Friday, July 23, 2010

Children of Light


For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light (for the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness, righteousness, and truth), finding out what is acceptable to the Lord. And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them. Ephesians 5:8:11

In this letter to the Ephesians Paul uses a contrast to speak to the lifestyle that some of the believers were keeping. He was not speaking to those outside the body of Christ but to those within.
The first part of the contrast was who they WERE. “You were darkness ….”, he said, and this described the life as well as the character we had before we were saved from it. In this statement Paul uses a contrast of light and dark, to opposites, to describe who we now are and who we used to be.
Because of that he exhorts us to “walk” (live out life) as children of light. In verse 9 he reminds them that the fruit (the outcome of having the Spirit in our lives) is all goodness, righteousness, and truth and what is acceptable to the Lord. He again uses a contrast of the fruit of the Spirit verses the unfruitful works of darkness. We are not to have to fellowship (to become a partaker of) with the unfruitful works of darkness but rather expose them. Having no fellowship means to have no share or participation in the darkened life-style. Instead he says to expose them? What does that mean? To say exactly what they are. But it is not as much of a verbal exposure as it is a life style exposure. That’s where it gets tough unless we are sold out to Jesus. It is tough because if we tell the truth of things then we can make ourselves pretty unpopular with people who continue to partake in them whether they are unbelievers or believers who want to continue to dabble in the flesh. If we live our lives free from the darkness it becomes very obvious and we are saying with out actions that we think the darkness is wrong. The other situation is that we ourselves can no longer partake of those things and so we must choose to say no to our flesh when it cries out like a spoiled child.
But we have such a hard time to tell the truth about things if we are not living a life that validates our words. We go see “Adult movies” and we watch TV programs with “adult themes.” We also visit “adult” websites and we refuse to acknowledge that what that means is that it is going to be sexually explicit in either what we see or what we hear or both. We partake in “adult beverages” and play “adult games” in the casinos. BUT WE ARE CHILDREN! Or at least we are supposed to be. How much goodness, righteousness, and truth and what is acceptable to the Lord is involved in “adult activities”?
When we received Jesus Christ as our savior we are given the right to become the children of God. (John 1:12). Earlier in this same letter Paul calls believers to be “imitators of God as dear children”. (Ephesians 5:1) Why is it that we think that there is a difference in sin because we are adults? Are we teaching our children that it is okay to have a double standard because we are adults? As they grow up they will look forward to a time when they can partake in “adult” activities. Unfortunately they generally want to try this while they are still very young.
Jesus saved us from our sins. He did not do this that we can continue in them, no matter what our age. He saved us from our sins so we can live in true freedom, freedom not to sin and to walk in the light with absolute freedom and confidence. And….we will be easily identified as His kids.

By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep His commandments. 1John 5:2

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Welcome to my corner of the pasture. I hope you find encouraging words that will nourish your heart as well as words that challenge it... and your thinking.

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I was raised in southern California, married my lovely wife, Lynda in 1972 and moved to Bullhead City over in 1976. I began a bible study in 1980 that became a Calvary Chapel in 1981. I had been involved in work in Mexico and a made a short term trip to Hungry in 1993. In 1996 I went to and fell in love with Bulgaria. We have been working with several ministries there ever since.