The Demands of Walking According to Light (1)

We come now to the third and final division of Ephesians 5:8-14. In verse 11-14, we see three demands of walking according to light.

 First, the Christian must be separate, as verse 11a declares: And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness.

The clause unfruitful works of darkness paints a graphic picture. Unfruitful is akarpos. The root karpos appears some 66 times in the New Testament and carries the primary meaning of “the fruit of plants (Matt. 21:19) . . . or the “produce of the earth” (Jas. 5:7, 18).” The extended meaning of karpos, however, is more significant. As one authority explains, “The use of the term fruit expressly indicates that it is not a question of deliberate, self-determined action on man’s part. Rather it is that ‘fruit-bearing’ which follows from his turning to God and the power of the Spirit working in him.” In other words, just as fruit automatically comes from a plant or tree because it is its nature to do so, spiritual fruit is automatic in the Christian. We don’t produce fruit because of our effort, but because of the Spirit’s energy. Fruit comes because that is now our nature. That is why our Lord said, “By their fruits ye shall know them” (Matt. 7:20).

With the prefix a, however, akarpos means the exact opposite, “unfruitful, fruitless, barren, unproductive.” Among its eight appearances in the New Testament, we find it in reference to the “thorny ground hearing” in the Parable of the Sower: “He also that received seed among the thorns is he that heareth the word; and the care of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, choke the word, and he becometh unfruitful” (Matt. 13:22). Jude uses it to refer to apostates, who are “clouds . . . without water, carried about of winds; trees whose fruit withereth, without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots” (Jude 12).

So just as fruitfulness is automatic because of natural inclination, so is unfruitfulness. The unsaved man does not have to work at being unfruitful; it comes naturally. As our Lord declared, “Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit” (Matt. 7:17-18).

The word work (ergon) is the result or object of employment, something to be done. Darkness is again skotos (as in v. 8), which speaks of uncertainty, ignorance, and depravity. Putting the clause together, then, as man gropes in ignorance and uncertainty, the result of all his employment is total fruitlessness and barrenness.

Paul, therefore, commands the believer, have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness. Does this not make perfect sense? In light of such ignorance, uncertainty, fruitlessness, and barrenness, why would we want to have anything to do with it? As one commentator asks, “Who wants to spend his life in working a field which produces no fruit at all?” But as logical as it might seem, Paul still feels the need to give the command to Believers. Why? To show us that we must not fellowship with people who do such evil things.

To prove that principle, we must examine the Greek word for fellowship (sunkoinoneo). The root koinoneo means “to share in something” and implies that this sharing is with someone else. The prefix sun intensifies the word. So the full meaning is, “to become a partner together with others.” Paul’s point, then, is that the believer is not to become involved in sin even by association. Yes, we live in this world, but we are not of this world. No, we are not to be separate from contact with the world, but we are to be separate from conformity to the world.

In the Rebellion of 1798 in England, the United Irishmen, with the aid of France, attempted to secure the complete separation of Ireland from England. The United Irishmen were defeated at Vinegar Hill on June 21, which led to the legislative union of Great Britain and Ireland under the name United Kingdom on January 1, 1801. The story is told that during that rebellion, the rebels took prisoner a little drummer of the king’s troops, and told him to beat the drum for them. The little boy laid his drum on the ground and jumped onto it, shredding the parchment, and then cried, “God forbid that the king’s drum should ever be beat for rebels.” The rebels promptly killed the little hero, but they could not erase the memory of such courage and loyalty. What a challenge to Christians to have no fellowship with that which betrays their Lord.