WALKING IN LOVE AND LIGHT
According to Ephesians 4, we need grace and truth for the life that qualifies us to participate in the building up of the Body of Christ. Chapter five of Ephesians is higher and deeper than chapter four. It goes on to show us that we need to walk in love and light (vv. 2, 8). Love is the source of grace, and light is the source of truth. When love is expressed, it becomes grace. When light shines out, it becomes truth. Christ came from God to express God, to manifest God. When God is expressed and revealed in the Lord Jesus, His love becomes grace and His light becomes truth. When we receive the Lord Jesus as our Savior and our life, we are brought into fellowship with the Father to enjoy Him as love and light (see note 2l in Ephesians 5—Recovery Version). The Son is the expression of love, which to us is grace, and this grace brings us to the source of grace, which is the Father as love. In the Gospel of John there is grace (John 1:14), but in the first Epistle of John there is love (1 John 4:8, 16). Christ also came to bring us the truth, the reality. When we have the truth, the truth brings us to the source of truth, the Father as light. Jesus Christ brings us to the Father, who is love as the source of grace and who is light as the source of truth. In Ephesians 5 we are children of light walking in love and light.
In writing the book of Ephesians, Paul was much higher than any philosopher, such as Confucius or Socrates. What human being could compose this book? Where did Paul pick up these points? Many of the terms he used, such as the Body of Christ, cannot be found in the Old Testament. Paul was one who was gained by the Triune God to be mingled with Him. In 1 Corinthians 7:40 he said, "I think that I also have the Spirit of God." He was living in the principle of incarnation as a God-man when he wrote the wonderful things in his Epistles. All these things were unveiled to him and were written by him, and they are in our hands. If there were not such a book as the Bible on the earth, what darkness we would be in! But since we have this book, what light we are in! We are really the children of light.
CHILDREN OF LIGHT
Ephesians 5:1 says, "Become therefore imitators of God, as beloved children." To live a life of love and light we have One whom we may imitate. We have a Father who is love and who is light. As children of the Father, we have His life and nature. The children are spontaneously the imitators of the Father. Every child as an imitator of God is a "xerox copy" of the Father. We are not strangers to God trying to imitate Him. We are children of God, possessing God’s life and enjoying God’s nature. By our Father’s divine life we can be imitators of Him.
We also have Christ as our pattern. Ephesians 5:2 says, "And walk in love, even as Christ also loved you, and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savor." An offering is a gift for fellowship with God, whereas a sacrifice is for redemption from sin. Christ loved us (vv. 2, 25) and Christ shines upon us (v. 14). He is our pattern for us to live a life in love and in light. By ourselves we could not love others as Christ loved us. We can love as He loved because He is our life. We have Him as our life and as our person. We have a person in us who loved us, and now by this person, in this person, and with this person we can love as He loved. This is organic, something of life.
The life of the children of light qualifies us to participate in the preparation of the bride of Christ. Revelation 19:7 says, "Let us rejoice and exult, and let us give the glory to Him, for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and His wife has made herself ready." When the wedding of the Lamb comes, we, the children of light, will be a bride to satisfy the One who loves us. To be ready requires preparation. The way to prepare ourselves to be the bride of Christ is to be the children of light always walking and working in love and light as our Savior did. We can imitate our Father God and take Christ as our pattern to walk and work in love and light.
(The Body of Christ, Chapter 5, by Witness Lee)
