Ephesians 5:8-14 Commentary

“Have nothing to do with [me synkoinoneite*] the fruitless [akarpois] deeds of darkness [skotous],” Paul admonishes Ephesus’ Christians in verses 11-12 of this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson. “But rather expose [elenchete] them. It is shameful [aischron] even to mention [legein] what the disobedient do in secret [kryphe].”

While that warning is nearly two thousand years old, it feels as though it might be cut out from today’s American news headlines. After all, most people caught in the glare of the scandal surrounding Jeffrey Epstein’s files sense there’s something aischron (“shameful”) about the deeds described in them. It’s a reason why some people named in those files are frantically trying to prevent them from being elenchete (“exposed”).

This Lenten season is a time in the northern hemisphere when God’s people think not just about spiritual but also physical darkness. While the physical darkness is slowly receding as the days slowly lengthen, the spiritual darkness doesn’t seem to want to surrender even one inch of the territory it blankets.

Paul, of course, spends much of Ephesians 5 cataloguing symptoms of that darkness. In it he roundly condemns things like falsehood, sin that arises from anger, unwholesome talk, bitterness, sexual immorality and coarse joking. They are, quite simply, spiritually dark behaviors and attitudes.

Spiritual darkness also saturates this Sunday’s Gospel Lesson. Jesus’ disciples assume that the blindness of the man they meet along their way has a spiritual cause. “Rabbi,” they ask Jesus in John 9:2, “who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus exposes his followers’ spiritual blindness by insisting neither the man nor his parents’ sin triggered his inability to see. “He was born blind,” Jesus says in verse 3, “so that God’s works might be revealed in him.”

But while this is an example of the kind of spiritual darkness that Paul describes in this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson, our text’s immediate antecedent is verses 6-7. There the apostle writes, “Let no one deceive you with empty words [kenois logois], for because of such things God’s wrath comes on those who are disobedient [huios tes apeitheias]. Therefore, do not be partners [symmetochoi] with them.”

God’s dearly beloved people will, by the power of the Holy Spirit, benefit from their preacher’s explanation if not also reading of those additional verses. We might note that kenois logois (“empty words”) may refer to religious words that sound impressive but really carry no meaning. They’re what The Message paraphrases as “religious smooth talk.” So we might paraphrase Paul as warning Jesus’ friends against hanging around with religious charlatans who talk a big game but are actually at least secretly disobedient.

Such spiritual darkness envelopes the religious leaders whose opposition to Jesus blinds them to Jesus’ healing power. After all, in John 9:16 some of them say Jesus “is not from God, for he does not observe the Sabbath.” Others refer to him as “a sinner.” In verse 24 those religious leaders insist “We know this man [Jesus] is a sinner.” They even intimidate the man’s parents into silence.

God’s adopted children have nothing to do with such peddlers and exemplars of spiritual darkness, says the apostle in verse 8. After all, while we “were once darkness [pote skotos], [we] now are light in the Lord [phos en kyrio].” This language is somewhat mysterious. Yet Paul may be at least reminding members of the church in Ephesus that even Christians are naturally so characterized by spiritual darkness that we could have been called darkness itself.

Now, however, through the rescuing life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ we aren’t just characterized by spiritual light. Christians are also, by the power of the Holy Spirit, “light in the Lord.” Christ’s Spirit equips his followers to, in other words, share some of the character of our Savior who called himself the “Light of the world.”

As a result, Paul adds in verses 8b-10, we can “live [peripateite] as children of light [tekna photos] for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness [agathosyne], righteousness [dikaiosyne] and truth [aletheia]) and find out [dokimazontes] what pleases [euareston] the Lord.”

The apostle insists the Spirit so infuses God’s adopted children with Christ’s light that we can be called “light in the Lord.” We look for ways to respond to God’s grace in ways that are characterized by light. We can do that only because the Spirit equips us to live in ways that are marked by goodness, rightness and truth. Such a light-filled lifestyle euareston to Kyrio (“pleases the Lord”). Good, right and true lives are, quite simply, acceptable to God.

The man whose physical darkness Jesus lifts shows a startling ability to see not just physically, but also spiritually. The man whom God’s light now fills responds to the skeptical religious leaders in ways that surely please the Lord. He tells them: “You do not know where [Jesus] comes from, yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to the one who worships him and obeys his will. Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing” (John 9:30-33).

Paul reminds Ephesus’ Christians that part of that good, right and true life involves not just living to please God in such a way, but also in bringing secret disobedience out into the open. “Have nothing to do with the fruitful deeds of darkness,” as we’ve already noted he writes in verse 11, “but rather expose them.” Have no “fellowship with” the unfruitful works of darkness, the apostle literally insists there. Don’t even go anywhere near them. After all, the “fruit” disobedience bears, warns Paul, is spiritually poisonous.

In fact, instead of getting close to the rotten fruit that is disobedience, Jesus’ friends seek to uncover it with the light of Jesus Christ. We, quite simply, “expose” [elenchete] it (11b). We don’t, however, just expose dark deeds for what The Message calls “the sham they are.” God’s dearly beloved people also call out and condemn these examples of darkness.

Preachers want to continue to let the Spirit guide us as we explore the implications of this summons. It would seem that Paul’s primary reference to exposing works of darkness involves spiritual self-examination, contrition and confession. It seems that his primary interest is in Christians letting the Spirit illuminate the spiritually dark corners of our own lives. This Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson in some ways echoes the poet’s plea in Psalm 139:23-24: “Search me, O God, and know my heart … See if there is any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.”

However, Jesus’ friends always remember, what’s more, that exposure of others’ secret sins is fraught with all sorts of spiritual danger. Those who would expose others’ fruitless deeds of darkness relentlessly examine our motives for doing so. The hurry to, for example, uncover the Epstein files at least partly seems to be driven by a desire to score political points against those with whom we disagree. Paul reminds those who would expose the fruitless deeds of darkness that we aren’t moral scorekeepers. We’re followers of Jesus who are dealing with our fellow image-bearers of God.

This points to a perhaps third reminder for those who wish to expose darkness’ fruitless deeds. It seems that victims of those deeds are often among society’s most vulnerable citizens. Their relative powerlessness allows more powerful people to keep their victimhood hidden from nearly everyone.

With that in mind, preachers might suggest Paul is inviting his readers to expose the darkness imposed on people like women and children who are secretly trafficked. People whose advancing age and various frailties also makes them vulnerable to all sorts of elder abuse. People whose material impoverishment, what’s more, makes them vulnerable to a variety of secret exploitation. Immigrants whose legal status, on top of all that, makes them reluctant to report their exploitation.

This Sunday’s Gospel and Epistolary Lessons summon Jesus’ spiritually sleepy friends to wake up. Then, after all, Christ’s light can shine on and through us onto a spiritually darkened world.

*I have here and elsewhere added in brackets the Greek words for the English words the NIV translation uses.

Illustration

Abuse is one of the fruitless deeds that flourishes most in darkness. John Grisham’s (fictional) The Judge’s List’s Ross Bannick is the victim of his Scoutmaster Mr. Leawood’s abuse. He “studied the faces of the other scouts, his closest friends, and wondered, as always, how many others were abused by Leawood. He had been afraid to ask, to compare notes.

“Walt Sneed once remarked that Leawood liked to touch him a bit too much for a twelve year-old’s liking, calling him ‘creepy,’ but Ross had been too afraid to pursue the conversation. How could a seemingly normal young man rape a child? He still hated Leawood, so many years later. He’d had no idea a man could do those things.”

[Note: For the Year A Season of Lent and leading up to Easter, CEP has, in addition to these weekly sermon commentaries, a special Lent and Easter Resource Page with links to whole sermons, commentary on Lenten texts, and more.]