S200P3 – Who we were: darkness

Eph. 5:8‭-‬10

For once you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord; walk as children of Light, trying to learn what is pleasing to the Lord.

This present world is full of darkness.  Before the fall of humankind, the world was in the light.  The darkness of sin had not yet entered it.  Since then, we have been subjected to the influence of darkness from within and without.  Being born into sin, we are born Into darkness.  It is oppressive and persistent, and we do you not have the power within ourselves to combat it.  This verse, however, speaks about more than the darkness that influences us.  This verse does not speak of darkness separate from the sinful people we used to be.  It tells us that we were darkness ourselves.  This means that we were the embodiment of everything that is opposed to the light.  It is not only that darkness was inside us, but it is what we were.  Darkness was not a cloak that we wore but was indeed our identity.

The transformations that are brought about by salvation are numerous.  They are also as miraculous as they are plentiful.  Imagine that before Christ we were so affected by darkness that we were not capable of being separated from it.  This goes beyond residing in a shadow.  After Christ, our spiritual substance changes.  While we go from living in darkness to living in the light, we also go from being darkness to being light.  We are light in the Lord, which means that the light we have become originates with him; it is his light.  And where we previously were children of darkness living as such, we are now commanded to live as children of light.  Not only do we give light, but we are light.  It is not simply something that we carry or project.  Light is now our spiritual substance.  We have been completely transformed in the spirit.  We have been adopted from the family of darkness to the family of light.

God is a miracle worker, and He only operates in black and white.  No one in this world has ever existed or will ever exist in the gray.  There is a dichotomy in the spiritual world that cannot be ignored or changed.  God takes us from darkness to light by changing us from darkness to light.  The spiritual substance that is our make-up is changed in an instant from one end of the spectrum to the other.  Justification makes us light, and the natural expectation is that we now live as the children of light that God has made us.  We must remember that we are not only affected by God’s light or influenced by God’s light, but we have become God’s light.  Father, remind us that we are no longer darkness, that it is our liberty and duty to walk as your children of light.