Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Ephesians · About this commentary
Children of Light
Ephesians 5:6-10
6 Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes on the children of disobedience. · WEB
The readers are not told they are in the light but that they are light, and what light produces is listed as fruit.
Verse 6 warns against empty words. The adjective shares its root with the futility of the gentile mind Ephesians 4:17, and the deception in view is evidently the claim that the things just listed carry no consequence.
Against that the letter states one: because of these things the wrath of God comes on the children of disobedience. The phrase has appeared before, of the readers' own former condition Ephesians 2:2. Verse 7 draws the practical line — do not be partakers with them.
Then verse 8, and the grammar is stronger than most readers notice. Not you were in darkness but you were darkness. Not you are in the light but you are now light in the Lord. The letter makes the condition an identity rather than a location, twice over. Only then does it give the command: walk as children of light.
The order is the letter's constant one. Identity announced, conduct requested, and never the reverse.
Verse 9 names what light yields, and the noun is agricultural: the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth. Fruit is singular, as it is in another letter's longer list Galatians 5:22 — one crop with several qualities, not a set of separate achievements.
And verse 10 gives the ongoing activity in one participle: proving what is well pleasing to the Lord. The verb is for testing metal or coinage to establish what it is. What the letter asks is not the mechanical application of a rule but an active discernment, exercised by people who have been told what they now are.
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