As Children of God we Walk in Love and Light, not just According to Truth and Grace

As believers in Christ, we are children of God, and God is our Father; as children of God, we should walk in love and light, and we can do this because Christ in us is love and light to be the constituting element of our being for our daily walk. Amen!

God is light (1 John 1:5) and God is love (4:8, 16). This is what God is in His nature; love and light are the constituents of His being.

When we see God and touch God, we see light and love, and we touch light and love. However, God as love reaches us as grace, and God as light reaches us as the truth.

We cannot touch God as the light, for He dwells in unapproachable light; Christ, the Son of God, came to express God as light, and He is the way and the reality (truth) and the life.

Christ came to express God and make God known to us, even to make God visible, for He defined God, expressed God, explained God, and made God real to us.

God as light reaches us as the truth; when we come to the Word of God or are under the hearing of faith, what we receive is the divine truth, and the truth brings in God as light.

God shines on us and in us through His word, the truth. This is why we need to come to the word of God day by day; we come not only to read the Bible and have a general knowledge of God and His plan, but to have His shining.

Actually, when God shines, we are awakened from any sleep or slumber, and we are raised from any death situation.

Day by day we need the Lord’s shining; we need to open to Him, turn our heart to Him, and allow Him to shine in us; He shines in us and on us through His word, the truth, and we are sanctified in the truth (John 17:17) to have His holy element in us.

God is love, and He poured out His love into our hearts. He showed us His love in coming to die for us in the person of the Lord Jesus; His dying love is so compelling and moving, and we are touched by His love.

When we see God’s love and are touched by His love, we enjoy Christ as grace, for grace is the reaching out of love to us. God’s love is the source of God’s grace; Christ came full of grace and reality, for He came to express God and represent God.

Today we believers in Christ are children of God, and we need to walk in love and light; we do this not in an outward or deliberate way but in an organic, intrinsic way, living by the divine life and nature of our heavenly Father in our spirit.

As Children of God, we should Walk in Love and Light, not only according to Grace and Truth

In Ephesians 5:2 and 8, we are told to walk in love and light; as children of God, we should walk in love and light.

Paul didn’t just exhort or encourage us to walk in love and light; he commanded us to walk in love and light.

In Ephesians 4:17-32, the basic elements are grace and reality (truth), and in 5:1-33, the basic elements are love and light (see vv. 2, 25, 8-9, 13).

On the one hand, we need to enjoy and experience Christ as grace and truth, being filled with the enjoyment of Christ as grace and constituted with the truth in our inner being.

On the other hand, we need to go deeper than grace and truth and touch the source, even the very being of God, so that we walk in love and light.

Grace is the expression of love, for love is the source of grace. Truth is the revelation of light, for light is the origin and source of truth.

In His very being, God is love and light (1 John 4:8; 1:5); when He is expressed and revealed in the Lord Jesus, God comes to us as grace and truth.

When Christ came, God’s love became grace to us, and His light became truth. When we heard the gospel for the first time, we were touched by the love of God, and we received Christ as grace; what we heard was the truth, which conveyed the shining of God’s light.

As we enjoy Christ as grace and truth, we are brought deeper into God to know God and experience God as love and light.

Our daily life needs to go deeper than just enjoying grace and truth; we need to walk in love and light.

We need to progress from the outward elements of grace and truth to the inward elements of love and light.

Love is the inner substance of God; we can sense the inner love of God. Light is the expressed element of God; the outer light of God is visible.

God doesn’t just give us things and then require things from us; He opens to us the very inner substance of His being. He opens His heart toward us, showing us His love and manifesting Himself to us as light.

He doesn’t just give us some light or some love, nor does He only show us an aspect of what He is to impress us. He opens the core of His being to us.

The inner love of God is sensible and the outer light of God is visible. We can testify that we can sense the love of God inwardly and we can see the light of God shining out.

May we go deeper with the Lord in our daily living so that we not only enjoy Him as grace and truth but touch the source by knowing and experiencing God as love and light.

And may we walk in love and light, for we are children of God. Our daily walk as children of God should be constituted with both the loving substance of God and the shining element of God; this should be the inner source of our walk.

We need to see God’s loving substance and be constituted with it. We need to see and be filled with the shining element of God.

We need to turn this into our prayer and ask the Lord to show us His loving essence and substance, and we need to be open to Him for Him to shine on us and infuse us with Himself as light.

As we are walking today as children of God, we need to be constituted with the loving substance of God and the shining element of God so that we may walk in love and light.

The inner source of our daily walk needs to be the inner substance of God as love and the shining element of God as light.

Such a walk in love and light is deeper and more tender than living according to truth and grace.

We are not minimising truth and grace; we just want to realise that there’s a deeper way to know and experience God, even to walk in what God is by walking in love and light.

Day by day, beginning from the morning, we need to come to the throne of grace to receive mercy and find grace for timely help (Heb. 4:16).

We need to enjoy the Lord in His word to be filled with the truth. However, we need to go even deeper to touch the source of grace and truth, that is, to touch and enjoy God as love and light.

We need to know and experience God as love and light, and we need to walk in love and light, for we are children of God.

May God as love and light be the source of our living day by day.

May we take every opportunity during the day, even the times that we take a break or have to wait for certain things to happen, to open to the Lord and touch God as love and light so that we may walk in love and light.

May the Lord uplift our daily living and walking in Him and with Him until we walk in light and love as children of God.

Lord Jesus, we want to walk in love and light today. Be the source of our life today. We come to You in Your word and we call on Your name to enjoy You as grace and truth. Fill us with the enjoyment of Christ and constitute us with Yourself as the truth, the living word of God. Oh Lord, we want to go deeper with You to touch the very essence and nature of Your being. May we touch, know, and experience God as love and light, the source of grace and truth. Infuse us with Yourself as love. May we touch God as love and receive God’s shining as light. Oh Lord Jesus, may our daily walk as children of God be constituted with both the loving substance of God and the shining element of God! Father God, we want to be constituted with Your loving substance! We want to experience the shining element of God! Oh, may God as light and love be the inner source of our Christian walk today! Amen, Lord, we want to go deeper with You and have a walk in love and light today!

Walk in Love, even as Christ loved us, and Walk as Children of Light, even as Light in the Lord

To walk in love and light is something very deep; we cannot walk in love and light unless we go deeper with the Lord, even deeper than knowing and enjoying Christ as truth and grace.

Paul commands us in Ephesians 5:2 to walk in love, even as Christ also loved us and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour.

What kind of love is this? This is God as love being expressed and lived out in Christ. Christ didn’t just love us and then come to rescue us from sin; He gave Himself up for us.

On the one hand, in 4:32 we see God as the pattern of our daily walk; on the other hand, Christ is the example for our living in 5:2.

In 4:32, we are told to forgive others even as God in Christ has forgiven us; God is the pattern of forgiveness.

But in Ephesians 5 we see that Christ is our example, for love is expressed in Christ (vv. 2, 25) and light is shined by Christ upon us (v. 14) to be the basic elements constituting our being.

Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us; He is the example of walking in love. He offered Himself as a sacrifice to God for redemption for our sins; He also gave Himself as an offering to God for our fellowship with God.

In the Bible, there’s a difference between an offering and a sacrifice; an offering is offered to God for fellowship with God, but a sacrifice is offered to Him for redemption.

Christ loved us to such an extent that He offered Himself to God as a sacrifice for our sins for our redemption, and He also gave Himself to God as an offering for our fellowship with God.

He loved us and gave Himself up for us. We are touched by His love, and this is also a sweet-smelling savour to God.

We need to learn from Christ to live and walk in love and light; as we learn from Christ and express Him as love, we will walk the same way that He did.

May we follow the Lord’s example today to walk in love so that our daily walk may also be a sweet-smelling savour to God.

May the Lord gain our daily living to such an extent. May we be touched by the love of God expressed in Christ, and may we live and walk in love today.

As we follow the Lord’s example, our walk will be in love for others and it will exude a sweet-smelling savour to God. Amen!

Eph. 5:4 tells us that we were once darkness but are now light in the Lord; therefore, we should walk as children of light. We need to walk in love and light.

We were once not only in darkness but were darkness itself. Because we were one with Satan, we were in darkness, and we were darkness itself. But now, after believing into the Lord Jesus, we are not only in the light but we are light itself.

We are children of the light and even light itself in the Lord (Matt. 5:14).

May we see that we are light in the Lord, and may we daily remain in the light, walk in the light, and allow the Lord to shine on us and through us.

This is something we do habitually; it is not a deliberate walk but something organic, coming from the inner constitution of our being.

When we walk in love and light, we will prove what is well-pleasing to the Lord (Eph. 5:10).

May we not walk foolishly, blindly, or ignorantly; may we walk as children of light, proving what is well-pleasing to the Lord.

May the Lord gain this in us. May the Lord gain our daily living coming out of our inner being, the constitution of our being, as we know and experience God as love and light.

Lord Jesus, thank You for loving us and giving Yourself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour! Oh Lord, we love You! We respond to You in love, for the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through faith! We take You, dear Lord Jesus, as the example for our living. We want to follow Your example today by walking in love. Thank You for giving Yourself up for us for us to be redeemed from our sins and to fellowship with God. We love You, Lord. Be expressed through us as love. May our walk be in love toward others and full of sweet-smelling savour to God! Amen, Lord Jesus, we love you! Thank You for making us light in the Lord! Praise the Lord, we were once darkness but we are now light in the Lord! We want to walk in the light as children of the light. Shine in us, dear Lord. Shine in every part of our being. Keep us in the light. May we walk in love and light so that we may prove what is well-pleasing to the Lord!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Inspiration for this article/sharing comes from the Word of God, the enjoyment in the ministry, a sharing by brother Ron Kangas in the message for this week, and portions from, Life-study of Ephesians, msg. 50, by Witness Lee, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Experiencing, Enjoying, and Expressing Christ (2) (2024 December Training), week 23 (msg. 11), The Children of God Walking in Love and Light.
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  – By the cross discern the spirit, / Put the soul to death alway; / Bear the cross, deny the self-life, / Walk in spirit day by day… / By the cross discern the spirit, / With the mind by light renewed, / All emotion consecrated, / And the will in love subdued. (Hymns #748 stanzas 1, 3)