Beloved Children, Walking in Light

Therefore, I wrote — and I want you to hear that word "therefore," for it carries everything before it. I had just told you to put away bitterness and wrath, to be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you (Ephesians 4:32). And now I press further up and further in: "Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children" (Ephesians 5:1).

Sit with that command a moment, because it is a staggering one. Imitators of God — as if a child could be like his Father. But notice how I bind the calling to the tenderest word: "as beloved children." I do not say, imitate God as slaves imitate a master they fear, or as hired men copy a wage-payer. I say children — and not merely children, but beloved ones. This is where all true obedience is born. You do not become God's child by imitating him; you imitate him because you already are his child, loved before you had done anything to earn it. A small son toddles after his father not to be adopted but because he already belongs, and he watches, and he wants to be like the man he loves. So it is with you. Everything I am about to ask of you flows out of a love you have already received, not toward a love you are trying to win.

And what does it look like to imitate God? "And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God" (Ephesians 5:2). There it is — the measure and the meaning of love, and it is not a feeling but a giving up. Christ loved, and he gave himself. He did not love us at a distance, keeping himself safe; he handed himself over, poured himself out, and the smell of that sacrifice rose up pleasing to God like the offerings of old. So when I tell you to walk in love, I am not telling you to be warm and agreeable. I am telling you to spend yourself for others as Christ spent himself for you. That is a costly road, and it is the only road that looks anything like your Father.

Now I turn, and my tone hardens — not because I have stopped loving you, but because love must warn. "But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints" (Ephesians 5:3). Not even named. I set the bar high on purpose. The world you live in, like the world I lived in, treats these things as ordinary — the appetite that must be fed, the wanting of what is not yours, the flesh made a god. But you are saints, set-apart ones, and these things are simply out of place in you, as mud is out of place on a wedding garment. And see how I bind sexual sin and covetousness together, for they share one root: both take a good gift of God and grasp it apart from him, both say I must have this to be full. That is why I call the covetous man an idolater (Ephesians 5:5) — he has set up a god that is not God and bowed to it.

Even our speech, I say, must be clean of this: "Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving" (Ephesians 5:4). Notice the exchange I offer. I do not merely forbid the coarse joke and leave a silence; I put thanksgiving in its place. The mouth that has learned to give thanks has less room for filth, because gratitude receives every good thing as a gift from a Father, while crude talk cheapens the gifts and forgets the Giver. If you would guard your tongue, fill it with thanks.

Then I grow very plain, because some will try to talk you out of taking this seriously: "Let no one deceive you with empty words" (Ephesians 5:6). There will always be voices — clever, soothing, sophisticated — that tell you sin is nothing, that grace means it does not matter how you live. Do not believe them. Their words are empty; there is no substance in them, no life. The one who is truly in Christ has been made new, and the settled love of sin has no place in a heart that has been raised with him. I am not frightening the children of God out of their inheritance; I am telling you plainly what people are, so that you are not fooled by pretty lies.

And now comes the heart of it, the sentence I would have you carry with you all day: "for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light" (Ephesians 5:8). Hear what I said, and hear it exactly. I did not say you were once in the darkness — I said you were darkness. That is what you were, through and through. And I did not say you are now in the light — I said you are light, now, in the Lord. This is what Christ has done to you. He has not merely improved your surroundings; he has changed your very nature. The command follows the miracle: walk as what you now are. Be, in your daily doing, what God has already made you in his mercy. And what grows in such a life? "The fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true" (Ephesians 5:9) — goodness toward others, righteousness before God, truth in the inward parts. This is the harvest of a life the light has touched.

So I say: "try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord" (Ephesians 5:10). This is the daily work of a grown-up child — not a list of rules memorized once, but a heart trained to ask, in each new thing, what would please my Father here? Discernment is love paying attention. And there is a companion command: "Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them" (Ephesians 5:11). See what darkness is called — unfruitful. It produces nothing, harvests nothing, feeds no one; it only consumes. You were not saved to spend your one life on what comes to nothing.

But how does the light "expose" the darkness? Not chiefly by scolding, but by shining. "When anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible, for anything that becomes visible is light" (Ephesians 5:13). Bring a thing into the light and it is seen for what it is — and more than that, the light has a way of transforming what it touches. A life simply lived in the open, clean and glad and thankful, shows the works of darkness to be the shameful hidden things they are, done in secret and unfit even to speak of (Ephesians 5:12). You need not always argue. Sometimes you need only shine.

And then, to close, I reach back and take up an old song of the awakened, and I lay it on you like a hand on the shoulder: "Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you" (Ephesians 5:14). Do you feel how the whole passage gathers here? This is the gospel underneath every command I have given. Left to ourselves we are asleep, we are dead, we lie in the dark and cannot rouse ourselves. And into that grave the word comes — Awake! Arise! — and it is no cruel command to a corpse, for it carries its own power: Christ himself will shine on you. He is the light that raises the dead. He shone on me on a road when I was his enemy, and I who was darkness became light in the Lord.

So, beloved children — for that is what you are — here is your day. You have a Father to imitate and you already bear his name. You have a Savior who gave himself up for you, and his love is the pattern for every love you give away. You have been made light, so live in the open; give thanks instead of filth; discern what pleases him; take no part in what comes to nothing. And if you read this still half-asleep, still lying in some old grave you have made your bed — hear the word once more. Awake. Arise. Christ will shine on you.

Grace and peace to you, and light for the walking.