TOPIC:“A Dedicated Walk In a Destructive World”
“For you were once darkness, but now are you light in the Lord;
walk as children of light” (Ephesians 5:8, NKJV).
Of the many descriptive words in the New Testament to characterize the Christian life, one of the most graphic and striking is the one used by the Apostle Paul in his letter to the believers at Ephesus. It is the word “walk” that he uses some seven times in his writings. True, Paul describes the Christian life in chapter 6 of this Epistle as a WARFARE, but it is the use of this word “WALK” in three different places in this letter and once in Galatians that now demand our attention. In 4:1 we are encouraged to “walk worthy.” In 5:2 we are told to “walk in love.” In 5:15 we are called upon to “walk circumspectly.” And in Galatians 5:16 we are commanded to “walk in the Spirit.”
Here, then, we have this figure of speech, the physical act of walking used as a metaphor to characterize the outward, visible life of the believer in Christ. But before we examine our new walk IN Christ let us think for a moment what our old walk WITHOUT Christ was like. Paul describes it for us in chapter 2 verses 2 and 3 of this Epistle: “You once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of the flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath.” There you have our walk without Christ. It was worldly. It was wicked. It was satanically inspired.
But not only did we walk in darkness when we were without Christ, but according to the Apostle's language in our text we “were once darkness.” Not merely that we were in darkness, but that darkness was in us. We were darkness itself. What we did was in keeping with what we were. Now notice what God did for us according to Paul in chapter 2 verses 4 through 6: “But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ, and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” The words "but God," may be two of the most marvelous . . .