'The fruit of the light is in all goodness and righteousness and
truth.'--Eph. v. 9 (R.V.).
This is one of the cases in which the Revised Version has done service
by giving currency to an unmistakably accurate and improved reading.
That which stands in our Authorised Version, 'the fruit of the Spirit'
seems to have been a correction made by some one who took offence at the
violent metaphor, as he conceived it, that 'light' should bear 'fruit'
and desired to tinker the text so as to bring it into verbal
correspondence with another passage in the Epistle to the Galatians,
where 'the fruits of the Spirit' are enumerated. But the reading, 'the
fruit of the _light_,' has not only the preponderance of manuscript
authority in its favour, but is preferable because it preserves a
striking image, and is in harmony with the whole context.
The Apostle has just been exhorting his Ephesian friends to walk as
'children of the light' and before he goes on to expand and explain that
injunction he interjects this parenthetical remark, as if he would say,
To be true to the light that is in you is the sum of duty, and the
condition of perfectness, '_for_ the fruit of the light is in all
goodness and righteousness and truth' That connection is entirely
destroyed by the substitution of 'spirit.' The whole context, both
before and after my text, is full of references to the light as working
in the life; and a couple of verses after it we read about 'the
unfruitful works of darkness' an expression which evidently looks back
to my text.
So please do understand that our text in this sermon is--'The fruit of
the _light_ consists in all goodness and righteousness and truth.'
I. Now, first of all, I have just a word to say about this light which
is fruitful.
Note--for it is, I think, not without significance--a minute variation
in the Apostle's language in this verse and in the context. He has been
speaking of 'light,' now he speaks of '_the_ light'; and that, I think,
is not accidental. The expression, 'walk as children of light,' is more
general and vague. The expression, 'the fruit of _the_ light,' points to
some specific source from which all light flows. And observe, also, that
we have in the previous context, 'Ye were sometime darkness, but now are
ye light _in the Lord_,' which evidently implies that the light of which
my text speaks is not natural to men, but is the result of the entrance
into their darkness of a new element.
Now I do not suppose that we should be entitled to say that Paul here is
formally anticipating the deep teaching of the Apostle John that Jesus
Christ is '_the_ Light of men,' and especially of Christian men. But he
is distinctly asserting, I think, that the light which blesses and
hallows humanity is no diffused glow, but is all gathered and
concentrated into one blazing centre, from which it floods the hearts of
men. Or, to put away the metaphor, he is here asserting that the only
way by which any man can cease to be, in the doleful depths of his
nature, darkness in its saddest sense is by opening his heart through
faith, that into it there may rush, as the light ever does where an
opening--be it only a single tiny cranny--is made, the light which is
Christ, and without whom is darkness.
I know, of course, that, apart altogether from the exercise of faith in
Jesus Christ, there do shine in men's hearts rays of the light of
knowledge and of purity; but if we believe the teaching of Scripture,
these, too, are from Christ, in His universally-diffused work, by which,
apart altogether from individual faith, or from a knowledge of
revelation, He is 'the light that lighteth every man coming into the
world.' And I hold that, wheresoever there is conscience, wheresoever
there is judgment and reason, wheresoever there are sensitive desires
after excellence and nobleness, _there_ is a flickering of a light which
I believe to be from Christ Himself. But that light, as widely diffused
as humanity, fights with, and is immersed in, darkness. In the physical
world, light and darkness are mutually exclusive: where the one is the
other comes not; but in the spiritual world the paradox is true that the
two co-exist. Apart from revelation and the acceptance of Jesus Christ's
person and work by our humble faith, the light struggles with the
darkness, and the darkness obstinately refuses to admit its entrance,
and 'comprehendeth it not.' And so, ineffectual but to make restless and
to urge to vain efforts and to lay up material for righteous judgment,
is the light that shines in men whose hearts are shut against Christ.
The fruitful light is Christ within us, and, unless we know and possess
it by the opening of heart and mind and will, the solemn words preceding
my text are true of us: 'Ye were sometime darkness.' Oh, brother! do you
see to it that the subsequent words are true of you: 'Now are ye light
in the Lord.' Only if you are in Christ are you truly light.