1 Thessalonians 5:5 You are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness. I. It is evident that ALL THOSE ON WHOM THE TRUE NIGHT SHINES ARE, IN A VERY IMPORTANT SENSE, THE "CHILDREN OF THE DAY." Christendom is the domain of light as contrasted with the early world or the regions beyond. Its very dimmest parts are luminous in comparison with any portion of the world to which the rays of the gospel have not penetrated. None can dwell where the gospel is known without deriving from it great accessions of knowledge on most important and essential questions. What elsewhere is conjecture, surmise, hope, there is certainty. What heathen sages, by the reflection and research of a life, laboured to make probable, the Christian child learns at its mother's knee, and grows up to know and believe with an implicit and unwavering confidence, yea, and many things besides, which the efforts of natural reason were never able so much as to excogitate even into the rudest sketch or outline. II. But there is a higher sense in which WE ARE THE CHILDREN OF THE DAY, AS WE ARE BAPTIZED INTO THE BODY OF CHRIST, AND MADE TO PARTAKE OF THE PRIVILEGES OF THE CHURCH. And this also is happily true of most of us; sad to think, that in a land that calls itself Christian, it should be untrue of any. The ancient fathers often called baptism "illumination"; because it introduced and pledged to its recipients the enlightening influences of the Holy Spirit. III. There is still another form and grade of illumination, by virtue of which the partakers of it are made in a still higher and more glorious sense the children of the light and of the day. This is THAT ILLUMINATION WHICH REACHES THE HEART AND THE LIFE, AND BRINGS THEM UNDER THE PRACTICAL CONTROL OF THE TRUTH WHICH IT COMMUNICATES. This is the end and design of all inferior illumination. A spiritual illumination, one that takes hold upon the moral and active powers of our nature, quickens the conscience, controls the will, hallows the affections, gives truth supremacy and dominion, and stamps the visible impress of every revelation it makes upon the character and practice, is the illumination that makes us children of the day in the only sufficient sense, and thereupon heirs of salvation. (R. A. Hallam, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness. |
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