According to the New Testament, reality is God revealed. Because grace and reality came through Jesus Christ (John 1:17), they must be something of God Himself. Jesus is God coming to us. When He comes, everything related to His being also comes. God comes to us for our enjoyment. This is grace. God also comes to reveal Himself to us. This is reality. In other words, when God is enjoyed by us, He is grace, but when He is revealed to us, He is reality. Reality is God revealed to us.
Ephesians 4:21 says, “If indeed you have heard Him and have been taught in Him as the reality is in Jesus.” The phrase the reality is in Jesus refers to the actual condition of the life of Jesus as recorded in the four Gospels. In the ungodly walk of the Gentiles, the fallen people, there is vanity (v. 17), but in the godly life of Jesus there is truth—reality. Jesus lived a life in which He did everything in God, with God, and for God. God was in His living, and He was one with God. This is the meaning of the reality is in Jesus. We, the believers, who are regenerated with Christ as our life and are taught in Him, should learn from Him as the reality is in Jesus.
The life of Jesus according to reality is the pattern for the believers’ life. In this pattern we have learned Christ as the reality is in Jesus. This means that we have learned Christ according to the reality shown in the Gospels, that is, according to the life of the Lord Jesus. This life is the shining of light. The shining of light is reality, and reality is the expression of God. Therefore, in the life of Jesus there is reality. The essence of the life of Jesus is reality. When the Lord Jesus lived on the earth, He always walked in reality, in the shining of the divine light, and in the expression of God.
Ephesians 4:17-24 depicts the principle of our renewed daily living for the learning of Christ. This principle is the reality, the living of the Lord Jesus when He was on earth. The Lord’s living was one of always putting off His human life and putting on the Father’s divine life. This is the life of Jesus, and this life is the reality that is the principle of a life of learning Christ. According to this principle, we put off the old man and put on the new man. Now by being filled in our regenerated spirit by the processed Triune God and letting the word of Christ dwell in us richly, we live a life that matches the new man in grace and reality.
Another result of being filled in spirit by the processed Triune God and letting the word of Christ dwell in us richly is that we live a life that matches the wife of Christ in love and light (5:22-25). As grace and reality (truth) are the basic elements in Ephesians 4:17-32, so love and light are the basic elements in 5:1-33. 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 reality. God is love and light (1 John 4:8; 1:5). When God is expressed and revealed in the Lord Jesus, His love becomes grace, and His light becomes truth. After we have received God as grace and realized Him as truth in the Lord Jesus, we come to Him and enjoy His love and light. Love and light are deeper than grace and truth. Hence, Paul takes grace and truth as the basic elements of the living that matches the new man and then takes love and light as the elements of the living that matches the wife of Christ. This implies that we should grow deeper in our daily life to progress from the outward elements to the inward.
Love is the inner substance of God, whereas light is the expressed element of God. It is possible to sense the love of God inwardly, and it is possible to see the light of God shining out. Our walk in love should be constituted of the loving substance and the shining element of God. Love and light should be the inner source of our walk, which are deeper than grace and truth.
Ephesians 5:2 says, “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.” Here Paul sets forth Christ as an example for our living. In 4:32 God in Christ is our pattern since God’s grace and reality (truth) expressed in the life of Jesus are taken as the basic elements. But in chapter 5 Christ Himself is our example since the love expressed by Christ to us (vv. 2, 25) and the light shined by Christ upon us (v. 14) are taken as the basic elements.
In verse 8 Paul says, “You were once darkness but are now light in the Lord; walk as children of light.” We were once not only dark but darkness itself. We are now not only the children of light but light itself (Matt. 5:14). As light is God, so darkness is Satan. We were darkness because we were one with Satan. Now we are light because we are one with God in the Lord. Because we are now light in the Lord, we should walk as children of light. We should not simply be according to reality and by grace, but in love and under light. Walking in love and in light is deeper and more tender than living according to reality and by grace.
After charging us to walk as children of light, Paul speaks of the fruit of the light: “The fruit of the light consists in all goodness and righteousness and truth” (Eph. 5:9). Goodness is the nature of the fruit of the light, righteousness is the way or the procedure to produce the fruit of the light, and the truth is the reality, the real expression of the fruit of the light. This expression is God Himself. The fruit of the light must be good in nature, righteous in procedure, and real in expression so that God may be expressed as the reality of our daily walk.
In speaking of the fruit of the light, Paul mentions three things—goodness, righteousness, and truth—because these three are related to the Triune God. Goodness refers to the nature of the fruit of light. The Lord Jesus indicated that the only One who is good is God Himself (Matt. 19:17). Hence, goodness denotes God the Father. God the Father as goodness is the nature of the fruit of the light.
Righteousness is the procedure by which the fruit of the light is produced. In the Godhead, the Son, Christ, is our righteousness. He came to earth to produce certain things according to God’s procedure, which is always righteous. Righteousness is God’s way, God’s procedure. Christ came to accomplish God’s purpose according to His righteous procedure (Rom. 5:17-18, 21). Therefore, the second aspect of the fruit of the light refers to God the Son.
Truth is the expression of the fruit of the light. This fruit must be real; that is, it must be the expression of God, the shining of the hidden light. No doubt, this truth refers to God the Spirit, because He is the Spirit of reality (John 14:17), the third in the Godhead. Therefore, the Father as goodness, the Son as righteousness, and the Spirit of reality as truth are all related to the fruit of the light. If we walk as children of light, we will bear the fruit described in Ephesians 5:9. This fruit must be in goodness, in righteousness, and in truth, and it proves that we are walking as children of light.
We first receive God as grace and realize God as reality in Christ. Then we enjoy God as love and light. Love and light are the inward elements, whereas grace and reality are the outward elements. Love is the inner substance of God that can be sensed, and light is the expressed element of God that can be seen. Both love and light must be the inner source of the believers’ daily walk.
We need to remember that the church life according to God’s desire must be in love and in light, both of which are the very elements of God Himself. In the inner substance of God we have love and light. The goal of Ephesians is to bring us into God’s inner substance to know Him as love and light. Here we can live in intimate fellowship as we enjoy His shining light and sweet love by being filled in spirit by the Spirit and letting the word of Christ dwell in us richly.
By being filled in spirit by the Spirit and letting the word of Christ dwell in us richly, we live a life that matches the new man in grace and reality. This new man is corporate; it is the Body of Christ, having Christ as its constituent, and it was created by Him on the cross in Himself. The corporate new man should live, as Jesus did on earth, a life full of grace and reality, a life that expresses God Himself and causes God to be realized as the reality by people so that they may receive God as grace to be their enjoyment.
Grace is the enjoyment of the Triune God in all that He is to the believers. Grace is Christ being subjective to the believers, becoming their enjoyment. When we experience the Triune God who has come to us as our enjoyment, He becomes grace to us. This grace is related to the details of learning Christ, and it enables us to meet the standard in the details of our daily living, to be happy and satisfied through the enjoyment of God as grace and to supply grace by the word out of our mouth to those who hear.
Reality is God revealed. In the ungodly walk of the Gentiles, the fallen people, there is vanity, but in the godly life of Jesus there is reality, because in His living He did everything in God, with God, and for God, and He was one with God. This life of reality, which is the shining of light and the expression of God, is a pattern to the believers to learn Christ and to have the principle of a renewed daily life.
By being filled in spirit by the Spirit and letting the word of Christ dwell in us richly, we also live a life that matches the wife of Christ in love and light. Love is the source of grace and the inward substance of God that can be sensed. Light is the origin of reality and the expressed element of God that can be seen. Love and light should be the inner source of the believers’ daily walk; this is the church life according to God’s desire. In the Lord Jesus, as believers, we receive God as grace and realize God as truth. Then we come to God to enjoy His love and light, taking Christ as the example for our living and walking in love and light as children of light.
The fruit of the light is in goodness, righteousness, and truth; it is proof that we are walking as children of light. These three items are related to the Triune God. Goodness denotes God the Father. God the Father as goodness is the nature of the fruit of the light. Righteousness denotes Christ the Son. Christ the Son as the righteousness of the believers came to earth to produce certain things according to God’s righteous procedure for the accomplishing of God’s purpose. Truth denotes God the Spirit because He is the Spirit of reality.