"Love & Light" Ephesians 5:1-14
- Senior Pastor, Robert Dennison, preached this sermon on April 2, 2023.
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Audio Transcript
Sharing about that’s pretty exciting. So I want to make sure the kids heard that today, so that’s great. If you’ll take your Bibles now and turn to Ephesians chapter 5 Ephesians chapter 5 We’re going to begin reading in verse one today. I’ve had this stuff in my head for two weeks. If I start sounding like I’m going through puberty, I am not.
I’m 61, but my voice will squeak and it does weird things. Ephesians chapter 5 beginning in verse 1 Therefore be imitators of God, as dearly loved children and walk in love as Christ also loved us and gave Himself for us a sacrificial and fragrant offering to God. But sexual immorality and any impurity or greed should not even be heard of among you, as is proper for saints. Obscene and foolish talking or crude joking are not suitable, but rather giving thanks, for no one recognized this Every sexually immoral or impure or greedy person who is an idolater does not have an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no one deceive you with empty arguments, for God’s wrath is coming on the disobedient because of these things.
Therefore do not become their partners, for you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light, for the fruit of the light consists of all goodness, righteousness, and truth, testing what is pleasing to the Lord. Don’t participate in the fruitless works of darkness, but instead expose them, for it is shameful even to mention what is done by them in sin. Everything exposed by the light is made visible, for what makes everything visible is light. Therefore it is said, get up sleeper, and rise up from the dead and Christ will shine on you.
May we pray? Heavenly Father, as we look at your word today about being imitators of you, show us how we can live walking in love and walking in the light so that people see in us something different that makes them desirous to know about Jesus Christ. Work for us that we might have eternal salvation. In his name we pray. Amen.
The text begins, therefore be imitators of God from the beginning in Genesis chapter one, God created mankind to be his imitators to reflect his his image to the world. God said, let us make man in our image according to our likeness. No other creatures were made in the image of God. So God created man in his own image. He created him in the image of God.
He created them male and female. God created mankind, both men and women, to bear his image in the world. But when Adam and Eve rebelled against God, they lost that ability to reflect God’s image adequately. That imitation of God can only be restored once we go through the saving work of Jesus Christ, whereby we once again bear God’s image in this world. So it’s God’s desire for us to be imitators of him.
And it’s also his command that we live our lives in such a way that we honorably bear his image to the world. Be imitators of God. How is it that I can imitate God because I can’t see Him? Well, if we look at Colossians 1:15, we do find out that we can see God, and we see God in the flesh in Jesus Christ. Colossians 1:15 says that he, speaking of Jesus is is the image of the invisible God.
And then in Hebrews 1:3, it tells us the extent of this. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory, and he is the exact expression of his nature. So what we learned about God from His words in the Old Testament, though nobody saw Him. When Jesus Christ came in the flesh, we saw in a physical body with those words that lived out how they behaved in this world. The answer on how we imitate God is to live like Jesus because He demonstrated in his body what it means to imitate God.
There are two areas that Jesus showed us how to imitate God. He showed us how to be imitators of God in our speech. And he also showed us how to be imitators of God in action. Let’s look at John 14, 9, 10, where we see that Jesus showed us the Father in the flesh by his speech. Jesus said to him, have I been among you all this time and you don’t know me?
Philip, the one who has seen me has seen the Father. In verse 10, Jesus said, Don’t you believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me. The words I speak to you, I do not speak on My own. The Father who lives in Me does His works. Jesus could have spoken his own words, but he set the example for us by speaking only what the Father wanted him to speak.
The Bible is God’s word. And by knowing it, we learn how to speak. Speak in such a way that we are imitators of God. And we also have the Holy Spirit living inside of us when we give him complete control of our lives day by day, that he helps us through God’s Word to know how to speak appropriately so that we imitate Him. But Jesus also showed us the Father in the flesh by his actions.
John 5:19. Jesus replied, Truly, I tell you, the Son is not able to do anything on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, the Son likewise does these things. So Jesus spoke the words that God gave him. Jesus did the things that God wanted him to do.
And by speaking God’s words and doing God’s actions, he became the exact representation of the Father. And we’re supposed to imitate Jesus in that way. By step studying God’s word and learning more about his life, his actions and his speech. It helps us to be imitators of God. Now Paul gives us two main ways in the text about how we are to be imitators.
The first one is that we are to walk in love. And the second idea is that we are to walk in light. So we’re going to be looking at walking in love today. We’re going to also be looking at walking in light. And then Paul chases a couple rapid rabbits to the side that we’re going to look at in the text today.
Walk in love. The first thing that we learn here is that it says that we’re supposed to be imitators of God as dearly loved children. We need to understand how much God really loves us. If you could take the love of all the mothers in the world that they have for their children, God’s love far surpasses all all of that for us. And the more we understand God’s love for us, the more we’re able to demonstrate that love to other people in the world.
Let’s look at Romans 5, verses 6 through 10. And it tells us here how much God loved us. For while we were still helpless. At the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. But God proves His own love for us in this.
That while we were still sin sinners, Christ died for us. And then in verse 10, for if we were while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his son. Jesus demonstrated his love for us when we were helpless. He demonstrated his love for us when we were sinners. He demonstrated his love for us when we were enemies and fighting against him.
So I’d like to picture these three words today. What does it mean to be helpless? It’s as if we are in a pit that we cannot get out of. And the sides of the pit are so steep that we can’t even see there’s anything up there that’s better than where we are living. And we’re completely helpless to do anything to jump out of the pit or to climb out of the pit or to put any type of ladders there.
When we were in that helpless estate, not even realizing that we were helpless. Jesus died for us, but we weren’t only helpless, but we were also sinners. And I want to add to that idea of being in the pit that not only is it just a pit, but that pit is filled with the worst sewage you can ever imagine. And when I think about the stinkiest sewage I can think of, it’s pig manure. I’ve been on lots of farms, but pig manure, it’s just acrid and it’s stinking, terrible smelling.
So the picture here is that we’re in this pit and we’re surrounded by this pig manure and sewage. And the thing about it is, in that state, we don’t know that there’s anything different. We actually relish that filth and that sinfulness, and we swim around in it. We’re like a child who’s never seen the ocean. They’ve never seen a lake or a river, but there’s that mud pile out in the backyard, and when it gets muddy, they just like to go out and play in it because they don’t know that there’s anything better.
We’re in this pit. We’re helpless. Jesus loves us. We’re in this pit as sinners surrounded by a swamp of sin. But not only that, Jesus died for us when we were also enemies against him.
When we heard about Jesus also offering us a way out, our natural human proclivity was to be defensive against that, to put together any weapons that we could to keep him away and to hurt him. Because that’s what happened when he came to the earth offering salvation to pull people out of this pit. They fought against him. They mocked him and they hung him on a cross. Jesus loved us when we were helpless.
He loved us when we were sick sinners. He loved us when we are enemies. And the more we understand that, it helps us to know how to demonstrate love to people that are helpless, how to demonstrate love to people that are sinners, even to demonstrate love to people that are enemies, that are completely against us. Verse 2 says, Walk in love as Christ also loved us and gave Himself for us. We’re supposed to fully understand how much God loves us, but we’re also supposed to follow the example of Jesus Christ.
What is the goal that our love is supposed to be? It’s supposed to be at the same level that Jesus gave Himself and showed his love for us. This word here for love is agape. And it means putting the needs of others before our own needs. And in that, Jesus was our example.
Just think about. He left the glory of heaven and he came to live in this icky, fallen world. He left the adulation of angels to come here to be hated and cursed and spat upon. He left the loving side of his Father instead to come and live alongside people that weren’t for him, that were against Him. He lived among us so that he could understand us.
He took on a frail body so that he could die for us. And then he rose from the dead so that he could likewise raise us to live with him eternally. And in all this, what was he doing for himself? He was doing nothing for himself because he didn’t need that. How did he benefit himself by coming to earth?
He didn’t. He came for our benefit. He didn’t die on the cross for his sins. He died on the cross for us. It was all for us.
And he gave this all willingly. That was agape love, putting our knees before his. It says that he did this as a sacrificial and fragrant offering to God. That word sacrifice there describes one who is innocent of crime. And they use their physical body to shield someone who deserves punishment.
It’s like somebody is about to get beaten and another person jumps in and they let their body be beaten. Jesus did that for us. Or it’s like an adult who sees a little child. They’re maybe about to get hit by a car, so they run out in the street and they. They push the child out of the way and they take the brunt of the car.
That’s what Jesus did for us. He put our needs before his own. Walk in love. We’ve got the positive aspect, but in verse three, Paul tells us what walking in love does not look like. Verse 3 says, but sexual immorality and any impurity or greed should not even be heard of among you, as is proper for the saints.
The world is looking for love in all types of sexual experiences. Sexual immorality. Sexual immorality. That goes against what God’s design for that is. And that’s not walking in true love.
Scripture tells us, don’t look to fill your need for love in the way that the world does, but instead look to the Lord to provide the love for you. What is sexual immorality? Here it’s any sexual sin of any kind. We can make a list of all that is wrong, but it’s easy, easier just to say the positive. That godly Sexual fulfillment is gained exclusively in a lifelong marital relationship between one biological man and one biological woman.
And anything outside of that is what Paul is calling sexual immorality. But he also says that walking in love is not being involved in impurity. And impurity here would include any vice, anything that is wrong or sinful that people are doing to fulfill something in their life. When people sin, they’re looking for the promise of reward, they’re looking for the promise of gratification, but looking for that fulfillment in anything outside of God’s word. And what he has for us is impurity.
It also uses the word greed here. And what greed means in the Greek is always more. People that are greedy people always want more. It doesn’t matter if they have a little, some, a lot, or they have everything. It will never completely satisfy them because they’re always going to want to have more.
Whereas living by faith in Jesus Christ, Paul commands us that we have a choice to be content. Paul said in Philippians 4, 11, 13, I have learned to be content in whatever circumstance I find myself, I know how to make do with a little. In other words, if Paul didn’t have much, he could be content. But he said, and I know how to make do with a lot. People that have a lot still need to be content with what God has given them in any and all circumstances.
I’ve learned the secret of being content, whether I’m well fed or hungry, whether in abundance or in need. Paul said his contentment came and that he was able to do all things through him who strengthens me. True contentment comes through living the life that Jesus Christ has for us. Walking in love isn’t just about not doing things, but it also has to do with not saying things that we shouldn’t. So in verse four, Paul says, obscene and foolish talking or crude joking are not suitable, but rather giving thanks.
And several weeks ago we looked in chapter four once again. Paul started out that you need to work on your speech. Your speech is going to be different if you’re a follower of Jesus Christ. Our tongue is such a dangerous thing. We could have people in our church body and they’re living sexually and moral lives.
They’re living lives filled with impurity or they’re greedy. But those people are not going to hurt the body of Christ as much as someone who cannot control their tongue. The words that people can speak can cause devastation beyond any actions that other people can do. Some would say that they’re not sexually immoral. Some would say, well, I’m not impure.
I’m not greedy. But sin. Some of those very people can be speaking words to others that are destroying lives far more than any action that they have. We read about this in James 3, 2, 10, for we all stumble in many ways. But if anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is mature, able also to control the whole body.
Concentrating on what your speech is is the best thing that you can do to help you bring your whole life into control and submission to the Lord. He goes on to tell us James does in verse 5. So too, though the tongue is a small part of the body, it boasts great things. Consider how a small fire sets ablaze a large forest and the tongue is a fire. Verse 9 says, with the tongue we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we can also curse people who are made in God’s likeness.
Blessing and cursing come out of the same mouth. But my brothers and sisters, these things should not be in this way. Walking in love means that we’re going to control what we say, and when we’re able to control that, the rest of controlling our body comes easily into line. Let’s go on now to verse five. It says, for no one recognized this Every sexually immoral or impure or greedy person who is an idolater does not have an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.
Some could interpret that to say if anybody does one thing sexually immoral, then they’re not part of Christ’s kingdom. Or if somebody is living a greedy lifestyle for a period of time, they must not be believers in Jesus Christ. When people place any of these things ahead of God as being more important when they make these things their idols, so that this is a continual lifestyle. That’s what Paul is talking about here. Because can a believer commit sin?
Definitely. So John tells us in First John 1:8, if we say we have no sin, we’re deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. First John 1:10, he says, if we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar and his word is not in us. So Paul isn’t talking about a believer here that falls into sin. He’s talking about people that possibly say they’re believers, but they have a continual sexually immoral, impure or greedy lifestyle.
And if a believer is participating in any of these things, they’re going to have a constant turmoil inside themselves because the life giving Holy Spirit is going to continually say, you shouldn’t be doing this, this is destroying you. This is going against what the Father has for you. The example that we have is the parable of the prodigal son. He left his father because he wanted to go and live a worldly lifestyle. And eventually, after he ran out of money, he ended up in a pigsty.
But he was still a child of the Father. And eventually he came to the point where he said, I’m going to go home. I’m going to repent to my father. I’m going to ask for his forgiveness and his to confess what I’ve done wrong. And so it is that a true believer, if they’re living wrongly, eventually they’re going to have this desire to return to the Father and praise the Lord.
In First John 1:9, we have this promise that if we confess our sins, no matter how far off the track we get, God is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. The Lord’s Prayer sets an example for this. Jesus uses the phrase that we are supposed to forgive us our sins as we also forgive those who have sinned against us. We need to come with daily confession to the Lord with anything that’s wrong. Another thing that can also happen to believers is that if they remain in sin, Paul tells us that you could end up being physically sick or you might actually die if you continue in sin as a believer.
That’s why we have about the Lord’s Supper. In First Corinthians, chapter 11, Paul says that a person should examine themselves in this way. Let them eat the bread and drink from the cup. Because if you do this in an unworthy way, he said that there were many among you that were physically sick and ill, and some had fallen asleep. And that doesn’t mean they fell asleep during the sermon.
That means that they had died because they were believers, but they continued in sin and with the regularity of the Lord separate every time we come. Part of it is to get our lives back in sync with the Holy Spirit so that we don’t fall into illness, so that God can bring us and restore us to a life of walking in love. Let’s go down to verse six. Here’s kind of a rabbit that Paul chased here. He says, now don’t let anyone deceive you with empty arguments, for God’s wrath is coming on the disobedient because of these things.
Therefore, do not become their partners.
There was a group of people during Paul’s day. They were false teachers. They were called Gnostics. And they were saying, yes, that’s fine to place your faith in Jesus Christ, but we have some special Knowledge that we’re going to add to what you’ve already been taught. They were very intellectual.
People could really be caught up in what they were saying because they sounded so good. And Paul’s saying, these people are giving you empty arguments, but they’re deceiving people, so you need to be careful. What was it the Gnostics were teaching? They said that everything material is evil, meaning your body is completely evil. There’s no way you can control it.
Now your spirit is good. That’s what God has transformed in your life. So instead of being like Paul and saying to put aside all these evil practices, they were saying, well, just let your body do whatever it wants to do. You can be sexually immoral. You can be living a life of impurity because your body just has to do that.
But inside what’s important is your spirit. Paul said, don’t be deceived by them because God’s wrath is coming and he eventually is going to judge the world. He’s going to contemn sin. He’s going to make all things new. He’s going to put away all evil and evildoers into the pit of hell for eternity.
Paul said, the way we live with our body is the right way to walk in love and to follow the example of Jesus Christ so that we imitate the Father. Walk in love. Let’s turn to First John, chapter two, verses three through six. We want to talk a little bit about walking in love because we’re supposed to love God, but we’re also supposed to love others. Then we’re going to look at some verses.
How do we do that? First John 2, verse 3 says, this is how we know that we know him if we keep his commands. People that are true followers of Jesus Christ want to follow the commands that we have in Scripture. He says, the one who says, I have come to know him and yet doesn’t keep his commands is a liar and the truth is not in him. Anyone that continues to not obey Scripture is not following the Lord.
But John tells us, whoever keeps his word, truly in him the love of God is made complete. And this is how we know we are in Him. The one who says he remains in him should walk just as he walked. In other words, when we are obedient to God’s command, we become complete. We become more mature.
Obeying God’s Word helps us to demonstrate love to the world, but it also shows our love for the Father. We turn to Matthew, chapter 22, verses 37 through 40. And Jesus said this love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and most important command. And the second is, like it, love your neighbor as yourself.
Because all the Law and the prophets depend on these two commands. When you look at the Ten Commandments, when you look at any other commands in the Bible, they’re all either about how we show our love to God or how we show our love to people. Jesus said, if you love me, you will keep my commands. By keeping the commands, we show our love to the Father. And Jesus said, if anyone loves me, he will keep my word.
And so it’s important, if we’re going to walk in love, to love God adequately and to love others. We do that by obeying the word first. John 2:15 says, do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. We’re not talking about the world as in people.
We’re talking about the ways of the world here. We’re supposed to love God. We’re supposed to love people. But John tells us we are not to love the ways of this world. We’re not to love the untruths of the world.
We’re not to love the way that the world tells us we are supposed to live. And I just want to encourage you here that when you think about this, concentrate on positive meaning. Don’t concentrate on trying not to do the evil of the world. Concentrate on loving the Lord. And if you do that positive thing where you’re concentrating on loving the Lord, it’s going to leave no room for the love of the world to come into your life.
Walk in love. There’s a second thing here that we’re also supposed to do. And Paul tells us that we’re supposed to walk in light. Let’s look at verse 8. Verse 8 says, for you were once darkness.
We weren’t actually in darkness. We were literally darkness. That’s how far off from pleasing God we were. But he says, but now you are light in the the Lord. And because now God has made you light, he commands us, you need to walk as children of light.
For the fruit of the light consists of all goodness, righteousness and truth. Walk as children of the life, testing what is pleasing to the Lord. So there’s just this one fruit here. It’s not three. They all have to work together.
Walking as children of the light means that we’re going to have this fruit. That’s described by three different terms here. Goodness, righteousness, and truth. What is goodness here? There are two different words in the New Testament that talk about goodness.
One form of goodness is just being gentle and kind and character. You know, people like that, oh, that’s just a good person. They’re just gentle and they’re kind to everybody. It’s emphasizing what their character is. But this particular word here for goodness, it’s more than just gentleness and kindness of character.
Instead, it’s this energized goodness. It’s actively, instead of passively expressing itself in doing benevolent things and doing good things for other people. So it’s not just the person that you look at and say, oh, they’re nice and they’re kind and they’re sweet. You look at them and you say, wow, the things that they’re doing for other people just demonstrates all the time their goodness. But there’s a kind of an opposite effect here that’s going on because this type of goodness does not spare sharpness and rebuke when it can cause good in others.
So you have this person that their character is that they’re so good and they’re so kind. But if it’s necessary for them to say something harsh to someone in order that that person can have more goodness in their life, this type of goodness is doing this. It’s light that is shining on wrongdoing in their life. It’s similar to a parent that their child is sticking bobby pins, if y’ all still use those anymore, into an electrical outlet. You know you’re going to be harsh on your child and say, don’t do that.
And it’s not because you hate the child. You’re showing goodness to them. And so it is a person with this type of goodness, by shining light on what people are doing wrong, there is a proper time to rebuke them. Christ showed this same goodness when he was in the temple and he cleared out the money changers. It was harsh what he was doing, but.
But he was doing it because he wanted the goodness of God to be there. We’re supposed to be goodness, active goodness. But also as we walk, as children of light, we live a life of righteousness. That means that we live a life that conforms to the righteousness that we have in Jesus Christ. It’s not the righteousness of following the law because we’re going to fail in that.
It’s allowing Christ’s righteousness that he has placed us in to live out in us. And by living a life that’s different from the world, we shed light on what is wrong in the world. Goodness, righteousness, truth. Truth is what is consistent with Jesus Christ himself, because he is the truth. Living a life of truth sheds light on what is wrong in this world.
We don’t compromise by saying, well, if you think that’s okay, it’s fine for you to do that. No, if you’re living as a child of light, you’re going to say, that’s wrong. It’s not because I say it’s wrong. It’s because God’s word says it’s wrong. Living as light we speak the truth of God’s word, which never changes.
First John 1, 7, 10 we read more about walking in the light. If we walk in the light, as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another. The blood of Jesus, his Son, cleanses us from all sin. Verse 10 the one who loves his brother or sister remains in the light, and there is no cause for stumbling in him. There’s this great benefit to us when we walk in the light.
The first thing is that we have fellowship with one another as we walk in the light. Within the body of Christ. We have this awesome fellowship with other believers that isn’t experienced in any other relationship in the world. Walking in the light. We also have assurance of our salvation because people that are walking in light can know that the blood of Jesus has cleansed us from all sin.
The next value here is that walking in the light and walking in love. It tells us that they go hand in hand. The one who loves his brother or sister remains in the light. So John is emphasizing what Paul said in order to imitate the Father. We have to do it by walking in love and by walking in light.
And when we do that, we also have this assurance that it’s going to keep us from from stumbling when we emphasize love and light, because there is no cause for stumbling in him. Going back to the text, verse 11, Walk in the light Paul said, don’t participate in the fruitless works of darkness. If you’re living according to the world’s lifestyle, there is going to be no fruit from your life that is going to last for eternity. And instead of not participating in it, we’re also supposed to expose the evil of the world, for it is shameful even to mention what is done by them in secret. Everything exposed by the light is made visible, for what makes everything visible is light.
This goes back to the picture where Jesus said, we’re not supposed to put our light under a bushel. Remember the song Put it under a Bushel? No, that we sang as Children. And you’re not supposed to put a candle under a bed for obvious reasons, because your bed’s going to catch on fire. But the picture there is that you’re not supposed to cover this light that Jesus Christ has placed inside of us.
We’re supposed to let the light shine because it exposes the sinfulness in the world. It exposes their need to follow Jesus Christ. Many of us, though, don’t want to show our light in the world because it makes people around us uncomfortable. If we live in the light, it makes people feel guilty about their sins. And they may not say that it makes them feel guilty, but they don’t like it if you have clean speech when they like to speak evil.
They don’t like it if you’re living a pure lifestyle. When they’re at work and they want to talk to you about all the sin that they’re involved in. The people in the world have seared their consciences to the point that they don’t want to recognize or feel bad about their sin. But if you’re living in the light, you’re continually reminding them, in other words, the consciousness that they have lost. You’re kind of like a consciousness outside of them.
Like Jiminy Cricket was on the shoulder telling, who was it, Pinocchio, what he was supposed to do and what he wasn’t supposed to. You’re supposed to live your life that way. Live your life. Making other people uncomfortable about their sin is the way we are supposed to be so that they will come to faith in Jesus Christ. Our lost family and friends are more likely to come to faith when by our light they see their own sin.
Therefore, in verse 14, Paul said, Therefore it is said, get up, sleeper, and rise up from the dead and Christ will shine on you. In other words, don’t be a sleepy believer. You’ve been raised from the dead, from your former way of life through Jesus death and burial and resurrection. And now you are a living person and you’re supposed to live that way. Don’t hide it.
Don’t be lazy about it. When you do this, it tells us that Christ will shine on you. The great thing about the light is we don’t have to produce the light. We don’t have to be the light. We just have to look to Jesus Christ, who is the source of source of our light.
And the more we gaze on him, the more we learn about him, the more we know Him. We just start to reflect the light that he’s already producing. We don’t have to do it in our own strength. Jesus wants to do it for us. Therefore, the more we concentrate on Jesus, the more he will shine on us so that we can reflect him to the world.
We’re supposed to bear the image of God, and we do that by walking in love. And we do that by walking in light. May we pray? Heavenly Father, we thank you that you reached out to us when we were helpless. You reached out to us when we were sinners.
You reached out to us when we were enemies against you. You sent your son, Jesus Christ to live among us, to die on the cross, to be buried and raised from the dead, so that when we place our faith in what he did, Father, in him, then you bring us to a life of light and love, Father. Let us desire to reflect that in the world adequately so that our friends and our neighbors, those that we work with, Father, even our enemies, will come to true faith in Jesus Christ that we might celebrate throughout eternity with them what you have given to us. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.