“You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness…
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For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord” Ephesians 4:22-24, 5:8-10
God absolutely loves us. It is the one truth that ties all the scriptures together, encompasses all of the commandments, and ensures His faithful disciples of their salvation. We know He loves us because He offered His beloved son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Jesus, the full embodiment of God’s love, willingly gave Himself over to a horrific death to demonstrate the depth of His love for us. It is that very love that beckons us out of the darkness and into God’s glorious light. Our obedience to Christ’s command to love is what reflects that light and draws the lost to us so they can hear the truth and be saved.
Before coming to Christ, we all learned to live according to the patterns of our past. We groped around in the darkness, often trying to live in a right way, without the power to carry it out. We allowed our desires and the hurts of our past to drag us into the darkest places of sin and false doctrine. Then true disciples came into our lives, got their hands dirty digging into every area of our lives, serving us, and teaching us a new way of life with Jesus as Lord.
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Those disciples gave us a sacred teaching, a pattern of life (Philippians 3:17) created to “be like God is true righteousness.” We gained the purpose of living like Jesus and the mission of getting these teachings out to a world of people, who are still lost in those dark places. Their lives made an impact because of their response to Jesus’ instruction in regard to the true mark of Christianity – “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13:34-35)
If we are called to love one another as Christ loved us, enough to suffer indignity, forgive any offense, and lay down our lives for each other, what causes fights and quarrels among us? James 4:1 tells us that the root of our discord comes from the desires battling within us. The Greek for the word desire in this passage means lust or desire for pleasure. When we give in to those yearnings and allow ourselves to covet what we do not have, we destroy the unity that Christ so fervently prayed for (John 17:19-26) in order to obtain what we think will please us. The desires that war within us take many forms: a desire for leadership, recognition, possession, money, comfort, sympathy, more time, relationships, and the desire to be right and to have things done our way.
Our lives and standards must be so different from those of the world that we stick out like a bright star on a moonless night. I’ve always loved star gazing. When I was young, I thought there were more stars out in the country. Of course, there weren’t more stars simply because we were in the country; it was that away from the city lights, the stars were the only lights around and LIGHT SHINES BRIGHTEST IN THE DARKEST PLACES.
Too often we lose opportunities to reach people or we allow people to drift back into their former ways of life because we are afraid of the dark. We need to be wise and not place ourselves in situations that will lead us into sin, but we must also become strong enough and mature enough to be a friend of sinners without being influenced by our friends’ sin. Are you willing to get your hands dirty from digging into the dark corners of people’s lives to help them out of the sin that has trapped them? We must also be willing to face the “black light” of false teachings. We must understand that without Jesus and His disciples in the 1st century, many would have thought that their darkness was really light. The darkness of false religion is a most deceptive darkness because people think that they are really in the light and doing God’s will, even when they admittedly are still unable to live out the commands of Jesus. It took Jesus shining the true light of God to expose the false teachings and hypocrisy. How bright does your light shine? Does it shine bright enough to outshine even the black light of religious falsehood and security? Our light must shine so that all people in all different forms of darkness can see their way out.
When we see others attain the status, recognition, and possessions we long for, our hearts can begin to envy. When our obligations and commitments demand the time we would rather spend doing something else we can become embittered. When our desire to be right supersedes our desire to be righteous before God we give in to pride. We long for what we do not have and it wages war within our hearts. Instead of supporting our leaders we grumble against them. Rather than give sacrificially of our time and effort, we withdraw our hearts. Instead of acting in humility and considering others as greater than ourselves, we pridefully justify our unloving attitudes and actions towards our brothers and sisters. In those moments we cease to be content with all that God has already given us, and His grace is no longer sufficient. Instead of being selfless, we imitate the world and pursue selfish ambition. We are no longer acting in accordance with the Spirit but have once again become worldly (1 Corinthians 3:3).
James 4 goes on to tell us that when we covet something we do not have, we are willing to quarrel, fight and even kill to get it. It is hard for some of us to imagine going to the extreme of killing someone to get what we want, but consider this, the Bible says the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23). It does not say the wages of some sins or only the really “big” sins are death. All sin comes at a cost, from the little white lie to acts genocide, and death is the penalty that must be paid. It is because of sin that Christ had to die. When we harbor selfish desires in our hearts or fight to obtain them we are crucifying Christ, and the destruction, unfortunately, does not end there. There remains a fate far worse than physical death. In our selfishness we kill others spiritually and further condemn an already dying world. Since anyone in Christ has eternal life, it is not our lives that we forfeit by our sins if we repent. Now ask yourself, if all sin leads to death, and the death paid is not your own, who are you willing to kill? Are the souls of your coworkers, friends, roommates, parents, siblings and children worth your earthly desires?
Wanting something is not inherently bad. It is when our desire for something becomes more important than our righteousness before God that we cross the line into sin. It becomes sin when winning an argument is more important than being unified, when your spouse/roommate leaving a mess leads to discord in your home, when your personal time becomes more important than making meetings of the body, when having a boyfriend/girlfriend is more important than having a right relationship with God, and when someone getting raised up instead of you is enough to make you withdraw your heart. There are many more examples, but they all come down to one thing. Anytime something you desire leads to disunity, jealousy, bitterness, or fighting between believers, it has become more important than Christ’s sacrifice. You’ve traded His life for your pleasure.
James 4:2-3 explains clearly why we do not get the things we want. It tells us that “[we] do not have, because [we] do not ask God,” and when we do ask, “[we] do not receive, because [we] ask with wrong motives, that [we] may spend what [we] get on [our] pleasures.” God longs to give us the desires of our heart and will willingly grant them as long as they are in accordance with His will (1 John 5:14-15). All we have to do is simply ask (John 14:13-14). Instead of allowing frustration and bitterness to undo the work of the Spirit within us, we should submit ourselves to God by examining our hearts, humbling ourselves before Him and petitioning Him for what we desire. Only then can we love one another as Christ calls us to and be the light that this dark world so desperately needs.
As Children of the Light, we must be focused so we can effectively help others see the darkness they are in and the way out of it. To do that, sometimes we will have to venture into some pretty dark and scary places. With Jesus as our help, we can just “Let it shine” and bring others into the beauty of the light.
Ron Harding, Lead Evangelist
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