Living in the Son's Light

Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for your truth. We thank you for the fact that you are our light. And now, Father, we pray that you would illumine the scriptures to us, open our hearts and minds to receive your word, to understand your word, to live out your word. Come, Lord Jesus, and teach us. We pray in Jesus' name.

Amen. The proposition for tonight is this, that living in the sun's light is a process of being sanctified, of growing in grace, and as the text puts it, to be clothed in Christ, to put on Christ. Now, as far as the introduction is concerned, I want to remind us of one thing. If we look at the context, this is talking about our intimacy and our walk with Christ. Verse chapter 12, verse one and two.

Let's look at that. Just pay attention to that. It says this, therefore I urge your brethren by the mercies of God to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.

Then if you drop down in chapter 12, the last verse, verse 21, it says, do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. And so that sets the stage for us as we look at this section on how to live out our lives in this world. And it's kind of like this. How can we live in a world that sometimes we wonder, is it coming apart? How do we live in a world when it's troubled, when there are things that look like they're going to break down? It may be something personal in your life.

It may be national or international. What is going on? And so, you know, I've been doing some ministry I received by Zoom, whatever. And so I asked one of the pastors there, I asked him this question. I said, knowing that they were in war, civil war, and that inflation is quadrupled and there is suffering and sickness and all kinds of problems. And it is actually a nation that's known as an LDC, Least Developed Nation. That's below number 30, not first world, second, third, third world.

No, it's LDC. It's at the bottom. And I asked him, I said, how do you deal with this?

How do you deal with living in that kind of situation? And he said to me, he said, I meditate on this word of God. And I meditate on particularly, I've been meditating a long time on Joshua 1, 8, and 9, the promises that God made to Joshua. And then he said this about his country. He says, without God, we cannot save our nation. Without God, we cannot save our country. Without the light of Jesus Christ, we cannot live out our daily life.

We cannot. We need him. We need the light that Christ supplies to us, that he shows us through the scriptures.

He illuminates them. And this text is talking about people, what do you do if you live in a lawless world? You need the light of Christ to guide you. So as we look at verses 8 through 10 in particular, we can put that under one heading.

And this is the point. Did you know that living in the light of Christ is founded on two commandments? Two commandments.

The two commandments that Jesus mentioned, which is a reduction of the 10 commandments. And that is the moral law, the moral law that's written on the hearts of believers. So we are to love God and to love our neighbors.

That's how we live in this world. So it begins by saying, owe nothing to anyone except to love one another for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. The law of love is the active principle that's operating in the life of a Christian. We should owe nothing to anyone else, but to love them. And that's sort of a background of this text, but to keep on loving your neighbor is never a means of salvation. That's not what it is.

We need to put it in context. You remember, as you think about the children of Israel, as they escaped Egypt, they went down to the Sinai and there they received the 10 commandments from God. But before they received the 10 commandments, they received God's grace. They were given grace. Now, how were they given grace?

Well, you remember when they went out, they were warned about what was going to happen. They took the blood of the land and they put it on the lentil in the doorpost of the house and they, their lives were spared because they believed that blood would protect them from the angel of death. And then they saw the grace of God again when he went through the Red Sea. But these 10 commandments were given later for their sanctification, never for their salvation. And that's very clear. Paul is writing to the Roman church here and he's teaching them that the law is for your sanctification, it's for your growth in grace. And this is how we are reminded of how we need to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. Now, if you look at verse nine, he begins by saying, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder.

Well, wait a minute. Now, if we go back and look at, well, Deuteronomy, or we look at Exodus 20, we know how the law begins. It begins by, on that part of the law, that part that applies to a lot of all the world and the people and our neighbors, it begins by saying, you shall not kill, you shall not murder. And then it says, you shall not commit adultery. Why did Paul reverse that? Well, Matthew Henry thinks that he reversed it because if you look at the context, this section is on loving your neighbor and loving God. And so, what is the biggest deceit of the world? One of the biggest deceits of the world is that, oh, if you were promiscuous, if you were out living a wild life, oh, that's just, you're just loving different people.

No. He says, no, you shall not commit adultery. He puts that first because he's relating it to what real genuine love is. And so, Paul is making a distinction between worldly love and agape love.

And so, verse nine begins to teach us the attitude that Christians should have toward their neighbors and even to all non-Christians as well. So, then verse 10 describes what love does. And how do you love people who have hurt you? How do you trust and love someone when that trust is broken?

That's what this is talking about here. So, without Christ, we cannot live out this law of love. We cannot. It is Jesus Christ who is our Lord, who is our life, and who is our light. Without him, we cannot live this way. Verse 10 says, love does no wrong to a neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfillment of the law. In this context, he's applying, he's talking about the love for everyone, Christian and non-Christian. But there's a verse in scripture that helps us as believers to look deeply into that.

And now when we use this, it applies to Christians. But 1 John chapter four, verse 20 and 21 says this, if someone says, I love God and hates his brother, he is a liar. For the one who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him that the one who loves God should love his brother also. These two verses talk about Christian brotherhood, but the origin of that, the basis of that is that God's love comes to us first.

He changes us, he redeems us, and then we are able to love those that are not so lovely or have mistreated us. So here are a few statements from Matthew Henry. I like these, these are examples of what not to do, okay? He say, this is what this is saying, don't do this. He says, if we are projecting, the projecting of evil is in effect the performing of it. Now if you're projecting evil on someone, you're implicating them falsely.

That's like you are attacking them. And he says, love is against the doing of that which turns to prejudice, offense, or grief. Another way he puts it in two statements, love constrains us from evil doing, but love also constrains us to well doing. There's a couple of proverbs that say basically the same thing. Proverbs 3, 27 says, do not withhold good from those to whom it is due when it is in your power to do it. And Proverbs 3, 29 says, do not devise harm against your neighbor while he lives securely beside you. I like the one other quote that Matthew Henry makes says, and that is this, he says, the whole law is written in the heart if the law of love is there. If God's agape love, grace is in your heart, his law is written on your heart. So without the light of Christ, we cannot live out the law of love.

We cannot. We have to have him change us. Okay, the next part is verses 11 through 13. And the Christian talks about our love for Christ.

How do we, we supposed to love our neighbors, but also we love God. And this is that the more we have, because of the light of Christ, we are able to more and more love God and more and more follow him, more and more leave sinful practices and repent and turn to him. So we're called to live holy lives.

We're to be clothed in the grace of Christ, be clothed in the righteousness of Christ. And it's in God's light that we do see light. If this whole section uses the number of metaphors, they're all, they're interrelated and they help explain what does he mean by the armor of light? He's talking about that in this section, this armor of light that God supplies to us. So we know how to live in this world. The first metaphor or the general metaphor is the metaphor of time.

It's an overarching concept that he's using here. We are told to do this. We are to take action.

Why? Because we know the times in which we live. We know that our time can be very short.

Sometimes we wonder where are we when we listen to our podcast? Where are we in human history? Are we at the point where 250 years of the average republic is at its end? Is that where we are? Are our children or are we or our grandchildren going to see the second return of Christ? Are we in that generation?

We can't answer those questions. We don't know that, but we must pay attention to our times because Christ is the one who gives us light. He prepares us for the times in which we live in every single generation.

So the metaphor here is of waking up. We as Christians need to be alert. He's reminding the Christians in Rome at that time that they needed to be alert.

He's reminding us that we need to be alert. And certainly the length of our lives is limited. The opportunities of our lives are limited. So now is the time, I believe this text is saying now is the time to be sharing the gospel. This is the time God has given to us. And this is the time that God has given us his Holy Spirit to help us to proclaim the gospel.

Also, the appeal is to wake up, to wake up from sleep. He's talking about Christians. And he uses the example of the... He points to the eschatology of life and said, regardless of our view of the return of Christ, when exactly he is coming, when that's going to happen, it is a fact that he's going to come and we do not know the day or the hour. And so, for now salvation is nearer than when you believed.

That's what he says in verse 11. So we're to wake up. It's a call to be aware that eternal life is already promised to us, but yet we live here. And so there's a sense like, well, my eternal life is already accomplished, but yet it's not yet. So we're here to live out our lives for Christ. These are the times to serve Christ. And what does this eschatology tell us? It tells us many things. One thing I think that it tells us about the return of Christ is that he is coming for us. He's coming for you.

Think about that. The Lord Jesus Christ is coming for you because he has given his blood and his life for you and I. This is an intimate relationship and this is going to become true.

It's going to be personal. You're going to be in his presence and he wants you to be in his presence. So we should look forward to that promise of closeness and intimacy that we're going to have with Jesus Christ because he loved us and he does love us.

So we need to be awake to that. The bridegroom is coming. He is really coming. Then he uses the metaphor of day and night in verse 12 and it tells us that one day the darkness of the world is going to end. The darkness of sin in this world will come to a conclusion and it will be, we know, when the Lord arrives. But it's sooner than we think, this text points out. And so it's going to be the morning of gladness, joy, and of holiness in Christ, not the day of gloom, despair, and misery, whatever that song was. But anyway, but it's going to be the time when we actually have experienced complete joy and all of the shackles of sin and burdens of sin are taken away. So he says, lay aside the deeds of darkness.

And you know, you can imagine how this takes place. People get up in the night, they put on their dark clothes, they go out in the night and they do their mischief and things. Darkness is a time when evil does take place. And so he says, you know, take that off, take off these deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. But without Christ, we never could put off the deeds of darkness. Without Christ, we would still be lost. And so Christ redeems us. And then we see, he compares this light and dark. And we see that all through scripture Thessalonians chapter five says this, for those who do their sleeping, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, get drunk at night. And that's true. And you know, you've heard it all your life when you were a little kid or when you're a teenager and you're telling other people the same, it's getting late, don't stay out too late, bad things happen late at night.

It is a reality. It's a picture, it's a metaphor that is a good reminder of spiritual truths. But by the help of the Holy Spirit, we put off the deeds of darkness. Now the contrast to the deeds of darkness is the armor of life. But what is the armor of light? It's a military term he's using here. The armor is the graces of the Spirit in the believer's life.

Matthew Henry describes it this way. The graces of the Spirit are this armor to secure the soul from Satan's temptations and the assaults of this present evil world. So in a sense, you can go back to Galatians 5, 22, 23, where it gives the fruit of the Spirit. And that describes some of the character that's being produced. And because of the Spirit in our heart, the work of the Spirit, we are changed. Our character is being changed. It's not by human restraint or human capacities.

No, it is the Spirit who changes us, who changes our characters, who gives us patience, self-control, and love towards other people that we might find it difficult naturally to love. And so the armor of light deflects. It's like a shield. And so someone may say something that's not true.

They may lie. But because you have self-control, because you have patience, because you love this lost person more than you feel about defending yourself. That armor, that character that God gives you, shields you. Someone is deceitful. And it's an attack upon you. It affects you. Well, you have a shield. You're patient.

You have self-control, because God's Spirit has given you that restraint and that love for that person. The one example they were using and talking about the Roman soldiers, they said sometimes some of the shields that the Romans used were polished. And so if they could get the sun behind them and they get the enemy coming this way, they could use their shields to help blind the enemy and deflect it. And you know, I guess remember the disciples were taken before, they're in the book of Acts, they were taken before the Sanhedrin, some of the chief priests, and they were told not to do this and that again. And what did they say? They said, how do these men know?

These are uneducated men. And then they said, oh, they've been with Jesus. The work of the Spirit, the life of Christ, he changes us so that we are different. We can shield. There's a shield of a deflection of those attacks of Satan upon us. So our desires are changed by the light of Christ, by the work of the Spirit. Our character is being changed. Then how do we walk in the light of the Spirit or light of the sun? Well, look at verse 13 tells us, it says, not this way, but the opposite. It gives you, don't do this. Don't go that way.

Stop going that direction. Verse 13 reads this way, let us behave properly as in the day, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual promiscuity and sensuality, not in strife and jealousy. If you look at the first two words, it's rather interesting. Paul is writing, he says, let us. Yeah, the apostle Paul includes himself in this statement. He knows he's not above sin. He knows that he could be tempted to sin.

He could, he fights it. He confesses it. So he's talking about us, including himself. And so he's urging the church there in Rome to act properly, to live godly in their life. And he describes these deeds of darkness that are to be put aside. Peter describes this in this way in first Peter chapter four, he says, therefore, since Christ has suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves, he used another military term, arm yourselves also with the same purpose, because he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin. So as to live the rest of the time in the flesh, no longer for the lust of men, but for the will of God.

You've suffered in the flesh. If you've mortified the flesh and desires of the flesh, then you're living for Christ. So we're being to walk in a way, taught to be to walk in a way that pleases God.

That's our focus. And they're the way that things that please God are the opposite of the deeds of darkness. Ephesians teaches the same thing. Ephesians 5, 18, it says, do not get drunk with wine for that is dissipation, but be filled with the spirit. Those contrasts that we see in scripture. So how do we have the nerve in the presence of our friends to reject their offer or their urging to participate in worldly wrong desires? How do we resist social pressure to conform to the world and do that which is displeasing to God? Well, you know, I always think about that, the line of that one hymn that says, turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full into his wonderful face and the things of earth will go strangely dim in the light of his glory and his grace.

And that is absolutely true. Matthew Henry calls attention to the deeds in particular, in this list, you have those deeds of the flesh, those promiscuous things. But then at the end, Paul mentions two things. He mentions strife and jealousy. And some have said, you know, these are so common, yet we don't may not think of them as deeds of darkness.

They're not visible. You can't observe somebody going out and doing this, but it may be taking place in our hearts. And it's not something that I would willingly or we might not be willing to say we own that. Oh, I'm causing strife or I'm jealous of this person. I'm jealous of their position.

I'm jealous of that. We don't want to talk about that. That's too personal. We can dismiss these things lightly, but who can admit that you've caused strife between other people?

Who can admit that you've envied someone? But Paul is saying this is a problem and that's one thing that we need to put aside. We need to reject these sins and we can by the presence and the power of the Holy Spirit. By the conviction of God's Word, God's Word brings to us and even on sometimes a very subtle sin, God's Spirit illuminates the word of God to us and we say, okay, that's something I need to leave alone.

I need to go a different direction. So we need to put on the armor of light by growing in the graces of the Spirit. So at the very end on verse 13, Paul just says the same thing again. What is that armor of light? It is putting on Christ. It is wearing the garments of His righteousness. The fact is that we believers can't be without Christ. We belong to Him. We must put on Christ. We must just say no to the world.

Say no, I'm not participating in this. I am going to walk with Christ. We put on His righteousness.

Why? Because He's redeemed us by His own blood. He's done that. He planned that from eternity past and He's accomplished it and He's coming back. He has given us this great privilege. We owe our lives to Him.

We owe this debt to Him because He took our debt and paid for it completely. So the fact is that He is actually continuing to love you and I. He's loving us in our own circumstances that we're in today and He's saying change this, move this.

He's going to give us comfort in this area. Christ is in the business of conforming us to His image. Paul writes in Philippians chapter 3 verse 9, he talks about the intimacy that he wants with Christ. He wants to be clothed with Christ and he says this.

He says, he says that I may be found in Him not having a righteousness of my own derived from the law but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith. That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings being conformed to His death in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. Paul is saying he wants to be ready to meet the Lord Jesus. He wants Christ to change him and to sanctify him so that he is prepared. He is ready to go into the presence of Christ. He wants to be in the presence of Christ. We should long to be walking and wearing the armor of light, the graces of the spirit that God gives us. We should long to be clothed in Christ. We should revel in the light that the Lord has loved us, that His blood has been spread on those doorposts and then on Calvary's tree all for us to cover our sins. How He has loved us this way. We should love and long to be with Christ because He's given us His Holy Spirit to illuminate us, to illuminate the scriptures, to teach us, cause us to meditate on the word of God, to grow in grace and we should rejoice in Christ because He's poured out His Spirit upon us. Charles Spurgeon made a comment about this on this particular text about putting on Christ. He says this. He says endeavor to come into such communion with Jesus himself that his character is reproduced in you.

Oh to be wrapped about with himself. May the Lord turn the command into actual fact. My privilege is to minister to some friends overseas but when I was talking to the pastor I mentioned the beginning of the sermon. There was another pastor there I mentioned and he began to minister to me and I think what he says is very apropos.

Knowing that the country is torn up I asked him this question. I said what is God showing you to help you live through your difficult situation? And he said I am willing to die and go and be with Jesus. Then he says I meditate on a particular scripture and one of those scriptures is Ephesians 3 20 and it says this.

For our citizenship is in heaven from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. Then he said to me this. He said I love Jesus so much for saving me. I look forward to today when I see him because he will still have the nail prints in his hands so I can go up to him and I can hug him and I can kiss him.

I love him so much. That's that pastor's testimony. God uses his saints to teach us what Paul means by putting on Jesus Christ, by having that armor of light, the graces that God pours into our life and develops in our life. How should we live? We are called to live by the word's command to wear his armor of light, the graces of the Spirit. Let us pray. Father in heaven we thank you for your grace and we pray that we would receive more and more every day. We realize that our love for you and love for others is very light. We pray that you would cause us to see your righteousness has covered us and now that we belong to you and that you belong to us, Lord draw us to yourself. Let us become more like you. Give us that kind of love for others and for you. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.