Knowing You Are A Child of God

How do I know if I’m a child of God? Don’t speculate. Don’t look past into the hinterlands of your experience years back, and say, well, I once prayed a prayer. Look at your life. Is it marked by all goodness, all righteousness, all truth? And are you ever learning what is pleasing to the Lord so you can do it? So this is how we are to walk in the light. Then we have not only the contrast, not only this command to walk in the light, but we have a second command in verse 11.

Do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness. We’ve seen the command to walk in the light. We’ve seen the characteristics of walking in the light. Now here’s the command not to participate, and that’s a form of the word koinonia, have fellowship with the unfruitful deeds of darkness. We have nothing to do with them. We don’t participate with them. We don’t fellowship with them. We don’t associate with them. We don’t become linked with them. As 2 Corinthians 6 says, don’t get involved in some kind of supposed spiritual enterprise with the darkness. We don’t associate with people who profess Christ, 1 Corinthians 5, and are immoral.

We obviously reach the people in the world who are immoral, but we don’t associate with those who profess salvation who are immoral. So that simple command is not hard to understand. And why would you participate? Because the works are unfruitful. On the other hand, their works in the light are the fruitful works of light. Why do those things that produce nothing of value? So there’s a contrast, their characteristics, and then a command. Then we have a commission, and I think this is so interesting, kind of getting toward the finish line for us. There’s a commission.

If you’re a child of light, instead of participating in the unfruitful deeds of darkness, instead expose them. Expose them. If we listen to Paul in 2 Timothy 4 too, preach the word, reprove, rebuke. You don’t ignore the deeds of darkness. You expose them. That’s your responsibility. You expose them for what they are. You expose them to the people who are the darkness. You warn them. You terrify them for the consequences of what they’re doing. And in the Church you confront it. Matthew 18. Discipline. If anybody’s at sin, you go to that person. You take two or three witnesses.

You tell the Church. You expose sin. The Church has to expose sin, not accommodate it, not make people engaged in the unfruitful deeds of darkness comfortable. That’s not what the Spirit of God did in Acts 5. When Ananias and Sapphira, who lied to the Holy Spirit, were executed in front of the entire Church by God Himself, who slew them in the public service of the Church, so people would learn not to tolerate sin, we have that responsibility to expose evil. Now what does that mean? Well, there’s a limit to that.

And that’s why the next verse has a caveat. For it is disgraceful even to speak of the things which are done by them in secret. You expose them. But that doesn’t mean you go into the lurid details. There are just some things that aren’t fit for even conversation, let alone behaviour. I don’t know that there’s anything in this culture that fits into verse 12 that is so disgraceful it should never be spoken about that people haven’t already seen on their iPhone. It’s disgraceful to speak of the things that deviated people do in secret. It’s disgraceful.

It’s not anything you would even talk about. It’s so repulsive it shouldn’t be mentioned. But when people are engaged in that without knowing the details, they need to be exposed. They need to be exposed for their sake. And if it’s in the Church, certainly for the Lord’s sake. This is our commission. And verse 13 says why? Because all things become visible when they’re exposed by the light. The one thing you never want allowed in the Church is for sin to hide. You want the sinner who is the darkness exposed by the light. You want the people who are the light, but doing the deeds of darkness exposed by the light.

God never wants sin hidden. But that doesn’t mean you talk about all of the lurid details of things that should never even be spoken of. But it has to be made visible, for everything that becomes visible becomes visible because of the light. Light makes manifest what’s in the darkness. So we have a contrast between light and darkness, characteristics of light, goodness, righteousness and truth. The command walk as children of light. The negative command don’t do the fruitless deeds of darkness. And we have a commission expose the darkness. And the passage ends with a closing call, verse 14.

For this reason it says, borrowing from some portions of Isaiah, awake sleeper and arise from the dead and Christ will shine on you. This is a call to become a child of light. This is a call to wake you that are sleeping in the darkness and arise from the dead and Christ will give you light, or Christ will shine on you. Once sin has been exposed, then the call to the sinner is to repent. Christ will give you light. That’s a gospel verse tucked into this section. Awake sleeper and arise from the dead and Christ will shine upon you.

We’re all here today worshiping, coming to the table, because that is exactly what happened in our lives, right? In our deadness, in our darkness. The Lord one day said, Awake sleeper, arise from the dead and Christ will give you light. Pray that God would be so gracious as to awaken you if you’re still in the darkness. Thank you for joining us in this exploration of knowing you’re a child of God. Until next time, remember to keep the faith, stay strong and continue to shine your light in the world. To hear these daily devotions of your daily bread, please log on to goddessgovernment.com.

Goodbye, and may your faith always lead the way. [tr:trw].