Live as children of light 

By Rev. Kenly Mann, Chaplain

If you are a terrible cook and I ask you to bake me a cake, you would be stressed.  But let me change the scenario: say you are a great cook and I ask you to bake me a cake. It would be easy for you to do.  

When God commands us to be imitators of God, you might be all stressed out.  And you would have reason to be, as by ourselves, we don’t have the power to make ourselves imitators of God.  

But look ahead to Ephesians 5:8-9: For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light. 

When we were unbelievers, we were darkness. We did not have it in us to imitate God.  (The therefore in 5:1 relates to the previous verse telling us to forgive each other as Christ God forgave us.) But God filled us with his Spirit. We now are light.  So Paul writes, “Live as children of light.” 

If you were a living apple tree, you would bear apples without being commanded to do so. You would bear apples because that is the nature of an apple tree. 

God made us believers who naturally bear fruit. One of those fruits is that we imitate Christ. When you imitate someone, you are complimenting that person. 

Our faith naturally praises Christ by imitating Him. We forgive because that is the nature of faith. We imitate Christ naturally because he made us light, and therefore, we live as beloved children of light.

Prayer: Dear Lord, we praise you for your love in coming to us when we were dead in sin and filling us with your Spirit of light.  When we are tempted to imitate the world instead of You, lead us to remember who we are – children of light – and say “no” to sin and instead imitate you. We praise you that you do not tell us to earn salvation by imitating you but instead made us your children of light, who want to mimic you like children do their dear parents. Amen.