for such dead carnalities to live, or have even the semblance of living.

Is it not at bottom the darkness of atheism? It is the darkness which would brood over all things, if there were no God. It is the darkness which does brood over all things to him who says in his heart "There is no God". It is the darkness of him who does not choose to retain in his heart the knowledge of God. It is the darkness which makes the world godless to me, and me godless to the world. I was that darkness ; and so were you. It was your nature. It was natural to you thus to be darkness; not only to walk in darkness and to do the works of darkness, but to be yourselves darkness; not only to have your outer life shrouded in darkness and too often stained with the pollution that courts darkness; but to have your inner life penetrated and pervaded by this darkness; a dark soul within vainly trying to fathom a dark world without. You were dark. Ye were once darkness. The apostle might say this with literal truth of the Gentile converts at Ephesus to whom he was writing. Dark, indeed, was their state, with all its surroundings, before the Gospel reached them. And dark indeed also was their inward soul, their inward experience; living as they did without God and without hope in the world. But you, as well as they, were once darkness; you even more than they; inward darkness amid the shining of outward light, personally dark under the bright beams of the light of the Sun of Righteousness. Even if you cannot look back to a time when you were, if I may so speak, historically dark, all the more on that account will you feel and own that you were, and are, naturally darkness. I believe in the possibility of regeneration from the womb ; and in the frequent occurrence, among a godly community and in godly families, of unconscious, or all but unconscious, conversions in early infancy and childhood. Even those who are thus favoured may say Amen to the apostle's statement, Ye were once darkness. They will say it, I am persuaded, even more feelingly than others. For they come to the discovery of what they naturally are, and what they feel, by a sort of spiritual instinct or intuition, they must have continued to be, but for early grace - with the keen apprehension and sense of holiness and of sin which the Spirit in the new birth imparts. They will not be the parties to object to their being included in the sweeping sentence, Ye were once darkness. Nor indeed will any one who, whatever may have been the time and manner of his awakening, has been brought to know the plague of his own heart. He will at once see and acknowledge that the contrast here is not one of dates, but a far deeper one, of state and nature and character. You were darkness. That was your state and nature and character once.

Yes! And but for grace, it must have been so still. Nay, but for grace, it is so still. For in fact that is the very point of the apostle's statement. He is not calling up old memories for their own sakes, but only for their bearing on present duty and present experience. He would have you to remember and recollect, always and everywhere, now, what you once were; because it is what you now are, but for present grace overcoming present nature. It is not his object to set you upon raking up the past, your past experiences of evil, your past evil doings. But it is his object to remind you that you still carry about with you - or rather, still have in you, in your inmost selves - the old nature, what you once were; not indeed the old development of that nature, but still substantially the old nature. Ye were darkness once. Keep that in mind. Would that the children of the light, after whose pattern we are exhorted to walk, were always fully alive to this consideration; not as a retrospective view of the past; but as a present experience. "Ye were once darkness."

Paul does not mean to send them back to recall the deplorable evils and excesses of their former way of life. Nor is he here bent on making them feel that on that account they must be debtors to grace originally. His aim is much more practical, and intensely present. His whole soul is in the present. See what you were, he cries; not workers of the works of darkness merely, but darkness itself. And see this, because that is still your nature, here and now; to be here and now, always, overcome only by grace; and that it may be so overcome here and now by grace, needing to be watched with the most jealous and anxious solicitude, in the view of the unfruitful works of darkness with which you are tempted to have fellowship. Remember what you were, and beware; beware of over-confidence, slackness, and security. You once were darkness, the very darkness in which these unfruitful works are all summed up. It is not for you to trifle with them, as if you could do so with impunity. Consider what your nature was and is. Ye were once darkness.

II. Now are ye light. The abstract form of expression here is even more emphatic than in the former clause; it touches a very different and much higher sphere or region of life; and on that account, and in very proportion to that difference and superiority, it is not so easily explained and illustrated. To identify myself with darkness, as my natural state and character, is doubtless difficult enough for me, even as a spiritual man; to say and feel that I was once - that I am by nature - not only surrounded by darkness, but in my inmost self darkness; that is difficult enough. But even that is not so difficult as to say and feel that now I am light. This new identification of myself with the abstract "light," is a higher and nobler, but yet harder exercise of self-appreciation than the other identification of myself with the abstract "darkness." That is the recognition of what is human and earthly in me, of which I have but too much natural experience. This is the recognition of what is divine and heavenly in me, which I can apprehend only by spiritual faith. But it must be apprehended, if I am not to be a partaker with the children of disobedience. It is a fact, and a great fact. "Now are ye light." It is not, Now ye have light, or now you receive light; new light shines around you, or shines into you ; now ye are enlightened outwardly and inwardly; outwardly by the Gospel, inwardly by the Spirit shining in your hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. It is, Now ye are light.

You are yourselves light. It is now your character, your function, your calling, your very nature, to be yourselves personally light. For light is an active principle or power. It is not a mere negation or negative. Darkness may be that - though we read of the powers of darkness - it may be simply the negation or negative of light; its absence or exclusion. But light is not, in any analogous sense, the negation or negative of darkness. It is a force in nature; a real force; operating really as such. No object on which it shines can be merely a recipient of it; a passive accepter and absorber of its beams. More or less, in some way, every object on which it shines is not only brought into light, but becomes itself light. The planets in the clear midnight sky are thus, all and each of them, light, in the glorious sun. So light is here viewed by the apostle ; in its active, outgoing, influence and power; rather than in its mere capacity for being received and retained; when he would identify you with it and it with you. In that sense and to that effect now are ye light. The verse that follows confirms this interpretation. "The fruit of the light is in all goodness and righteousness and truth."

It is then fruitful light; it is the light considered as fruitful; that Paul has in his eye when he says - Now are ye light. And the fruit; the manner of the outcoming of the light's fruitfulness, is described. It fructifies into all goodness first; that is, into all amiability, kindness, sympathy, benevolence, universal and hearty goodwill. That fruit of the light may surely be looked for, if it is the same light as the shepherds saw on the morning of the great nativity. Is it not that light that you now are - a light surely fruitful of goodness ; charged and vocal with the song, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men." But this light fructifies or has its fruit, not in goodness merely, but in righteousness and truth as well. It must be so, if the goodness or good will in which it primarily, as it were, fructifies, is identical with the good will proclaimed from heaven, under the shield and sanction of the first voice in the great doxology, " Glory to God in the highest."

No goodness, in fact, can be the fruit of the light, or can have the light for its source or seed, that is not allied to righteousness and truth. There may be a sort of amiable weakness, tolerant of evil, indulgent to injustice, unholiness, and falsehood, at least in some of their milder and more mitigated manifestations, which may pass current, in some quarters, as the genuine fruit of the light. And some who profess to be themselves light, may content themselves with this fruit of the light being brought forth in them and manifested by them. And they may call it charity, Christian charity, goodness, good-heartedness. But is it really so? To count nothing blameworthy, but everything excusable, in the circle in which I move and the society with which I mix; to smile with bland complacency on all alike ; to be simply kind, complaisant, amiable, and nothing more; is that goodness to my fellows? Is it safe for me? Is it not the very way to bring me in guilty of the sin, or exposed to the danger, against which the apostle warns me - "Be not ye therefore partakers with them"? (vs. 7).

And is it not sad cruelty to my fellows? I countenance their folly. I compromise my own integrity. The goodness which is the fruit of the light must have associated with it, as of one essence with itself, righteousness and truth. It must be good will to men, giving glory to God. For the fruit of the light cannot but be righteousness and truth as well as goodness, if the light is indeed that which shone on Bethlehem's plains at the birth of Christ. The light then shining from highest heaven pointed to the light then come to our lowest earth, in the person of the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in the manger. That is the light which you now are, if you are in him; light in the Lord. What fruit of that light can you trace, in its brief shining here for a few memorable years between the cradle and the cross? Goodness, all goodness. Yes ! that surely; benevolence without bounds; love without a parallel; having a length and breadth and depth and height in respect of which it passeth knowledge. But is it goodness merely? Does that light bear no other fruit than all tolerant kindness and all indulgent fondness? He is the light of the world. The light in him, the light which he is, his mere living presence as the light of the world; scathes and withers every unkind wish, every unloving thought; nothing but pure goodness can grow under it, or out of it, or in it.

But is that all? Does it not scathe and wither every germ and manifestation of what is unjust or false? Its fruit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth. Ah, were it not so, even he, as the light, could avail us little, as we lie in darkness: in the darkness of guilt and corruption, of sin and selfishness, of unrighteousness and untruth. Had the fruit of that love been pure and simple goodness it never could have met our case, satisfied our consciences, or saved our souls. It is because its fruit is in all goodness, allied to all righteousness and truth; because its full fruit is in that cross which makes these three one; acting out deepest divine love in harmony with highest divine righteousness and truth, that this light is the life of men.

III. It is this light, this very light, that you now are, if indeed you are in him who is the light. Now are ye light in the Lord. It is a very close identification of you with Christ and Christ with you that is here implied: "light in the Lord." It is not light through the Lord : as it might be, through his mediation; but light in the Lord. And it is and must be light in the Lord, in the sense, and to the effect, that he is himself the light. It is a high standard; a high aim! It is nothing short of your entering into the meaning and spirit of all that is implied in Christ's being the light. It is in him that you are light; light in the Lord. And you are light in him, as regards the fruit of the light, which is in all goodness, and righteousness, and truth. Alas ! I fear that there may be here a difference of mind between my Lord and me. One with him in goodness I might consent to be; understanding by goodness mere vague and general, indifferent and indiscriminating, good will. But the oneness is to be in all goodness, and righteousness, and truth. For myself, and for my friends and brethren, let me thoroughly lay that to heart. If it is in Christ the Lord that I am to be light, it must be in him as being the light, whose fruit is first in all goodness, and then in righteousness and truth. In the Lord; light in the Lord. How close and intimate is the identification here between your light and the Lord's ; your being light and his being light! Close and intimate in very proportion to the closeness and intimacy of the oneness indicated by the phrase "in the Lord."

It is not a mere legal oneness, your being accounted one in the eye of law : it is so ; but it is so because it is a real spiritual oneness ; a oneness of character, a oneness of nature, a oneness of heart and mind and soul. You are so in the Lord as to partake of his holiness : which indeed is his light. He is light, for he is holy. And you are light as he is light, when you are holy as he is holy. As the light of the world Jesus shone before all men in the beauty of holiness, in the fruit of the light, all goodness and righteousness and truth. So he was light; the light of loyalty to God as his Father; the light of purest and truest love to men as his brethren. So if it is in him that you are light, you must be shining forth ; walking as children of the light, proving what is acceptable unto the Lord. For now, to draw this discourse to a close, you may see the meaning and feel the force of the exhortation - "Walk as children of the light." Being yourselves light in the Lord, as the planets are light in the glorious sun, see that you let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven. Walk worthy of the light, as its children. Walk thus, for your own sake, that you may more and more thoroughly make good your complete deliverance from the darkness which you once were. You are still so surrounded with its works that you need to be continually on your guard; and the best guard is not the negative security of keeping the darkness and its works and their workers at bay, and as it were at arm's length - although that is always and by all means needful - but the positive attainment of walking, without disguise or concealment or reserve of any kind, openly, under the eye of God and before the eyes of all men, as children of the light.

So walk for your own sake. And walk thus also for the sake of your great mission and high office towards men, . among whom ye are to shine as lights in the world. The light of the body, says our Lord, is the eye. If the eye be single, the whole body is full of light. But if the light that is in you be darkness, how great is that darkness. So it may be said of you in relation to your fellow-men. Ye are the light of the world. If the light that is in the world be darkness, how great is the darkness; how dark and hopeless is the world's state if the church is not light in the Lord; if her members do not walk as children of the light. Consider this, ye who are light in the Lord. Consider that as he was the light of the world, when he was in the world, so now that he is gone, you, in his stead and on his behalf, are the light of the world called to walk as children of the light. And, that you may he so walking - walk as he walked, proving what is acceptable to him; as he was always proving what was acceptable to the Father, doing all things to please him, not trying what might be acceptable to himself, but ever trying, proving and preferring, simply what was acceptable to God. For it was that, in large measure, which made him the light of the world, not in his teaching only, but even still more in all his holy life and in his voluntary yet obedient death.

This was what was pre-eminently conspicuous in him, so conspicuous as to be known and read of all men, his caring absolutely for nothing but to please God; to prove what would be acceptable to God. None could possibly mistake him for a self-pleaser, or a man-pleaser. He walked as one bent on pleasing God only. Let your walk be like his : let it be so more and more. There never was any darkness in him, any of the darkness of self-pleasing or man-pleasing. But you were that darkness. That you may never at any time or in any degree become that darkness again, see to it that, being indeed light in the Lord, you walk in the Lord as children of the light. And oh! have pity on a benighted world, and the men who are, not walking, but groping, in its darkness ; not knowing what they are doing, what they are, or whether they are going. Tell them, in holy and faithful love, in all the goodness and righteousness and truth which is the fruit of the light, that they are darkness; in the midst of darkness, and themselves darkness.

Yes! 0 my brother, that is thy state, thy character. And thou canst scarcely deny it. Darkness : a dark frame of mind, a dark present, a dark future ; that is thy characteristic now. I testify in truest kindness that thou art a child of darkness, that thou art thyself darkness. But I add - so was I. I was darkness. And if now I am light in the Lord, it is not through any merit or work of mine that I am so, but by grace; and not by grace peculiar to me; no, no, my brother; but by grace common to thee and me : grace free to all; grace bringing near to all now the light of a glorious salvation ; the grace which hung on the lips of the Light of the world when he said, "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up ; that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eterAal life." " Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."
Go To Chapter Sixteen

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