Children of Light

God had shed His light of glory on the world in many ways, but never as definitively and as powerfully as He did when the glory of God was shining in the face of Jesus Christ, who in John 8:12 said, “I am the Light of the world. Since He came, the world has experienced the impact of the Light that shattered the darkness.  And through the two thousand years since His arrival, millions of people have come to the Light and have been redeemed and are now part of the Light, having been transferred from darkness into Light. The transformation of people through the power of the gospel has brought light to the world. 

It is expected from the children of God that they should live as the children of light. Light in the Bible is a symbol for two things, two aspects. It is used from the intellectual side, and from the moral side. Intellectually, light refers to truth. Morally, light refers to holiness.  So it is the intake and the output. It is the truth and the life. So living in light means living in truth and living in holiness. Receiving the truth and living a holy life. 

In Proverbs 6:23 we read “For the commandment is a lamp and the law is light.” Here it is truth that he is talking about; he’s not talking about deeds. In Psalm 119:105, it says: “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.”  And that is the same idea. There you see light as truth, light from the intellectual side.  

God is light and in Him there is no darkness.  If you are a son of God, you are a son of light, and if you are a son of light, there is in you no darkness at all.  In other words, when you were redeemed, you were fully redeemed. There is no residual darkness. Christians do not walk in the darkness. (1 John 1:7) In other words, the ones being forgiven are the ones in the light.  As long as we are God’s children, God is light, light produces light, and God’s children are light. We are called sons of light repeatedly in the New Testament. 1 Thessalonians (5:5). A Christian is somebody in the light. We don’t walk in darkness. When we were saved we were taken out of darkness into light. Conversion is an absolute opposite, just like Light and darkness are absolute opposites.

It’s a dark world.  Jesus Himself said, “Men love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil.” And what happens is they plunge deeper and deeper into the darkness.  It’s the story of a sick, dying man who cherishes his disease. It’s the story of a blind man who pushes away the cure. And God has called us into the world to be light, to show light in a dark world. And the only way we can be effective at it is to walk as children of light, not to fiddle around doing the deeds of darkness. 

In Eph.5: 8: Paul is saying, “For ye were once darkness, you were darkness formerly,  “but now you are Light.” This is a stark contrast. They are mutually exclusive; and that is why the Lord has chosen by His Spirit. It is the best analogy to show the complete separation of the non-Christian from the Christian, the complete separation of the child of Satan from the child of God. One is darkness, the other is light; and the contrast is extreme to show the difference and the distinction and the opposite nature between Christians and non-Christians.

He is just saying “be who you are.”  The Christian life is simply becoming what you are - Living up to your identity; being who you are. Live like what you are, not like what you were.” “You were once darkness.” Note that he did not say you were in darkness. He says you were darkness. You are not just a victim of Satan’s system. The darkness is the composite accumulation of all the dark people. It’s not that you are in the darkness as a victim; you are in the darkness as a contributor: You are the darkness. Apart from Christ you are the darkness; you are a contributor, you are a perpetrator. you are now light. In other words, whatever dominion we are in, we are of.

The characteristics of people who are darkness is that they do the work of Satan. It is true of people in the darkness that they do the deeds of darkness.  A person who is darkness, does deeds that are darkness. That is, they are ignorant, and they are unholy. They show no knowledge of God, and they show no life of God in the heart and the soul.  That’s exactly what Jesus says in Jn.8:84 you do what you do because your father is the devil.  So if you’re in the darkness, you do the deeds of the one whom Luke 22:53 calls “the power of the darkness.” Satan is called the power of the darkness. So when you function in the darkness, you are empowered by Satan, you do his deeds. It’s hard for the average person to realize that he is empowered and energized by Satan. The darkness is a system; it is a realm, it is a kingdom, it is a domain of unbelievers.

Secondly, they are ruled by Satan - they are ruled by the prince of darkness, they are literally dominated by him. Colossians 1:13 says that you were taken out of the kingdom of darkness. It is a kingdom. It has a hierarchy, and it has a ruler and it is Satan. The kingdom of darkness is ruled by the king of darkness, and he rules the life of those who are the darkness. Those who are the light do the deeds of light under the prince of light, the Lord Jesus Christ. And they become inheritors of the kingdom of light. But now everything has changed. Because of Him we have been transferred from the darkness to light

In Eph.5:9 we read that there are fruit of light and they are goodness, righteousness and truth. Those are the marks of those who walk in light.

There are a lot of people who claim to be in the light. We have been born again, baptized, we have been going to church for years. But note that the children of light are made manifest by the fruit of light.   There needs to be some fruits. First fruit is goodness. Paul says in 1 Thess. 5:15, “do good to everybody.”  This is the first element of the fruit of light. It touches other people with goodness.  If you are a child of light you are going to walk in light, and you are going to walk as a child of light, then the first thing should be goodness in terms of others.

The second thing points more toward God - righteousness. That has to do with your relationship to God. And third term is truth.  It has to do with my own self.  First, goodness in relating to others; secondly, righteousness in relating to God; and thirdly, integrity as I view myself, as I am what I say – honesty, reliability, in contrast with the sham, and the falseness, and hypocrisy of the old life. If we are walking as children of light, there is to be the fruit of light- toward others, toward God, even within your own self.  We ought to be able to examine our own life to see if we are really in the light.