37
The Demands
of Walking According To Light
Eph.
5:11-14
And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.
For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret.
But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light: for whatsoever doth make manifest is light.
Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.
We come
now to the third and final division of this section. For the most part what we
saw in our last chapter concerning the Details of walking according to
light was positive, but what we are about to see concerning the Demands
of walking according to light is negative.
In that
regard, there are two extremes in evangelical, fundamental Christianity. One
extreme is to preach only positive messages. In this type of preaching there is
very little, if any, rebuke, exhortation, command, challenge, or the like. The
attitude in this is, “We do not want to offend, so we will just preach positive
things; we’ll just keep things light and upbeat..” The problem with that
approach, of course, is that God plainly gives negative commands in His Word.
There are numerous places in the Word of God, and not just in the Ten
Commandments, where God says, “Thou shalt not!” To fail to preach the negative
is to fail to preach “all the counsel of God” (Acts 20:27).
The other
extreme is to preach only negative messages with little or no positive. This
approach brow-beats Christians and tells them what only they can’t do, usually
in a legalistic and self-righteous framework. But this in some ways is even
worse than preaching only positively because people are lead to believe that
there is no joy in Christianity and that spirituality is dependant solely upon
outward observance.
Thankfully,
Paul gives the balance between the two extremes. As he always balances doctrine
and duty, he now balances the positive and the negative.
He vividly shows here that it is vitally important that we not only know how
to live, but how not to live. Just like little “children” (v. 1), we
must be told what to do and what not to do.
With that
in mind, we turn to the three demands of walking according to light, after
which we’ll meditate on some other wonders concerning the nature of light.
I. Be Separate (v.
11a)
And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness,
A
principle we must recognize, but one that is often avoided or ignored in our
say, is that we must be separate
for the world. I shall never forget my young adult days in a church in
Indianapolis, where the associate pastor, Clarke Poorman, taught the young
adult Sunday School class, not by the popular methods of our day, but through
expository preaching. He often mentioned what he believed to be the three most
foundational principles of living the Christian life: separation, discipline,
and evangelism. As he often emphasized, separation must be first.
The clause
unfruitful works of darkness
paints a graphic picture. Unfruitful
is akarpos. The root karpos appears some 66 times in the New
Testament and carries the primary meaning of “the fruit of plants (Matt. 21:19)
. . . or the “produce of the earth” (Jas. 5:7, 18).” The extended meaning of karpos,
however, is more significant. As one authority explains, “The use of the term
fruit expressly indicates that it is not a question of deliberate,
self-determined action on man’s part. Rather it is that “fruit-bearing” which
follows from his turning to God and the power of the Spirit working in him.”[1] In other words, just as fruit
automatically comes from a plant or tree because it is its nature to do so,
spiritual fruit is automatic in the Christian. We don’t produce fruit because
of our effort, but because of the Spirit’s energy. Fruit comes
because that is now our nature. That is why our Lord said, “By their fruits ye
shall know them” (Matt. 7:20).
When the
prefix a is added, however, akarpos means the exact opposite,
“unfruitful, fruitless, barren, unproductive.” Among its eight appearance in
the New Testament, we find it in reference to the “thorny ground hearing” in
the Parable of the Sower: “He also that received seed among the thorns is he
that heareth the word; and the care of this world, and the deceitfulness of
riches, choke the word, and he becometh unfruitful” (Matt. 13:22). Jude uses it
to refer to apostates, who are “clouds . . . without water, carried about of
winds; trees whose fruit withereth, without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by
the roots” (Jude 12).
May we
also interject that it’s significant that while many today claim to “pray in tongues,”
Paul makes it clear, however, that the state of mind that such prayer comes
from is unfruitful: “For if I pray in an unknown tongue, my spirit prayeth, but
my understanding is unfruitful” (I Cor. 14:14). “An unknown tongue” refers to
the pagan practice of ecstatic, unintelligible utterances that
supposedly communed with the gods spirit–to–spirit, something the Corinthians
began mimicking in their church services. But such mindless, ecstatic “prayer,”
which many practice today, is fruitless
and unproductive because it does not edify (14:4).
So, just
as fruitfulness is automatic because of natural inclination, so is
unfruitfulness. The unsaved man does not have to work at being unfruitful; it
comes naturally. As our Lord declared, “Even so every good tree bringeth forth
good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot
bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit”
(Matt. 7:17-18).
Moving on
to the word work, this is
ergon, the result or object of employment, something to be done. Darkness is skotos, the
point of which, as mentioned back in verse 8, is not just the absence of light
but “chiefly of the effect of darkness upon man,” which is his limited ability
to see and his subsequence groping in uncertainty. [2] It “is the emblem and region of
ignorance and depravity.”[3]
Putting
the clause together, then, as man gropes in ignorance and uncertainty, the
result of all his employment is total fruitlessness and barrenness.
Paul,
therefore, commands have no
fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness. Does this not seem
to make perfect sense? In light of such ignorance, uncertainty, fruitlessness,
and barrenness, why would we want to
have anything to do with it? As one commentator asks, “Who wants to spend his
life in working a field which produces no fruit at all?”[4] But as logical as it might seem,
Paul still feels the need to give the command to Believers. Why?
The key to
understanding this injunction is to compare it with verse 7: “Be not ye
therefore partakers with them.” In verse 7 we find the command not to
participate directly in the evil of the world. Why does Paul give this
injunction to Christians? Because we are tempted with such fleshly evil
every day. But Paul goes further here in verse 11. We are now told that we
must not even fellowship
with people who do such evil things.
To prove
that principle, we must examine the Greek word for fellowship, sunkoinōneō. The root koinōneō means “to share in something” and
implies that this sharing is with someone else. The prefix sun
intensifies the word. So, the full meaning is, “to become a partner together
with others.”[5] Paul’s point, then, is that the
believer is not to become involved in sin even by association. Yes, we live in
this world, but we are not of this world. No, we are not to be separate
from contact with the world, but we are to be separate from conformity
to the world.
In the Rebellion of 1798 in England, the United Irishmen, with the aid of France, attempted to secure the complete separation of Ireland from England. The United Irishmen were defeated at Vinegar Hill on June 21, which led to the legislative union of Great Britain and Ireland under the name United Kingdom on January 1, 1801. The story is told that during that rebellion, the rebels took prisoner a little drummer of the king’s troops, and told him to beat the drum for them. The little boy laid his drum on the ground and jumped onto it, shredding the parchment, and then cried, “God forbid that the king’s drum should ever be beat for rebels.” The rebels promptly killed the little hero, but they could not erase the memory of such courage and loyalty.[6] What a challenge to Christians to have no fellowship with that which betrays their Lord.
By far,
the most pivotal passage concerning Christian separation appears in II
Corinthians 6:14-7:1. We’ve mentioned this passage twice in recent studies, but
may quote it once again and briefly apply it:
Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, And will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty. Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.
As mentioned back in verses 6-7, Paul’s first metaphor, of course, is based on Deuteronomy 22:10 (cf. Lev. 19:19), which commanded not to yoke together an ox and a donkey for plowing because of the obvious reason that the step and pull of the two is uneven. That was just simple common sense. The other metaphors build upon that one with increasingly graphic and even more contradictory comparisons: righteousness—unrighteousness; light—darkness; Christ—Satan (Belial); belief—unbelief (infidelity); God’s temple—pagan idols. The point is unambiguous: it is impossible to bring such opposites together; they can have nothing to do with one another.
Deeper still, it’s interesting to note the graphic words Paul uses that describe a relationship. First, he uses “fellowship,” which translates metochē, meaning sharing, participation. “Communion” is the familiar word koinōnia, which speaks of partnership, close union, and brotherly bond. Paul then speaks of “concord,” sumphōnēsis (English “symphony”), which pictures unison and agreement. Next is “part,” which is meris, a share or portion or something. Finally, Paul uses the word “agreement,” sunkatathesis, an accord or a consensus.
Can there be any doubt as to the importance of the
Christians separation from the world? Paul heaps one word upon another so there
will be no misunderstanding about the Christian forging too close a bond with
the non-Christian. There simply can be no sharing, participation, partnership,
close union, brotherly bond, unison, or consensus. Without being legalistic,
those graphic words provide several
obvious applications concerning separation.
First, it is never right for a
Christian to marry a non-Christian. Of all relationships, in fact, this one is
the most unthinkable. Still I have heard Christians argue, “Well, I need to
pray about whether God wants me to marry that unbeliever.” No! There is no need
to pray about anything that God has already revealed in His Word. Such a
situation doesn’t require prayer, just obedience.
Second, this principle goes deeper to
show that a Christian shouldn’t even date an unbeliever because a spiritual
Christian is not going to have the same interests and desires. Besides, one
will not be tempted to marry someone he has not already dated.
Third, this principle goes still deeper
to show that it is a mistake for a Christian to marry or date another Christian
who has radically differing doctrinal viewpoints. Many believe that as long as
a Christian marries another Christian, then both are in God’s will. That is not
so! How could there be harmony and spiritual growth as a couple and as a family
when there are radically differing doctrinal viewpoints? Someone will have to
have to compromise in the end.
Fourth, the same is true is of marrying
or dating a believer who is not spiritually mature and committed to spiritual
growth. It is because of this point and the previous point that I am so
convinced of the importance of in-depth premarital counseling. I have received
many phone calls over the years from couples asking, “Will you marry us?” My
answer is always the same: “Maybe, but before I agree to do so, we must be
several sessions of Biblical counseling first.” Often the reply has been,
“Well, thank you. Goodbye.” Tragically, fewer and fewer pastors today bother to
offer any counsel, much less an in-depth Biblical study of marriage and
the family. Many pastors seem to view doing weddings as just another thing
pastors are supposed to do. I go so far, in fact, that even after the in-depth
counseling, only then do I decide whether to perform the wedding.
Fifth, a Christian should not even make
a business partnership with an unbeliever. For a Christian to do so might
demand compromises of ethics, but at the very least, a spiritual Christian will
have different values, methods, motives, and goals.
Sixth, a Christian should not be a
member of a secret lodge or other such organization. Such organizations like
the “Masons” are not Christian. As we detailed back in 4:6 (“One
God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all”), the literature of the Masons by
itself is enough to prove its religious overtones, not to mention its
unscriptural teachings and even pagan practices.
May I say
again, I am not trying to be legalistic or narrow-minded. But Paul is very
specific here, heaping one word upon the other to emphasize separation. Why is
this principle so important? Why make such an issue of the matter? Because, as
verse 17 declares, God wants us to be pure, to “be ye separate” and “touch not
the unclean thing.” He does not want us to be defiled by evil or by fellowship
with those who do evil. Further, when we do fellowship with evil, we break
fellowship and communion with God. He can only “receive us” when we are separate from this world.
Even with
all that in mind, we discover that our separation from evil and from those who
do it goes one step deeper yet, for the Word of God declares that we are not to
fellowship with a Christian who is living in sin:
I wrote unto you in an epistle not to company with fornicators: Yet not altogether with the fornicators of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or with idolaters; for then must ye needs go out of the world. But now I have written unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such an one no not to eat. (I Cor. 5:9-11 – emphasis added).
Not only
do we not fellowship with
the unbeliever who practices sin, we are not to fellowship with the believer
who practices sin. The surrounding context, of course, speaks of “church
discipline,” the confronting of a Christian with known sin and dismissing him
from fellowship in the
local church if there is no repentance. The construction of the Greek
terms for the sins listed here is called the “substantive,” which indicates a pattern
of behavior, that is, persistent behavior that is affecting the Church.
Therefore, if a Christian has been put out of the Church for persistent,
unrepentant sin, other
believers are not to fellowship
with him, that is, not have a close relationship with him. Now, this does not
mean we snub him, or that we never speak to him, or that we “shun” him, as the
Amish custom is. Rather, we are to continue to admonish him and try to restore
him. This restoration is always, in fact, the goal of church discipline (II
Thes. 3:14-15).
So, the first demand of walking according to light is to be separate. As John 17:15 implies, and which we’ll examine later, we are in the world but not of the world. Charles Spurgeon recounts the day when faithful 18th Century pastor Matthew Wilks rode by a coach in which a young nobleman and a female passenger were riding and overheard the nobleman start an improper conversation with the coachman and the woman. At a favorable opportunity Mr. Wilks attracted his attention, and said, “My lord, maintain your rank!” The reproof was heard and heeded.[7] May that challenge every believer to maintain his or her rank, to remember who we are and how we are to live.
This leads to the second demand.
II. Take A Stand (vs. 11b-13)
but rather reprove them.
For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret.
But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light: for whatsoever doth make manifest is light.
Lest we
think that it’s enough to just withdraw from sin, as a monk would do in the
monastery, Paul adds that we are rather to reprove “the unfruitful works of darkness.” Reprove is elegchō. In Classical Greek, both Plato
and Aristotle used this word for “the logical exposition of the facts of a
matter for the purpose of refuting the (usually sophistical) argument of an
opponent.” The word, therefore, developed the “principal meaning of convince,
refute.”[8]
That
meaning is essentially the same in the New Testament. So strong is this word,
in fact, that Greek scholar Richard Trench writes:
It means to rebuke another with the truth so that the person confesses, or at least is convinced, of his sin . . . [It] refers to an accusation that is true, and often implies an inward or outward acknowledgment of that truthfulness on the part of the accused. This [it] represents the glorious prerogative of the truth in its highest operation, not merely to silence its adversary but to convince him of his error.[9]
John
Calvin adds that “it literally signifies to drag forth to the light what was
formerly unknown.”[10] What a vivid picture! We drag
error, perhaps kicking and screaming, into the light to expose it.
Paul, for
example, declared in no uncertain terms that this is a pastor’s responsibility.
To Pastor Timothy he wrote, “Them that sin rebuke before all, that
others also may fear” (I Tim. 5:20) and, “Preach the word; be instant in
season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering
and doctrine” (II Tim. 4:2). Likewise to Pastor Titus he wrote, “Holding fast
the faithful word as he hath been taught, that he may be able by sound doctrine
both to exhort and to convince the gainsayers [lit. ‘those who
contradict or appose’]. . . Wherefore rebuke them sharply, that they may
be sound in the faith” (Titus 1:9, 13; emphasis added in all verses).
To say the
very least, all this flies in the face of the attitude of our day. While the
growing tendency in many churches is to avoid even the mention of false
doctrine or sin, Paul’s repeated emphasis is the refutation of such
practices. The ruling attitude in society today is “tolerance.” “How dare
we say that something is wrong,” it is argued. We should appreciate commentator
Kent Hughes quite blunt but truthful observation:
According to the world, Christianity ought to be as broad and accepting as possible. And the fact is that clergy who think in this way, who baptize every form of sin as OK, become the darlings of the media. A cultured accent, a fuchsia-colored bishop’s shirt, and the urging to place condoms in Gideon Bibles will get you a spot on Good Morning, America. Our culture loves the “open-minded,” nonjudgmental, “live and let live” personality.
William
Hendrickson also addresses another attitude of our day when he writes: “One is
not being ‘nice’ to a wicked man by endeavoring to make him feel what a fine
fellow he is. The cancerous tumor must be removed, not humored.”[11] Still the attitude today is to
address people’s “felt needs” and avoid even mentioning sin.
The fact
is, however, that to be tolerant of sin is not only to approve of
sin—to overlook and sanction it—but is even to be complicit in that sin,
to actually be an active participant. God does not want His children to be tolerant
but to be discerning. Back in the 16th Century, John Calvin
preached on Ephesians and spoke these words:
Most men and women nowadays wink at all manner of evil and disorder, and stop their ears at the things that they might ill heard, and every man seeks to conceal his fellow’s wickedness, men of men’s, and women of women’s. They might remedy a great number of enormities that are committed, but they would rather go and pollute their gowns and coats with other people’s dung and filthiness, than expose their vices . . . The very way therefore for us to show in practice and in good earnest that we belong to God and are enlightened by His Holy Spirit and by His Word is to expose things which otherwise would, as it were, lie lurking a long time if we did not draw them into the light.[12]
Many today
would read that and think, “But that was centuries ago and is just the old
theology of a bunch of dead guys. We are much more enlightened today.” But that
was precisely Calvin’s point. We are only “enlightened” if we love the light
and expose error to be error. God demands that we take a stand for
Truth, that we expose and rebuke sin. How, then, do we do that?
First, and
foremost, we rebuke sin in the lives of those around us indirectly by
just living Godly in front of them. The entire context surrounding our text, in
fact, emphasizes a life of “goodness and righteousness and truth” (v. 9). The
right attitudes, actions, words, values, motives, and priorities will be
convicting to those whose lives are the opposite of those qualities.
Second, we
rebuke sin directly. There will be times when sin must be openly
rebuked. Now, usually this is to be done by pastors through the pulpit ministry
or through church discipline (I Cor. 5; Matt. 18:15-17), but there will be
times when every Christian should humbly take a stand and speak against sin.
Again,
there is the attitude of monasticism, which advocates withdrawing from the
world into a monastery to insulate the person from the world. But this is the
very opposite of what Scripture teaches. In His High Priestly Prayer to the
Father in John 17, our Lord prayed this for His disciples:
And now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are . . . While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name . . . I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth (vs. 11-12, 14-17).
Never did
our Lord or one of the Apostles teach withdrawal from the world, that we lock
ourselves away somewhere to escape the world. Rather, as mentioned earlier,
they taught that we are in the world but not of the world.
Martyn
Lloyd-Jones reminds us of what is perhaps the best Biblical example of the
principle of the Christian being in the world but not of it.[13] In Mark 5:1-20, we read of how our
Lord healed a demon possessed man in the country of the Gadarenes. The man’s
possession was horrific; he was wild, cut himself with stones, and went about
screaming (krazō). Our Lord, of course, healed the
man by driving the demons from him and sending them into a herd of pigs, after
which we see the man seated, clothed, and in his right mind. The people who
witnessed this became afraid and insisted that Jesus leave. How odd that is!
They were not afraid of the demon possessed man, but were afraid of the One who
healed him. As the Lord entered his ship, however, the man asked if He could
come along, but Jesus answered, but Jesus would not allow it.
At first
glance that does seem odd, does it not? Why on earth would the Lord tell Him
such a thing? Why send him back to the very place of his horrible possession
and indescribable misery? Wasn’t there a danger of the demons returning?
Wouldn’t it be better to get out of that place and start a new life? Obviously
not, for out Lord answers all those questions in His response to the man: “Go
home to thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee,
and hath had compassion on thee” (v. 19). He sends the man back to be a witness
armed with the power of God in his life. He doesn’t tell the man to go to cave
somewhere to get away from his old life or to go to another country to start a
new life. No, he said I want you to go back to the same world you were in but
now armed with the Truth and power of God. The spectators, in fact, had already
seen the difference in the man, and it frightened them. They would now see and
hear more of that transformed life. He was still in the world but no
longer of it.
Dear Christian Friend, that is why we are here. With our lives and our lips, “we are ambassadors for Christ” (II Cor. 5:20). “Ambassadors” is the Greek presbeuo, which is in the same family of words as presbuteros, which we examined back in 4:11, and which basically means “one who is advanced in years or of mature age.” It was the best word in Greek to correspond with the Jewish concept of “elders” (e.g., Tit. 1:5), that is, the mature leaders of Israel.
The verb presbeuō, then, means “to be older or
eldest” and was “used also for institutional functions in society, for which
the wisdom of age is regarded as a prerequisite.” It was, therefore, “used for
the activity of an ambassador, who represents the people who send him and
negotiates for them.”[14] Even in our day rarely will you see
a “young ambassador,” because those two words are contradictory.
Why does
Paul use this word? Does it imply that only older people can witness for
Christ? Of course not. Rather it pictures the maturity that comes with
age. The ambassador
for Christ is a mature Christian, one who says and does the right thing in
every circumstance, one who truly represents Christ in action and attitude.
Commentator Albert Barnes elaborates on this wonderful picture:
He is sent to do what the sovereign would himself do were he present. They are sent to make known the will of the sovereign, and to negotiate matters of commerce, of war, or of peace, and in general everything affecting the interests of the sovereign among the people to whom they are sent. At all times, and in all countries, an ambassador is a sacred character, and his person is regarded as inviolable, he is bound implicitly to obey the instructions of his sovereign, and as far as possible to do only what the sovereign would do were he, himself present. Ministers are ambassadors for Christ, as they are sent to do what he would do were he personally present. They are to make known, and to explain, and enforce the terms on which God is willing to be reconciled to men. They are not to negotiate on any new terms, nor to change those which God has proposed, nor to follow their own plans or devices; but they are simply to urge, explain, state, and enforce the terms on which God is willing to be reconciled. Of course they are to seek the honour of the Sovereign who has sent them forth, and to seek to do only his will. They go not to promote their own welfare; not to seek honour, dignity, or emolument; but they go to transact the business which the Son of God would engage in were he again personally on the earth. It follows that their office is one of great dignity, and great responsibility, and that respect should be showed them as the ambassadors of the King of kings.
While the
context of this verse speaks specifically of Paul, his fellow ministers, and by
extension all preachers, by implication all believers are included. We are all
representatives of our Lord on this earth. In sad contrast to that picture,
there are many Christian leaders who not acting like true ambassadors. Instead
of saying and doing what the Sovereign Ruler tells them to do in His Word, they
are renegotiating, redefining, and redesigning what God has ordained in the
Gospel and His Church. Every believer, whether Christian leader or layman, is
to stand for the Truth and propagate only that.
I was
remind here of a dear friend of mine of 30 years. He has for some 25 of those
years been a salesman and coordinator for other salesmen and their customers,
troubleshooting problems and smoothing out operations. His job demands a great
deal of travel and the customary “entertaining” of customers that goes with
that type of job. Because of his Christian testimony, however, he decided from
the start that he would not drink alcohol, something that is very rare in that
type of business. In those early days he was told by other salesmen that he
wouldn’t last six months in his job if he didn’t drink with his customers, but
after 25 years, he’s still going strong.
Yes, we
can, indeed, be in this world and not of it. We can take a stand
on the Truth and not renegotiate it for the sake of expediency.
It is
extremely significant to notice that Paul issues a warning in verse 12: For it is a shame even to speak of those
things which are done of them in secret. Yes, Paul commands that we
are to expose sin, but he also qualifies it. Why do men do things in secret? Why do “men [love]
darkness rather than light?” Because their “deeds [are] evil” (Jn. 3:19). Their
deeds are detestable, disgraceful, and dishonorable.
Therefore,
Paul says, it is a shame even to
speak of those things. In other words, “In your exposing of sin, do
not be overly explicit or detailed.” In other words, you don’t have to go into
the gory details. There are some preachers today who are just too explicit and
detailed in discussing moral issues. But God says that some things are so vile
and wicked that He doesn’t even want us to hear about them. The sordid details
of sin is not only unnecessary, but such details often arouse curiosity and
even tempt people to sin.
How
ridiculous is the argument, “Oh, but we should not be sheltered from such
things; we need to know these things so we can be more effective in witness.” I
have even read of some Christian leaders who have sat and watched pornographic
films so that they could be “better informed.” May we submit that that is sin!
Do these men actually think that Paul or the Lord Jesus Himself would have done
such a thing? We don’t need to know such details. All we need to know is just
enough to stay away and be rid of such things.
There is
also the tendency to speak so candidly about past sin, from which God
saved us, that it can actually become a temptation. I still remember being at a
youth meeting back when I was a young adult and hearing a man who had been a
gangster—a “Wiseguy” as they are called—give his testimony and go into some
sordid details. Why do that? Why not just say, “Yes, I was a Wiseguy, but God
graciously saved me before I got whacked” and leave it at that? Spurgeon was
keenly aware of this even in his day:
I feel grieved when I hear or read of people who can stand up and talk about what they used to do before they were converted very much in the way in which an old seafaring man talks of his voyages and storms. No, no; be ashamed of your former lusts in your ignorance, and if you must speak of them to the praise and glory of Christ, speak with bated breath and tears and sighs. Death, rottenness, corruption, are all most fitly left in silence, or, if they demand a voice, let it be as solemn and mournful as a knell.[15]
Verse 13
sums-up this second demand: But all
things that are reproved are made manifest by the light: for whatsoever doth
make manifest is light. This tells us that all things become visible
when they are exposed to the light.
It also declares another profound truth, that anything that does expose
error is light. The
opposite is also true: if a teaching does not expose error, it is not light. Mark it down, preaching
that does not expose error—and we have a lot of it today—is not light. Many prominent Christian
leaders today pride themselves in not preaching against sin and repackaging the
Gospel to be appealing to one’s sense of purpose. But such error is not light.
How the light is hated by many today! The
story is told of a colonial governor of the Bahamas who was about to
return to England. Before departing, he offered to use his influence to acquire
from the home government any favor the colonists might desire. The unanimous
reply was startling! They cried: “Tell them to tear down the lighthouses; they
are ruining the prosperity of this colony.” The people were salvagers.[16]
While many hate the light for their own gain, the true
child of God loves the light
and adores the Truth.
This leads
us to the third demand.
III. Don’t Sleep (v. 14)
Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.
Just as no
light enters our eyes
when we are asleep physically, likewise no spiritual light enters when we are asleep spiritually. So Paul commands
awake thou that sleepest.
Awake is egeirō. Used literally, it means “to rise
from sleep, implying also the idea of rising up from the posture of sleep.”[17] In Matthew 8:25, for example,
where the terrified disciples came to Jesus “and awoke him, saying, Lord, save
us: we perish.” We can just see them shaking Him awake and pulling Him up to
his feet to do something. Used metaphorically, of course, it speaks of waking
up from lethargy or sluggishness.
I would
submit, however, that both ideas are implicit. To illustrate, as most teenage
boys, I remember my parents trying to wake me up from that deep teenage boy
sleep, which enables them to peacefully sleep through a freight train
thundering through their room. After finally waking me up and getting a
response, one of them would five minutes later call again, “Are you awake?” at
which time I would groggily answer, “Yes.” But was I? Of course not. I was
conscious, but still in the position of sleep, far from awake, alert, and ready
for the day.
The same
is true spiritually. Many Christians are conscious—they profess Christ, go to
Church, pray, and so forth. But many of them are not really awake, not really out of the
posture of sleep, not alert and ready for the challenges and commands of
Christian living. Oh, how we need to awake!
The words Wherefore he saith indicate that
this verse is a quotation of something, and many commentators have wondered
about the source. Some have speculated that is from the Apocrypha, which is
ridiculous because neither Paul nor any other New Testament writer ever quotes
the Apocrypha. After all, why would they?
Many
others, however, think that these lines are from an early Christian hymn. While
that might very well be true, there can be little doubt that they are based
upon some Old Testament Scripture. This is obvious because Paul used the very
same words, Wherefore he saith,
back in 4:8, where he partially quotes Psalm 68:18. As John Eadie observes, “It
would be quite contrary to Pauline usage to suppose that this formula
introduced any citation but one from the Old Testament.”[18]
What Old Testament Scripture, then, does Paul adapt here? Isaiah 60:1: “Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the LORD is risen upon thee.” While some commentators say that there is little or no similarity between these two verses, the more one compares them the more likeness he sees. [19] Because of the darkness of sin around them, the people of Israel were admonished to put on the light of Jehovah’s glory since they had not been doing so. Paul brings this admonition into the Church Age, perhaps using his own “free rendering”[20] of it. What a terrible thing it is that there are Christians today who are barely discernable from lost people; quite often values, goals, motives, priorities, and basic attitudes are the same. As theologian and commentator Charles Hodge correlates the two verses: “In both, there is the call to those who are asleep or dead to rise and to receive the light, and there is the promise that Jehovah, Lord, or Christ (equivalent terms in the mind of the apostle) would give them light.”
Paul goes
on to say that such Christians are actually dead. No, this doesn’t mean that such are dead spiritually,
but it means that such are dead effectively; that is, such Christians
are not growing and have no practical vitality or useful witness. This verse is
a call to repentance and renewed devotion to the Lord. If we do, Paul adds, Christ shall give [us] light. The
implication is that He will give us even more light than we have; that is, He will illumine His Word that
much more to our hearts and minds.
Dear
Christian, are you asleep? May we all wake up!
Meditating on the
Wonders of Light
Before closing this section on “walking in light” (5:8‑14), let us take one more look at light itself. Light is truly a fascinating phenomenon that has baffled men for centuries. We know what light does, but we really do not know what it is. The 17th Century Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens developed the theory that light travels in waves, but his contemporary, the famous English mathematician and physicist Sir Isaac Newton, described light as being comprised of particles. While both views are actually defensible, and while it’s now believed that both theories are essentially complementary, it’s obvious that we still don’t know what light is.
But again, we do know what light does, and when we consider some of the aspects of its nature, we recognize some profound spiritual applications.
First, light is emitted from a source.
Whether it comes from the Sun or from a small flashlight, light has a source.
What’s more, all physical light, according to Scripture, originated at
creation, when God said, “Let there be light: and there was light” (Gen. 1:3).
Spiritually,
the source of light is God and Him alone. The Psalmist declares, “God is the
LORD, which hath showed us light” (Ps. 118:27). Isaiah thundered to rebellious
Israel, “Who is among you that feareth the LORD, that obeyeth the voice of his
servant, that walketh in darkness, and hath no light? let him trust in the name
of the LORD, and stay upon his God.” Later he added, “The sun shall be no more
thy light by day; neither for brightness shall the moon give light unto thee:
but the LORD shall be unto thee an everlasting light, and thy God thy glory”
(60:11). Paul declared to the Corinthians, “The god of this world hath blinded
the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of
Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them” (II Cor. 4:4). And as
the Apostle John makes clear, “This then is the message which we have heard of
him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all”
(I Jn. 1:5).
Second, light spreads out the farther it
travels. We’ve all seen this with a flashlight. No matter how focused the beam,
the light spreads out. As John declared of the Lord Jesus, “That was the true
Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world” (Jn. 1:9). Not
every person is redeemed, but God’s light, the Lord Jesus Christ, is available
to all.
Third, when light strikes an object
having a hard surface, it is either absorbed or scattered in all directions. An
interesting phenomenon of light is that frequencies are absorbed differently,
which gives objects their color. In contrast, white surfaces scatter light of
all wavelengths equally, while a black surface absorbs all light. Spiritually,
each of us is a unique “surface” and will reflect God’s light uniquely. “Let
your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify
your Father which is in heaven” (Matt. 5:16).
Fourth, light produces change. Another
phenomenon is how light effects certain chemicals. Sunlight, for example,
triggers photosynthesis in plants. Also, in photography when light strikes
chemicals that contain silver, they turn dark in the presence of other
chemicals. Likewise, the light of Christ and His word effects transforming
change. John writes, for example, of a “new commandment” to love sacrificially
as our Lord did and that this new commandment comes “because the darkness is
past, and the true light now shineth” (I Jn. 2:8). This is why Paul writes,
“Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed
away; behold, all things are become new” (II Cor. 5:17). The light of Christ
always produces change. Light drives away the darkness and all the things that
hide in that darkness.
Fifth, light is a constant, the only constant in the physical universe, in fact. It was for that very reason that Einstein said that he could construct the Theory of Relativity. Today the speed of light is known with near certainty to be 186,282.396 miles per second. That’s almost seven and one half times around the world at the tick of a clock!
More amazing, however, is that that speed is always the same. The term “relativity,” as Albert Einstein used it, derives from the fact that the appearance of the world is relative—that is, it depends upon—our state of motion. This is actually easy to illustrate. Picture yourself standing on a train that is moving 50 miles per hour and that you throw a ball in the direction the train is moving. Now, relative to you and the train, the ball leaves your hand traveling at twenty miles per hour, but relative to the point of view of a spectator standing alongside the tracks, how fast is the ball moving? Of course, 70 miles an hour—the velocity of the train plus the ball.
Now picture the train going really fast, say half the speed of light, approximately 93,000 miles per second. Instead of throwing a ball, however, you turn on a flashlight. How fast is the light traveling relative to the observer standing alongside the tracks? Would it be 279,000 miles per second, that is, 93,000 (your speed on the train) plus 186,000 (the speed of light)? No, because light always travels at the same speed. Likewise, how fast is the light traveling relative to you on the train? The same speed. The speed of light remains constant for all observers.
What a profound and wonderful truth this is spiritually! God’s light is always the same; It remains constant for all observers. As the Psalmist declares, “O send out thy light and thy truth: let them lead me; let them bring me unto thy holy hill, and to thy tabernacles” (Ps. 43:3). God’s “Word is truth” (Jn. 17:17) and in “the Father of lights [there] is no variableness, neither shadow of turning” (Jas. 1:17).
Tragically, we have another form of “relativity” in our
world today, but this one recognizes no constant. Everything truly is relative
to each person’s position and nothing is absolute. Worse, this has spilled over
into the Church where Scripture is not the sole and sufficient authority. How
we need to recognize that whether
we are moving or standing still, no matter what our environment, God’s light is
the only constant. This leads to one other aspect of the nature of light.
Sixth, light travels in a straight line.
This is nowhere better illustrated nowadays than in the fascinating world of
lasers. Teachers use them for a pointer, builders use them for leveling, the
military uses them for targeting weapons, and the uses go on. All this is
possible because light travels in a straight line.
In the
mysteries of the universe, however, there is an exception. As Einstein also
theorized, and which was later confirmed through scientific experiments, strong
gravitational fields produced by massive objects, such as the Sun, actually
“curve” space so that light no longer travels in a straight line but is bent.
Likewise,
if I may take the liberty of stretching the analogy, there are countless
individuals today who bend and warp the light of Scripture the way they wish, who
twist Scripture to say what will justify their actions, attitudes, and
lifestyle.
But God’s
Word is to be “cut straight,” which is the literal idea of the Greek behind “rightly
dividing the word of truth” in II Timothy 2:15. The verb orthotomeō (orthos, “straight” and temnō, “cut or divide”) appears only
there in the New Testament. It’s often observed that this refers to plowing a
straight furrow or cutting a straight seam, but more accurate is the idea of
“cutting a path in a straight direction.” The idea behind temnō (which does not appear by itself in
the NT), “is that of cutting a path through a forest or difficult terrain so
that the traveler may go directly to his destination.”[21] This is the picture, in fact, in its use in two instances in the
Septuagint where it’s translated “direct”: “In all thy ways acknowledge him,
and he shall direct thy paths” (Prov. 3:6), and “The righteousness of
the perfect shall direct his way” (11:5).
What, then,
is Paul saying? Simply this: keep the Word of God straight; never misuse
It, bend It to your thinking, or twist It to prop up your own opinions.
May we
rejoice in the wonders of Light.