The Demands of Walking According to Light (4)

The first demand of walking according to light in Ephesians 5:11-14 is be separate, (v. 11a) and the second is that we are to take a stand (11b-13).

Third, we must not sleep in verse 14: Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.

Just as no light enters our eyes when we are asleep physically, likewise no spiritual light enters when we are asleep spiritually. So Paul commands awake thou that sleepest. Awake is egeirō. Used literally, it means “to rise from sleep, implying also the idea of rising up from the posture of sleep.” In Matthew 8:25, for example, where the terrified disciples came to Jesus “and awoke him, saying, Lord, save us: we perish,” we can picture them shaking Him awake and yanking Him up to his feet to do something. Used metaphorically, of course, it speaks of waking up from lethargy or sluggishness.

I would submit, however, that both ideas are implicit. To illustrate, as most teenage boys, I remember my parents trying to wake me up from that deep teenage boy sleep, which enables them to peacefully sleep through a freight train thundering through their room. After finally waking me up and getting a response, one of them would five minutes later call again, “Are you awake?” at which time I would groggily answer, “Yes.” But was I? Of course not. I was conscious, but still in the position of sleep, far from awake, alert, and ready for the day.

The same is true spiritually. Many Christians are conscious—they profess Christ, go to Church, pray, and so forth. But many of them are not really awake, not really out of the posture of sleep, not alert and ready for the challenges and commands of Christian living. Oh, how we need to awake!

The words Wherefore he saith indicate that this verse is a quotation of something, and many commentators have wondered about the source. Some have speculated that is from the Apocrypha, which is ridiculous because neither Paul nor any other New Testament writer ever quotes the Apocrypha. After all, why would they?

Many others, however, think that these lines are from an early Christian hymn. While that might very well be true, there can be little doubt that they are based upon some Old Testament Scripture. This is obvious because Paul used the very same words, Wherefore he saith, back in 4:8, where he partially quotes Psalm 68:18. As John Eadie observes, “It would be quite contrary to Pauline usage to suppose that this formula introduced any citation but one from the Old Testament.”

What Old Testament Scripture, then, does Paul adapt here? Isaiah 60:1: “Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the LORD is risen upon thee.” While some commentators say that there is little or no similarity between these two verses, the more one compares them the more likeness he sees. Because of the darkness of sin around them, the people of Israel were admonished to put on the light of Jehovah’s glory since they had not been doing so. Paul brings this admonition into the Church Age, perhaps using his own “free rendering” of it. What a terrible thing it is that there are Christians today who are barely discernable from lost people; quite often values, goals, motives, priorities, and basic attitudes are the same. As theologian and commentator Charles Hodge correlates the two verses: “In both, there is the call to those who are asleep or dead to rise and to receive the light, and there is the promise that Jehovah, Lord, or Christ (equivalent terms in the mind of the apostle) would give them light.”

Paul goes on to say that such Christians are actually dead. No, this doesn’t mean they are dead spiritually, rather it means they are dead effectively; that is, such Christians are not growing and have no practical vitality or useful witness. This verse is a call to repentance and renewed devotion to the Lord. If we do, Paul adds, Christ shall give [us] light. The implication is that He will give us even more light than we have; that is, He will illumine His Word that much more to our hearts and minds.

Dear Christian, are you asleep? Let us all wake up!