My sermon today is meant to be both helpful and hopeful. What we read in verses 7-10 is encouraging to you if your faith and trust is in Jesus Christ as the only One qualified to atone for all of your sins as the Lion and the Lamb. These verses are encouraging if you believe that Jesus while fully divine was also fully human for the purpose of living the life you could not live to die upon the cross for your sins while He was perfectly sinless, and that all the wrath of a Holy God fell upon Him in your place.
If you are a Christian, you are no longer in darkness, but because of nothing you have done and everything He has done... you are “light in the Lord” and now able to “walk as children of light.” Because you are a Christian, you know Him and long for His appearing in the same manner the apostle Peter described: “...and though you have not seen Him, you love Him, and though you do not see Him now, but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory” (1 Pet. 3:8). It is because you are a Christian that there is coming a day when you also will be able to face death with the same confidence the apostle Paul did while facing death: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith; in the future there is reserved for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day; and not only to me, but also to all who have loved His appearing” (2 Tim. 4:7-8). This is why we can sing songs like “He Who is to Come” with hope and confidence:
There is a day coming
When the old will pass away
Every wrong will be made right
No darkness no night
The Son will light the way
There is a king coming
The one who conquered death and grave
No more pain and no more sorrow
This hope for tomorrow
Is our hope for today
He who is to come
Christ the Son of man
Riding on the clouds with a crown upon His head
Every eye will see Him
With the nail scars in His hands[1]
If you are a Christian, you belong to God as His beloved child (5:1) because He chose you before the foundation of the earth (1:4), He forgave and redeemed you through the shed blood of His Son, Jesus (1:7), and have been adopted as a child of God according to the good pleasure of His will (1:5). If you are a Christian, you are now alive with Jesus (2:4-5), and because you are alive with Christ, you are God’s, “workmanship [poiēma], created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them” (Eph. 2:10).
You Were Saved from the Wrath of God
If you are a Christian, you have been saved from the wrath of an infinitely holy God! You who were once dead in your offenses and sins, walked according to the course of this world, lived in the lusts and desires of your flesh and mind, and were by nature a child of the wrath of God, stand before God as one who has been fully pardoned, forgiven, and loved because the wrath you deserved, Jesus willingly endured. This is why Paul wrote in Ephesians 5:6-7, “See that no one deceives you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.
When I preached on verses 1-6, I spent a considerable amount of time explaining that “these things” in verse 6 include sexual immorality, impurity, and greed. Sexual immorality is any perversion of sex that has not been sanctioned to be enjoyed between a husband and a wife within the bounds of the covenant of marriage. Impurity includes any sexual sin but is not limited to sexual sins. Greed is any form of covetousness which also includes the taking of a person for sexual pleasure who does not belong to you because you are not married to that person, and this can be done physically as well as mentally. It is because of sexual immorality, impurity, and greed that the wrath of God comes.
However, it is not only because of sexual immorality, impurity, and greed that the wrath of God is coming; the wrath of God comes also because of filthiness, foolish talk, and vulgar joking. Jesus said of that what comes out of your mouth is a symptom of what is in your heart: “The good person out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good; and the evil person out of the evil treasure brings forth what is evil; for his mouth speaks from that which fills his heart” (Luke 6:45). In short, the wrath of God comes because of sin. In Revelation 1:18 we are told: “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of people who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.”
What is “wrath?” Well, according to the dictionary, it is “strong, stern, or fierce anger.” God’s strong, stern, and fierce anger is provoked over sin, and we are warned about His fierce anger over sin both in the Old Testament and New Testament. For you to understand and appreciate the mercy, love, and grace of God, you must understand that sin is serious and God’s anger over sin is white hot against those guilty of it!
We do not have the time for me to get exhaustive regarding the wrath of God over sin but permit me to offer you some glimpse into the explanation God’s word gives us for why He takes sin so seriously. For starters, there is only one attribute that is repeated not twice, but three times, and that attribute is the holiness of God. In Isaiah 6:3 and Revelation 4:8 we encounter the holiness of God expressed in a way that no other attribute of God is expressed:
“And one called out to another and said, ‘Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of armies. The whole earth is full of His glory.’” (Isa. 6:3)
“And the four living creatures, each one of them having six wings, are full of eyes around and within; and day and night they do not cease to say, ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God, the Almighty, who was and who is and who is to come.’” (Rev. 4:8)
Regarding the holiness of God, the sinless Seraphim – a specific type of angel commissioned and designed for the throne room of God – attribute the Almighty with a literary device by repeating three words to emphasize the holiness of God, in Scripture it is called the three-times-holy. Even the Seraphim, before the presence of God, must cover their eyes and their feet (Isa. 6:2), and Isaiah’s response before the presence of the Holy One was one of cursing upon himself: “Woe to me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of armies” (Isa. 6:5). It is of this God that the prophet Habakkuk said: “Are You not from time everlasting, Lord, my God, my Holy One? Your eyes are too pure to look at evil...” (Hab. 1:12a, 13a). In Nahum we are told that God is a “jealous and avenging God is the Lord; The Lord is avenging and wrathful. The Lord takes vengeance on His adversaries, And He reserves wrath for His enemies” (Nah. 1:2). And when it comes to the sinfulness of the nations, we are told that all of the wicked must drink the cup of His wrath: “For a cup is in the hand of the Lord, and the wine foams; it is well mixed, and He pours out of this; certainly all the wicked of the earth must drain and drink its dregs” (Ps. 75:8).
The cup of God’s wrath reserved for the wicked is the cup Jesus drank. The Son of God, the perfect sinless lamb, the Groom of the Church drank the cup of God’s wrath! “The only begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God.... Who, for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, and was made man”[2] was born to die for sinful man! In the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus prayed about the cup reserved for the wicked: “And He went a little beyond them, and fell on His face and prayed, saying, ‘My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will.’ He went away again a second time and prayed, saying, ‘My Father, if this cup cannot pass away unless I drink from it, Your will be done.’” (Matt. 26:39, 42). Jesus drank the cup of God’s wrath for our redemption, and He drank every last drop on the cross by becoming curse in our place: “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us—for it is written: ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a Tree’” (Gal. 3:13). This is why Jesus said of Himself: “The Father loves the Son and has entrusted all things to His hand. The one who believes in the Son has eternal life; but the one who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him” (John 3:35-36). Hell is how the wrath of God will be carried out, and Jesus described it as a place, “where their worm does not die, and the fire is not extinguished” (Mark 9:48).
You Are Redeemed to Live as Children of Light
However, if you are a Christian, you who were once a child of wrath are now a child of mercy, and thereby an adopted child of the Living God through the price Jesus paid by His blood. R.C. Sproul wrote of the salvation of sinners, “The glory of the gospel is this: The one from whom we need to be saved is the one who has saved us.” In his magnum opus, The Cross of Christ, John Stott described Christ’s sacrifice for our salvation this way: “Divine love triumphed over divine wrath by divine self-sacrifice.”[3]
If you are confused as to how seriously God takes sin or how offended by your sin He was, you need not look beyond the cross on which Jesus died! The cross is the place where our redeemer bore a holy and justified wrath on our behalf where He received the ax of God’s justice in our place! Upon the cross, where Jesus was cursed in our place, He was pierced for our offenses and was crushed for our wrongdoings (Isa. 53:5).
We who have been redeemed by the blood of Christ are no longer children of wrath, and because we are no longer children of wrath, we are not to become partners with those who continue to practice the very thing that the wrath of God is reserved for. Christian, you who were once darkness are a child of light. As children of light, we are to live out our new life in Christ in the following four ways:
- We are to walk as children of light by not partnering with the sons of disobedience (v. 7). The Greek word for “partner” is symmetochos which can also be translated “sharer” or “partaker.” Paul uses the same word in Ephesians 3:6 to describe how we, Gentiles, share, partake, and participate in the promise of Christ as the body of Christ. We who once were satisfied by the broken cisterns of this world, now find our satisfaction in Jesus as the Living Water (John 7:37-39).
- We are to walk as children of light by displaying the light of Christ (v. 8). If you are a Christian, you are no longer darkness, but sons and daughters, Light of Life (John 12:36). Jesus said of all who belong to Him: “You are the light of the world.... Your light must shine before people in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 5:14, 16).
- We are to walk as children of light by displaying the fruit of our identity and union in Christ (v. 9). By walking with Christ, we will display the goodness, righteousness, and truth of Jesus for the glory of God and the good of those around us. Our life is in Jesus, and the evidence that we belong to Him is that His life will shine through our lives. Tony Merida, in his commentary on Ephesians, said it this way: “Those who walk in light do “good works” (2:10), they live righteously (4:24), and they speak truthfully (4:15).”[4]
- We are to walk as children of light by living lives that are pleasing to the Lord (v. 10). Our lives are not set apart to please people, but to please the One who purchased us with His blood. This is why the apostle Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 6:18-20, “Flee sexual immorality. Every other sin that a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought for a price: therefore glorify God in your body.”
So, what’s the point? The point is simply this: You, Christian, are a child of a Holy God who poured out His wrath upon His Son so that you would not be consumed by His justice but be overwhelmed by His kindness, grace, love, and mercy through Jesus! Because you are no longer dead in your offenses and sins (2:1), you walk as one who is alive in Christ. Walk as one who has been called, “out of darkness into His marvelous light” (1 Pet. 2:9). Walk as the forgiven because, “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Cor. 5:21). Walk in light of your new identity because God has declared by the authority of His word: “if anyone is in Christ, this person is a new creation; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come” (2 Cor. 5:17). You who was once dead in your sins and once walked in darkness, are awake and alive not because of anything you have done but because of everything Christ has accomplished! This is why we sing,
O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I'm constrained to be
Let Thy grace Lord like a fetter
Bind my wand'ring heart to Thee
Prone to wander Lord I feel it
Prone to leave the God I love
Here's my heart Lord take and seal it
Seal it for Thy courts above.[5]
