Message Nine

The Children of God Walking in Love and Light

Scripture Reading: Eph. 1:5, 9; 5:1-14; 1 John 4:8, 16; 1:5

1. God’s good pleasure is to be one with man and to make man the same as He is in life and in nature but not in the Godhead—Eph. 1:5, 9.
2. As the children of God, we are God-men, born of God, possessing the life and nature of God, and belonging to the species of God—Eph. 5:1; 1 John 3:1; John 1:12-13:
   1. God is our real, genuine, Father, and we are His real, genuine, children—1 John 3:1; Eph. 5:1.
   2. The greatest wonder in the universe is that human beings could be begotten of God and that sinners could be made children of God—1 John 3:1, 9; 4:7; 5:1, 4, 18; John 1:12-13:
      1. Through such an amazing divine birth we have received the divine life, the eternal life, as the divine seed sown into our being—1 John 1:2; 3:9.
      2. Since we have been born of the divine life and possess the divine life, we, the children of God, are divine persons—5:11-13; 3:1, 10.
      3. As those who have been born of God, we have not only the divine life but also the divine nature— 2 Pet. 1:4.
   3. Because we are the children of God with the life and nature of God, we can be imitators of God—Eph. 5:1.
   4. As the Father’s children, having the Father’s life and nature, we can be perfect as our Father is perfect— Matt. 5:48.
3. As the children of God, we should walk in love and light—Eph. 5:2, 8:
   1. As grace and truth are the basic elements in 4:17-32, so love and light are the basic elements of Paul’s exhortation in 5:1-33:
      1. Grace is the expression of love, and love is the source of grace; truth is the revelation of light, and light is the origin of truth—1 John 4:8; 1:5.
      2. Love is the inner substance of God, and light is the expressed element of God; the inner love of God is sensible, and the outer light of God is visible.
      3. Our daily walk as children of God should be constituted with both the loving substance of God and the shining element of God; this should be the inner source of our walk.
      4. Walking in love and light is deeper and more tender than living according to truth and by grace.
   2. “Walk in love, even as Christ also loved us and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savor”—Eph. 5:2:
      1. To walk in love is to walk in intimacy with God—cf. 1 John 3:1:
         1. In the Father’s presence, we not only enjoy grace, the expression of love, but we also enjoy love itself.
         2. In our daily walk we should always care for our Father’s feeling, for we live intimately in His tender love.
      2. The goal of the book of Ephesians is to bring us into love as the inner substance of God that we may enjoy His presence in the sweetness of the divine love and thereby love others as Christ did—5:25:
         1. In the condition and atmosphere of love, we are saturated with God to be holy and without blemish before Him—1:4.
         2. The love in which we are rooted for growth and grounded for building is the divine love realized and experienced by us in a practical way—3:17.
         3. The love of Christ, which is Christ Himself, is immeasurable and knowledge-surpassing, yet we can know it by experiencing it—v. 19.
         4. In the love of God in Christ, we hold to truth, that is, to Christ with His Body—4:15.
         5. The Body of Christ builds itself up in love; love is the most excellent way for us to be anything and to do anything for the building up of the Body of Christ—v. 16; 1 Cor. 12:31.
         6. To love the Lord in incorruptibility means to love Him in the new creation and according to all the incorruptible things revealed in the book of Ephesians—6:24.
      3. As those who have been regenerated to become God’s species, we, the children of God, should be love because God is love; since we become God in life and in nature, we also should become love— 1 John 4:8, 16.
   3. “You were once darkness but are now light in the Lord; walk as children of light”—Eph. 5:8:
      1. As God is light, so we, the children of God, are children of light—1 John 1:5; Eph. 5:8; John 12:36.
      2. We are not only children of light—we are light itself; we are light because we are one with God in the Lord—Matt. 5:14; 1 John 1:5.
      3. When we are in the light, we are outside the realm of right and wrong—v. 7.
      4. If we walk as children of light, we will bear the fruit described in Ephesians 5:9:
         1. The fruit of the light must be good in nature, righteous in procedure, and real in expression, that God may be expressed as the reality of our daily walk.
         2. The fruit of the light in goodness, righteousness, and truth is related to the Triune God:
            1. 1) God the Father as goodness is the nature of the fruit of the light; therefore, goodness in verse 9 refers to God the Father—Matt. 19:17.
            2. 2) Righteousness refers to God the Son, for Christ came to accomplish God’s purpose according to God’s righteous procedure— Rom. 5:17-18, 21.
            3. 3) Truth, the expression of the fruit of the light, refers to God the Spirit, for He is the Spirit of reality—John 14:17; 16:13.
         3. The proof that we are walking as children of light is seen in the bearing of such fruit.