[ [133] Vol. iv., pp. 22, 41 (Eng. Trans.).
[ [134] Comte, vol. iv., p. 30.
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHT.
“Be not ye therefore partakers with them; for ye were once darkness, but are now light in the Lord; walk as children of light (for the fruit of the light is in all goodness and righteousness and truth), proving what is well-pleasing unto the Lord; and have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather even reprove them. For the things which are done by them in secret it is a shame even to speak of; but all things when they are reproved are made manifest by the light: for everything that is made manifest is light. Wherefore He saith:—
‘Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead;
And the Christ shall shine upon thee.’”
Eph. v. 7–14.
The contrast between the Christian and heathen way of life is now, finally, to be set forth under St Paul’s familiar figure of the light and the darkness. He bids his Gentile readers not to be “joint-partakers with them”—with the sons of disobedience upon whom God’s wrath is coming (ver. 6)—for he has hailed them already, in chapter iii. 6, as “joint-partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.” “Once” indeed they shared in the lot of the disobedient; but for them the darkness has past, and the true light now shineth.
In wrath or promise, in hope of life eternal or in the fearful looking for of judgement they, and we, must partake. This future participation depends upon present character. “Do not,” the apostle entreats, “cast in your lot again with the unclean and covetous. Their ways you have renounced, and their doom you have exchanged for the heritage of the saints. Let no vain words deceive you into supposing that you may keep your new inheritance, and yet return to your old sins. Show yourselves worthy of your calling. Walk as children of the light, and you will possess the eternal kingdom.” Each man carries with him into the next state of being the entail of his past life. That heritage depends on his own choice; yet not upon his individual will working by itself, but on the grace and will of God working with him, as that grace is accepted or rejected. He has light: he must walk in it; and he will reach the realm of light. Thus the apostle, in verses 7 and 8, concludes his warning against relapse into heathen sin.