Ephesians: Week 18
Darkness and Light

Today in Ephesians, Paul reminds us that as great as our salvation is, it doesn’t stop at the moment of our conversion. We are told to put off the old self and put on the new, to continually be renewed and transformed through the work of the Holy Spirit. Throughout chapters 4-6, Paul will show us what it looks like to live this way.

• What differences have you seen in your life since the moment of “conversion,” trusting Jesus with your life?

Paul continues to pull out argument after argument, image after image, to show us what it means to live the Christian life. Today the image he will use is not about being adopted children, not about family, but darkness and light.

• In regard to our spiritual lives, what do the images of darkness and light bring to mind?
• How has Jesus exposed darkness that you once thought was light?

Tim Keller wrote, “What makes you an effective, solid Christian is that you’re continually arguing with yourself, and you’re winning the argument. What makes you a mess as a Christian is you’re continually arguing with yourself and you’re losing the argument!” What he means is that we have to argue with ourselves about who we truly are in Christ. In order to win that argument with ourselves, we have to know the Gospel. We have to be able to remind ourselves that “you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.”

Read Ephesians 5:1 and then 5:8-14.
• What kinds of arguments do you have with yourself inside your own mind? What lies are you prone to believing about yourself/God/the world?
• How does the Gospel challenge those lies?

1) When the Bible says God is light, it means He is true. Paul uses the word light to talk about truth because the light exposes what is false. In the presence of God everything comes to light; it is in the presence of light that we see reality.

2) When the Bible says God is light, it means He is righteousness. Light is purity, and therefore light is often used as an image for God’s righteousness. God is absolute and complete moral excellence; He is completely consistent. The Bible says God is righteous; He is absolute and pure light.

3) When the Bible says God is light, it means He is goodness. The word good has an aspect to it that means benevolent. When we talk about God being light, we mean, among other things, that He is also good. Darkness tends to bring and breed confusion as opposed to goodness and truth. A dark world breeds cynicism and disillusionment about the possibility of ANY answers.

• What does it mean to be “light in the Lord”?
• Based on your habits, speech, thoughts, etc., what is actually the center of your life?
• If Jesus were the center of your life more often, what do you think might change?

There is a moment in which we cross from night into day. The only way to move from being darkness to being light is a change of nature as God sends His Spirit and we are grafted into Him.
• Come awake! A Christian is someone who sees differently because the light has been clicked on.
• See our righteousness. Our entire life centers on being found in Christ. Paul tells us we are light in the Lord….so we should walk as if we are!
• See a change in our attitude toward other people. We become more of a servant and less of a taker.

When we understand the Gospel, we don’t see ourselves in degrees of perfection; we are instead made perfect in Christ. A Christian is somebody who has finally said, “I see that the main problem in my life … is me.” That takes enlightenment—the engrafting of light from the outside. This acknowledgement also frees us to expose darkness and be known.

• What obstacles get in the way of your darkness being exposed?
• What can be gained from darkness being exposed by the light?
• How can we create safe relational spaces in which we can
expose darkness and encourage one another to walk as
“children of light”?