“For you were sometimes darkness, but now you are light in the Lord: walk as children of light: 9. for the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth.”
In Matthew 5:14, Jesus referred to His disciples as “the light of the world.” In this text, Paul reminded the Ephesians that since they were now Christians, they were to walk as “children of light.” In this dark world, we are to shine God’s light into the dark.aul gave a similar reminder in Philippians 2:15: “That you may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom you shine as lights in a dark world.” This has not changed. We are still God’s lights in a dark world. We are to live in goodness before the world. We need to be careful about how we use this word “goodness,” because we can easily be misunderstood. When we mention our goodness, the world hears us saying that we are better than they are. We do not need to talk about our goodness; rather, we need to live goodness before the world. What is goodness? I think that we reflect goodness by showing love and compassion to the world. The Good Samaritan comes to mind here. He did a good thing that neither the priest nor Levite would do. He shined a light of goodness upon the stricken man. We reflect the Spirit’s goodness by doing good things. This usually means doing good things for people. This is how Jesus lived, and is how we should seek to live as well if we are to reflect His light to the world. We are to live in righteousness before the world. Righteousness and goodness are closely related, but they are not the same. Again, we need to be careful how we use this word. We don’t need to talk about our righteousness, because people will hear that as self-righteousness. We need to live out the righteousness of Christ before the world. We need to remember that the righteousness that we have is not our own. It is given to us by our faith in Christ. When we live righteously, we are careful about how we talk and about how we behave before the world. We hurt our witness when we say and do unrighteous things. Of course, this begins by living righteously when we are alone as well. The righteousness of Christ needs to be reflected through our lives to a dark world. We are to live in truth before the world. I think that this refers to our truthfulness. We should be honest in all of our dealings with people. First, we should always tell the truth. For example, if we are going to sell someone a used car, we should tell them the truth about it and not let them find out down the road. When we promise somebody something, we should follow through with what we promised unless what we promised would do more harm than good. Even then, we would need to explain. Christians should be as good as their word. If we tell somebody something, they should be able to “take it to the bank.” We must use Christ as our example. He who is “The Truth” wants us to live out His truth before the world. In all of these things, we are to obey Christ and to reflect Him in our dealings with this dark world. Bro. Joe
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AuthorDr. Joe Beauchamp is the author of this blog and website. Categories
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