Light in the Lord
You are not just in the light. You are light.
Family Matters · Part 6 · Ephesians 5:1–20
For five weeks we have been climbing this letter. We stood on the summit of chapters 1 through 3 and watched God do all the acting: he blessed, he chose, he adopted, he made us alive, he seated us, he filled us. Then we crossed the great pivot of 4:1, the moment of cruciality where the whole book turns, and we learned that everything after the "therefore" is a response. God never asks for the verbs of chapters 4 through 6 from people who haven't received the verbs of chapters 1 through 3.
Ephesians 5 continues that response, and it opens by planting a flag on the highest ground in the letter:
"Follow God's example, therefore, as dearly loved children and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God." (Ephesians 5:1–2, NIV)
Read that from the apex, because that is where Paul is standing. He is not handing down a code of conduct from a courtroom. He is describing, from the summit, what the children of God are like. Because of what Christ has done, who we are has fundamentally changed. Those who put off the fleshly works in chapter 4, who were renewed in the spirit of their minds and put on the new self, are now different. There has been a divine exchange, and it changes you from the inside out. So everything that follows in this chapter is not a ladder to climb. It is a family resemblance to grow into: dearly loved children, walking in the way of love, taking after the Father, imitating the Christ who gave himself for us. And the way we grow into it is the way it has been from the start of this letter: loving faith, leading to loving acts of obedience.
Not even a hint
Then Paul gets specific, and the specifics are strong:
"But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God's holy people. Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving. For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person (such a person is an idolater) has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God." (Ephesians 5:3–5)
Notice the logic before you feel the weight. Paul does not say these things are wrong because a rule says so. He says they are improper for God's holy people. That is identity language. It is the same argument he has been making since 4:1: this simply does not fit who you now are. A crown does not belong in a gutter. And then he lifts our eyes to the kingdom: the immoral, the impure, the greedy person has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. He is connecting how we live in this world with the kingdom we are now part of, and with what participation in that kingdom looks like. We are not earning a kingdom by our conduct. We are heirs learning to live like the King.
"Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God's wrath comes on those who are disobedient. Therefore do not be partners with them." (Ephesians 5:6–7)
Even here, notice what the danger is: empty words. Keep your eye on that. Words are about to become the theme of this whole chapter.
But now you are light
Then comes one of my favorite phrases in the entire Bible:
"For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light." (Ephesians 5:8)
Read it slowly, because Paul says something more radical than we usually hear. He does not say you were once in darkness and now you are in the light, as though only the room changed. He says you were darkness, and now you are light. The change is not your location. The change is you.
I did a little word study this week, because this idea of light runs like a golden thread through the whole of Scripture, and it keeps showing up tied to the same two companions: God himself, and words.
When God first speaks in the Bible, his very first words are "Let there be light" (Genesis 1:3). Light is the firstborn of God's speech. David sings, "The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?" (Psalm 27:1). John opens his Gospel with the Word in whom was life, and that life was "the light of all mankind," the true light coming into the world (John 1:4–9). Jesus says it outright: "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life" (John 8:12). James calls God "the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows" (James 1:17).
And then the thread does something breathtaking. Jesus turns to ordinary people and says, "You are the light of the world" (Matthew 5:14). Paul tells the Romans to "put on the armor of light" (Romans 13:12). And he tells the Corinthians how the transfer happens: "For God, who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness,' made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God's glory displayed in the face of Christ" (2 Corinthians 4:6). The God who spoke light into the first creation speaks it again into the second one, and this time the place it shines is a human heart.
So light strikes us first. But it does not stop there. Christ in us makes us a source. That is the claim of Ephesians 5:8, and it is one of the boldest statements of the new creation anywhere in Paul: not enlightened people, not people walking near a light, but light in the Lord.
Everything illuminated becomes a light
Now watch how Paul turns the identity into a way of living:
"Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord. Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. It is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret. But everything exposed by the light becomes visible, and everything that is illuminated becomes a light." (Ephesians 5:8–13)
He gives us behaviors, yes. But tucked inside them he gives us the principle by which transformation actually works, and it is the same principle we found in chapters 1 and 3. Remember his first prayer: that "the eyes of your heart may be enlightened" (1:18). Remember his second: that Christ would dwell in our hearts, that we would be strengthened in our inner being, that we would be filled with all the fullness of God (3:16–19). The light of God penetrates us. We come into communion with the light. And out of that communion, we become light to the world around us. Verse 13 states it like a law of spiritual physics: everything exposed by the light becomes visible, and everything that is illuminated becomes a light. What the light touches, the light transforms. What the light transforms begins to shine.
That is why Paul reaches for the fragment of an early hymn, the same one we flagged two weeks ago when we studied the songs buried in this letter, very possibly sung over new believers at their baptism:
"This is why it is said: 'Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.'" (Ephesians 5:14)
Why is that said? Because of the law we just read. When Christ shines on you, you do not merely get a better view. You wake, you rise, and you begin to glow with a borrowed brightness that becomes your own. The church sang that truth before Paul wrote it down.
Keep on being filled
Then Paul brings the chapter to its practical center:
"Be very careful, then, how you live, not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord's will is. Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit." (Ephesians 5:15–18)
Here is the engine room. In chapter 4, right in the center of all the instructions on how we live together, Paul planted the relational heart of the passage: do not grieve the Holy Spirit (4:30). Chapter 5 has a center too, and it is the same Person: be filled with the Spirit. One command guards the fellowship; the other feeds it. The Christian life Paul is describing is not moral achievement with religious decoration. It is a life that keeps returning to the place of communion, where the presence of God transforms us from the inside out and then overflows.
And the original language makes the point even sharper. The word translated "be filled," plerousthe, is a present passive imperative. It is a command, so the filling is not optional. It is passive, so the filling is not something you generate; it is something you receive. And it is present continuous, so it is not a one-time event. The truest translation is almost awkward in English: keep on being filled. Be being filled. Yesterday's filling was for yesterday. The Spirit-filled life is not a certificate on the wall; it is a river with a current, which is exactly the picture Jesus chose: "Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them" (John 7:38). You were not built to be a reservoir that got topped up once. You were built to be a riverbed.
The Spirit-filled life speaks
So what does the continually filled life actually look like? Paul tells us, and the answer surprised me when I slowed down enough to count:
"...be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." (Ephesians 5:18–20)
Walk back through this passage and count the instructions. Out of roughly eighteen distinct commands in these twenty verses, at least seven deal directly with how we give and receive communication: no obscenity, no foolish talk, no coarse joking, thanksgiving in their place, refusing empty words, not even mentioning what darkness does in secret, and then the overflow of verses 19 and 20. Depending on how you slice them, somewhere between a third and half of everything Paul says here is about words. And when he finally describes what the Spirit-filled person overflows with, nearly every mark he lists is vocal: speaking to one another, singing, making music from the heart, giving thanks always. The evidence of the filling is what comes out of the mouth.
That should not surprise us by now. We have already seen it: in the Bible, light and words travel together. God's first act of creation was speech, and the first thing his speech made was light. When the Spirit fills a heart, the overflow is a changed voice: gratitude instead of grumbling, songs instead of cynicism, words that build instead of words that burn. Chapter 4 said it negatively: no corrupting talk, only what builds up. Chapter 5 says it positively: psalms, hymns, songs, thanksgiving. A heart of gratitude. A heart of singing. A heart that prays and sings in the Spirit.
Washed with the word
We are going to stop at verse 20 this week. The second half of chapter 5 turns to marriage, and in a few weeks Montell and Kristen Jordan will be with us to open up that whole conversation on marriage and relationship. But before we close, I cannot resist pointing at one phrase from that section, because it gathers up everything we have seen today. When Paul describes what Christ does for the church, the church he loved and gave himself up for, he says Christ makes her holy, "cleansing her by the washing with water through the word" (5:26). And the Greek term there for "word" is rhema: the spoken word, the uttered word, the word that lands on you. The same term Paul will use in chapter 6 for the sword of the Spirit.
Do you see it? The light that transforms us arrives on words. Christ washes his people the way he made the worlds, by speaking. Which means the most practical question this chapter leaves us with is about our speech, and about our ears. I have come to believe our words are a key access point for how righteousness flourishes in every other area of our lives. What is inside of us comes out of us largely through words. What is inside other people reaches us largely through words. And what is inside of God reaches us through his word: the scriptural word we read, the rhema word he speaks to our hearts, the living Word himself. Words are the gates of the inner life. Guard them, and you guard everything.
The call
Wash daily. Are we letting God's word actually wash over us, or only occasionally splashing in it? Put yourself under the water this week: Scripture read slowly, Scripture spoken over your home, Scripture sung.
Guard your gates. Deceitful words, lustful words, empty words: refuse them entry. Audit what you are letting speak into you, on your screens and in your ears, and ask whether it is carrying light or darkness.
Release light. You are light in the Lord, and light travels on words. Speak to someone this week the way the Spirit speaks: a psalm shared, a song sung in your kitchen, a thank you that is really worship, a word that exposes darkness by simply being bright.
Keep on being filled. Not once, not annually. Return to the place of communion until returning becomes your rhythm: worship, prayer, praying in the Spirit, gratitude for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
You were once darkness. You are darkness no longer. The God who said "Let there be light" has said it again, over you, in the face of Jesus Christ. Wake up, sleeper. Rise from the dead. And shine.