'Walk as children of light.'--Eph. v. 8.
It was our Lord who coined this great name for His disciples. Paul's use
of it is probably a reminiscence of the Master's, and so is a hint of
the existence of the same teachings as we now find in the existing
Gospels, long before their day. Jesus Christ said, 'Believe in the
light, that ye may be the children of light'; and Paul gives
substantially the same account of the way by which a man becomes a Son
of the Light when he says, in the words preceding my text, 'Ye were
sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord.'
Union with Him makes light, just as the bit of carbon will glow as long
as it is in contact with the electric force, and subsides again into
darkness when that is switched off. To be in Christ is to be a child of
light, and to believe in Christ is to be in Him.
But the intense moral earnestness of our Apostle is indicated by the
fact that on both occasions in which he uses this designation he does
so, not for the purpose of heightening the sense of the honour and
prerogative attached to it, but for the sake of deducing from it plain
and stringent moral duties, and heightening the sense of obligation to
holy living.
'Walk as children of light.' Be true to your truest, deepest self.
Manifest what you are. Let the sweet, sacred secrets of inward communion
come out in the trivialities of ordinary conduct; make of your every
thought a deed, and see to it that every deed be vitalised and purified
by its contact with the great truths and thoughts that lie in this name.
These are various ways of putting this one all-sufficient directory of
conduct.
Now, in the context, the Apostle expands this concentrated exhortation
in three or four different directions, and perhaps we may best set forth
its meaning if we shape our remarks by these, I venture to cast them,
for the sake of emphasis, into a hortatory form.
I. Aim at an all-round productiveness of the natural fruits of the
light.
The true reading is, 'Walk as children of light, for the fruit of the
light' (not _spirit_, as the Authorised Version reads it) 'is in all
goodness and righteousness and truth.' Now, it is obvious that the
alteration of 'light' instead of 'spirit' brings the words into
connection with the preceding and the following. The reference to the
'fruits of the spirit' would be entirely irrelevant in this place; a
reference to the 'fruit of the _light_,' as being every form of goodness
and righteousness and truth, is altogether in place.
There is, then, a natural tendency in the light to blossom out into all
forms and types of goodness. 'Fruit' suggests the idea of natural,
silent, spontaneous, effortless growth. And, although that is by no
means a sufficient account of the process by which bad men become good
men, it is an inseparable element, in all true moral renovation, that it
be the natural outcome and manifestation of an inward principle;
otherwise it is mere hypocritical adornment, or superficial appearance.
If we are to do good we must first of all _be_ good. If from us there
are to come righteousness and truth, and all other graces of character,
there must, first of all, be the radical change which is involved in
passing from separateness in the darkness to union with Jesus Christ in
the light. The Apostle's theory of moral renovation is that you must
begin with the implantation in the spirit of the source of all moral
goodness--viz. Jesus Christ--brought into the heart by the uniting power
of humble faith. And then there will be lodged in our being a vital
power, of which the natural outcome will be all manner of fair and pure
things. Effort is needed, as I shall have to say; but prior to effort
there must be union with Jesus Christ.
This wide, general commandment of our text is sufficiently definite,
thinks Paul; for if the light be in you it will naturally effloresce
into all forms of beauty. Light is the condition of fruitfulness.
Everywhere the vital germ is only acted upon by the light. No sunshine,
no flowers; darkness produces thin, etiolated, whitened, and feeble
shoots at the best. Let the light blaze in, and the blanched feebleness
becomes vigorous and unfolds itself. How much more will light be the
condition of fruitfulness when the very light itself is the seed from
which all fruit is developed.
But, still further, mark how there must be an all-round completeness in
order that we shall fairly set forth the glory and power of the light of
which our faith makes us children and partakers. The fruit 'is in all
goodness and righteousness and truth.' These three aspects--the good,
the right, the true--may not be a scientific, ethical classification,
but they give a sufficiently plain and practical distinction. Goodness,
in which the prevailing idea is beneficence and the kindlier virtues;
righteousness, which refers to the sterner graces of justice; truth, in
which the prevalent idea is conformity in action with facts and the
conditions of man's life and entire sincerity--these three do cover,
with sufficient completeness, the whole ground of possible human
excellence. But the Apostle widens them still further by that little
word _all_.
We all tend to cultivate those virtues which are in accordance with our
natural dispositions, or are made most easy to us by our circumstances.
And there is nothing in which we more need to seek comprehensiveness
than in the effort to educate ourselves into, and to educe from
ourselves, kinds of goodness and forms of excellence which are not
naturally in accordance with our dispositions, or facilitated by our
circumstances. The tree planted in the shrubbery will grow all lopsided;
the bushes on the edge of the cliff will be shorn away on the windward
side by the teeth of the south-western gale, and will lean over
northwards, on the side of least resistance. And so we all are apt to
content ourselves with doing the good things that are easiest for us, or
that fit into our temperament and character. Jesus Christ would have us
to be all-round men, and would that we should seek to aim after and
possess the kinds of excellence that are least cognate to our
characters. Are you strong, and do you pride yourself upon your
firmness? Cultivate gentleness. Are you amiable, and pride yourself,
perhaps, upon your sympathetic tenderness? Try to get a little iron and
quinine into your constitution. Seek to be the man that you are least
likely to be, and aim at a comprehensive development of '_all_
righteousness and goodness and truth.'
Further, remember that this all-round completeness is not attained as
the result of an effortless growth. True, these things are the fruits of
the light, but also true, they are the prizes of struggle and the
trophies of warfare. No man will ever attain to the comprehensive moral
excellence which it is in his own power to win; no Christian will ever
be as all-round a good man as he has the opportunities of being, unless
he makes it his business, day by day, to aim after the conscious
increase of gifts that he possesses, and the conscious appropriation and
possession of those of which he is still lacking. 'Nothing of itself
will come,' or very little. True, the light will shine out in variously
tinted ray if it be in a man, as surely as from the seed come the blade
and the ear and the full corn in the ear, but you will not have nor keep
the light which thus will unfold itself unless you put forth appropriate
effort. Christ comes into our hearts, but we have to bring Him there.
Christ dwells in our hearts, but we have to work into our nature, and
work out in action, the gifts that He bestows. They will advance but
little in the divine life who trust to the natural unfolding of the
supernatural life within them, and do not help its unfolding by their
own resolute activity. 'Walk as children of the light.' There is your
duty, for 'the fruit of the light is all righteousness.' One might have
supposed that the commandments would be, 'Be passive as children of the
light, for the light will grow.' But the Apostle binds together, as
always, the two things, the divine working and the human effort at
reception, retention, and application of that divine work, just as he
does in the great classical passage, 'Work out your own salvation, for
it is God that worketh in you.'
II. Secondly, the general exhortation of my text widens out itself into
this--test all things by Christ's approval of them.
'Proving what is well pleasing unto the Lord.' That, according to the
natural construction of the Greek, is the main way by which the Apostle
conceives that his general commandment of 'walking as children of the
light' is to be carried out. You do it if, step by step, and moment by
moment, and to every action of life, you apply this standard--Does
Christ like it? Does it please Him? When that test is rigidly applied,
then, and only then, will you walk as becomes the children of the light.
So, then, there is a standard--not what men approve, not what my
conscience, partially illuminated, may say is permissible, not what is
recognised as allowable by the common maxims of the world round about
us, but Christ's approval. How different the hard, stern, and often
unwelcome prescriptions of law and rigidity of some standards of right
become when they are changed into that which pleases the Divine Lord and
Lover! Surely it is something blessed that the hard, cold, and to such a
large extent powerless conceptions of duty or obligation shall be
changed into pleasing Jesus Christ; and that so our hearts shall be
enlisted in the service of our consciences, and love shall be glad to do
the Beloved's will. There are many ways by which the burden of life's
obligations is lightened to the Christian. I do not know that any of
them is more precious than the fact that law is changed into His will,
and that we seek to do what is right because it pleases the Master.
There is the standard.
It will be easy for us to come to the right appreciation of individual
actions when we are living in the light. Union with Jesus Christ will
make us quick to discern His will. We have a conscience;--well, that
needs educating and enlightening, and very often correcting. We have the
Word of God;--well, that needs explanation, and needs to be brought
close to our hearts. If we have Christ dwelling in us, in the measure
in which we are in sympathy with Him, we shall be gifted with clear
eyes, not indeed to discern the expedient--that belongs to another
region altogether--but we shall be gifted with very clear eyes to
discern right from wrong, and there will be an instinctive recoil from
the evil, and an instinctive attachment of ourselves to the good. If we
are in the Lord we shall easily be able to prove what is acceptable and
well-pleasing to Him.
We shall never walk as the children of the light, unless we have the
habit of referring everything, trifles and great things, to His
arbitrament, and seeking in them all to do what is pleasing in His
sight. The smallest deed may be brought under the operation of the
largest principles. Gravitation influences the microscopic grain of sand
as well as planets and sun. There is nothing so small but you can bring
it into this category--it either pleases or displeases Jesus Christ. And
the faults into which Christian men fall and in which they continue are
very largely owing to their carelessness in applying this standard to
the small things of their daily lives. The sleepy Custom House officers
let the contraband article in because it seems to be of small bulk.
There are old stories about how strong castles were taken by armed men
hidden in an innocent-looking cart of forage. Do you keep up a rigid
inspection at the frontier, and see to it that everything vindicates its
right to enter because it is pleasing to Jesus Christ.
III. Thirdly, we have here another expansion of the general command, and
that is--keep well separate from the darkness.
Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather
reprove them.' Now, your time will not allow me to dwell, as I had hoped
to do, upon the considerations to be suggested here. The very briefest
possible mention of them is all that I can afford.
'The unfruitful works of darkness';--well, then, the darkness has its
works, but though they be works they are not worth calling fruit. That
is to say, nothing except the conduct which flows from union with Jesus
Christ so corresponds to the man's nature and relations, or has any such
permanence about it as to entitle it to be called fruit. Other acts may
be 'works' but Paul will not dishonour the great word 'fruit' by
applying it to such rubbish as these, and so he brands them as
'unfruitful works of darkness.'
Keep well clear of them, says the Apostle. He is not talking here about
the relations between Christians and others, but about the relations
between Christian men and the _works_ of darkness. Only, of course, in
order to avoid fellowship with the works you will sometimes have to keep
yourselves well separate from their doers. Much association with such
men is forced upon us by circumstances, and much is the imperative duty
of Christian beneficence and charity. But I venture to express the
strong and growing conviction that there are few exhortations that the
secularised Church of this generation needs more than this commandment
of my text: 'Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness'
'What communion hath light with darkness?' Ah! we see plenty of it,
unnatural as it is, in the so-called Church of to-day. 'What concord
hath Christ with Belial? What part hath he that believeth with an
infidel? Come ye out from among them, and be ye separate.'
And, brethren, remember, a part of the separation is that your light
shall be a constant condemnation of the darkness. 'But rather reprove
them,' says my text; that is a work that devolves upon all Christians.
It is to be done, no doubt, by the silent condemnation of evil which
ever comes from the quiet doing of good. As an old preacher has it, 'The
presence of a saint hinders the devil of elbow-room for doing his
tricks.' The old legend told us that the fire-darting Apollo shot his
radiant arrows against the pythons and 'dragons of the slime.' The sons
of light have the same office--by their light of life to make the
darkness aware of itself, and ashamed of itself; and to change it into
light.
But silent reproving is not all our duty. The Christian Church has
wofully fallen beneath its duty, not only in regard to its complicity
with the social crimes of each generation, but in regard to its cowardly
silence towards them; especially when they flaunt and boast themselves
in high places. What has the Church said worthy of itself in regard to
war? What has the Church said worthy of itself in regard to impurity?
What has the Church said worthy of itself in regard to drunkenness? What
has the Church said worthy of itself in regard to the social vices that
are honeycombing society and this city to-day? If you are the sons of
light, walk as the sons of light, and have 'no fellowship with the
unfruitful works of darkness'; but set the trumpet to your lips, and
'declare unto My people their transgressions, and to the house of Israel
their sin.'