Colossians describes the first side as “on the earth… You also once walked in those, when you lived in them.” This stands in contrast to how we live “as God’s chosen ones…” 1 Peter says, “For we have spent enough of our past time doing the desire of the Gentiles” which he contrasts with the advice to “be of sound mind, self-controlled, and sober in prayer.” And I love the nice summary from Ephesians 2:13 which says, “You who once were far off are made near in the blood of Christ.”Ī SUBSCRIBER SAYS: “Thank you!!! With two funerals this week, you saved my Sunday!!! I tell everyone what a great job you do!”Ī user-friendly resource for busy pastors! And on the other side, Titus says, “But when the kindness of God our Savior and his love toward mankind appeared …” (Titus 3:4). Here in Ephesians, Paul starts the contrast with the words, “you were once” and ends it with “but are now.” The book of Titus draws the same contrast by saying, ” For we were also once …” (Titus 3:3). Each one has a peculiar way of describing the contrast. The first verse of our text says, “you were once… but are now…” This is one of several in Scripture that paint a stark contrast between what we were before we became Christians and what we are now that we have. We don’t belong to the night, nor to darkness” (1 Thess. 1 Thessalonians says, “You are all children of light, and children of the day. And again in John 12, Jesus says, “Believe in the light, that you may become children of light.” (John 12:36). When Jesus told the parable of the dishonest manager, he concluded that “the children of this world are, in their own generation, wiser than the children of the light “ (Luke 16:8). Early in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said in a very direct way, “You are the light of the world.”
We are called “children of light” in several passages in the New Testament. At the very beginning of his ministry, Jesus forecast his own epitaph by saying, “This is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light for their works were evil” (John 3:19). He who follows me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the light of life” (John 8:12). Jesus said, “I am the light of the world. Jesus loved to use this contrast between darkness and light as a tool to describe the difference that Christ makes. Our passage from Ephesians says it this way, “For you were once darkness, but are now light in the Lord. What better image for us in eastern Kentucky than that of a coal mine? When I read that article I immediately knew it was the introduction that I needed for this sermon on children of light. The Bible says Jesus brings them out of the darkness and into everlasting light'” (Lexington Herald Leader, March 9, 2002, story by Art Jester). “It made me realize how Jesus Christ came to me in the darkness while I was a sinner and brought me out to the light. “Everything was completely dark, and I looked up a way, where the men were near the top, and I could see a light,” Napier said. Napier remembers the time he had stopped in a mine to eat his lunch, and he reached up and turned off the light on his safety hat. But sometimes something wondrous can happen, too. Coal mining is safer than it used to be, though it’s still dusty and dirty, and there’s always concern that something terrible could happen deep inside a cramped shaft. The article continued, “Every workday, at dawn’s early light, Kevin Napier crawls into a long, black hole. It was the Faith and Values section of the Lexington Herald Leader, and it described the experiences of three Pentecostal preachers in Leslie County who work weekday jobs as coal miners and preach on the side. “Out of the darkness comes the light.” So began an article in yesterday’s newspaper.
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