January 15 | Bible in a Year: Genesis 36–38; Matthew 10:21–42

Flourishing or Floundering

Live as children of light. Ephesians 5:8

READ Ephesians 5:1–11

It was our first biology experiment. Chattering with typical eleven-year-old excitement, we set to work, wrapped in our bright blue laboratory coats. Lining two jars with damp blotting paper, we inserted a broad bean half-way down each one, between paper and glass. One jar we placed on a sunny windowsill, the other in a dark cupboard. The bean in the light grew strong white roots and a stem crowned with green leaves. The one in the darkness attempted to grow, but its frail roots, limp yellow stem and shrivelled leaves predicted it would fail unless someone moved it into the light.

Light, we learned, is essential for plants to grow and bear fruit. But light in the Bible is also synonymous with spiritual life. Jesus is called the light of life (John 1:4), so Paul encourages us to “live as children of light” (Ephesians 5:8). Living in the light is to “walk in the way of love” (v. 2), and yield Christ’s fruit of “goodness, righteousness and truth” (v. 9). It is to “have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness” ( v. 11). It involves living ‘on the sunny windowsill’.

Christ’s life produces fruit: love in action and godly character in obedience to God’s Word. When we confess ungodly behaviour that belongs in the darkness, and choose instead to live in the life-giving light of Jesus’ lifestyle and commands, our spiritual lives will not only flourish, but nourish others also.

By Anne Le Tissier

Are there any “fruitless deeds of darkness” holding back your growth in your relationship with God? How might picturing yourself flourishing on a sunny windowsill help you to resist temptation in the future?

Thank You, loving God, that I can turn to You in confession at any moment, and receive Your life-giving light to help me flourish and grow in You.

SCRIPTURE INSIGHT

Paul often writes of what our new life in Christ is to look like. We’re new creations from which the old has gone and the new has come (2 Corinthians 5:17). In Ephesians 5:3–7, he lists specific characteristics or actions that should have no place in the lives of believers in Jesus.

But the focus of this section lies in the reason Paul gives for leaving these things behind. The word for at the beginning of verse 8 signals that what follows is causal. We leave these things behind because we’re no longer darkness but light. Paul doesn’t say that we inhabited these areas, but rather that we were these things. We were darkness, but now we’re light. The actions left behind belong to darkness and have no place in light.