I. "Walk in love." Here we have a command founded upon a reason: "Walk in love, as Christ hath loved us." Yes, of all forces love is the most powerful as a force to act upon others. Pure, disinterested love is all but irresistible, all but, not quite; for if it were quite irresistible, then the world had been converted long ago. I think St. Augustine was right when he said that the most wonderful thing he knew was that God could love man so much, and man could love God so little. It looks sometimes as if God had never loved the world, as if Jesus had never died for the world, as if there were no such thing as love at all.
II. But then we come to the other command: "Walk as children of light." Now light, of course, is put for knowledge, as darkness is put for ignorance. Well, the light shows us what otherwise could not be seen; it reveals to us what otherwise were unknown. Now the one who walks as a child of light sees the things that it is needful for him to behold, if he too would avoid the perils, would escape the evils, of the journey, and direct his way aright towards the everlasting home. But then, again, remember that the light shines. It falls on others. The child of light not only walks wisely and safely, but he shines; he is a reflected light, not like the sun, which shines with its own inherent intrinsic light, but like the planets, which shine with borrowed light. It is Christ shining on them and in them which makes Christian people to walk as children of light.
Bishop Walsham How, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxxiii., p. 161.
Reference: Ephesians 5:4. A. Ainger, Sermons in the Temple Church,p. 296.
Light in the Lord.
I. "Ye were darkness." Assuredly these words ought not to apply to us at all in the same sense in which they applied to the Ephesians, brought into fellowship as we are at our baptisms with Him who is the Light no less than the Life of men and who illuminated them. They ought notto apply to us, and yet must not each of us set our seal to these words as in their measure only too true of him during all the time that he failed to realise to the full his baptismal privileges and the things which were freely given him of God? And if we are now light, is it any other than light in the Lord? We have tried, some of us, what it is to walk by some other light than His, in sparks of our own kindling, or following those foolish fires which, born of earth, can never guide to heaven, and on earth itself can only mislead and betray. We too have discovered that there is only one light for man, and that light is in Him who is Himself the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.
II. If it be asked, What are the sins which the children of light are, so to speak, by their very name pledged to renounce, and what the graces which, by their very name, they are pledged to follow after? I should not hesitate to say that this name does, in the first place, exclude, or ought to exclude, on the part of them that bear it, all fraud, falsehood, trickery, untruthfulness in word or deed; does demand on their parts uprightness, sincerity, straightforwardness, and manly truthfulness of dealing as between man and his brother. You are children of light, and the vocation of the children of light is to remove the darkness, not to share it. This you must do, or if you fail to do it, be sure that a day is coming when the light into which you were called, but in which you refused to walk, shall reprove you and make manifest your deeds, that they were not wrought in God.
R. C. Trench, Sermons in Ireland,p. 133.
References: Ephesians 5:8. J. Armstrong, Parochial Sermons,p. 10; J. Fraser, Church of England Pulpit,vol. i., p. 189; Clergyman's Magazine, vol.vi., p. 142; Obbard, Plain Sermons,p. 134.Ephesians 5:8-10. E. Garbett, Experiences of the Inner Life,p. 127. Ephesians 5:8-32. Clergyman's Magazine,vol. iv., pp. 86, 88, 89.