Walk In the Light

The thing I love most about summer is the amount of sunlight that floods my room from morning to evening. There’s just something joyful and energetic about a bright, sunlit room. The rest of our house, however, stays fairly dark most of the day. In the evening, as I have dinner with my parents, I can see the sunlight spilling out into the hallway outside my room, beckoning to me.

Recently, as I walked through the house on a particularly sunny day and looked at my family sitting in the dark living room, I thought, “Why are you all sitting in the dark? Don’t you know there’s light outside?”

Then it hit me. That is the essence of the Christian life. To tell a world living in darkness that there’s light. Jesus said,

“Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light to all that are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.” (Matthew 5:14-16)

We are to be light to the world, and the primary way we are to shine is through the “good works” we do. Now, the good works can never purchase our salvation, as Ephesians 2:8-9 reminds us:

“For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast.”

But good works naturally flow from the heart of one saved by faith. The works do not do the saving, they illustrate it. James puts it this way:

“Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: show me thy faith without thy works, and I will show thee my faith by my works.” (2:18)

Our good works (performed in obedience to the Holy Spirit) demonstrate externally the change God has already made internally, in our hearts. When we accepted the gift of forgiveness by faith, God shined His light into our sin-dark hearts, as 2 Corinthians so beautifully declares:

“For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

With the light of God shining in our hearts, we are then called to live our lives in the light:

“This then is the message which we have heard of Him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth: But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.” (1 John 1:5-7)

When we walk in the light, living our lives in Holy Spirit-empowered obedience, our works will “shine before men,” as Matthew 5:16 put it. But if we are not walking in the light, if our lives are characterized by disobedience to God, our works will demonstrate that we are not in fellowship with God.

For the saved-by-faith Christian, disobedience does not mean we lose our salvation, but it does mean that we lose our brightness before men, tarnishing the testimony of Christ. Romans 13:12-14 says,

“The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light. Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof.”

When we fulfill the lusts of our flesh, we display darkness to the world. But when we put on the Lord Jesus Christ, choosing to say yes to Him, and no to sin, His light shines through us to the world around us, putting His righteousness on display.

Now, how about you? What’s on display in your life today?

“I am the light of the world: he that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.” (John 8:12)