Our text for this week is Ephesians 5:15-17:
As someone once said, “Whenever you see a “therefore” in Scripture, go back and see what it’s there for. The above verses are a continuation of last week’s verses that addressed how everything will be made visible by the light, and that we must arise so the light of Christ can shine on us. Once we arise or awake for the day, we must be careful how we walk. Two ways we do this is by not wasting our time, and by understanding what the will of the Lord is.
It is tragic that most teachings on the end times revolve more around the anti-Christ than Christ. Most books I have read on the book of Revelation give far more emphasis on the anti-Christ than Christ even though, as stated in the very first verse, this revelation was given to John as “The Revelation of Jesus Christ...” (Revelation 1:1). We will never have a right eschatology by interpreting everything by what we think the anti-Christ is going to do. All true understanding will come from how “the light of Christ” shines on us.
Even so, it is crucial that we are careful how we walk, and as our text for this week declares, wise men will walk making the most of their time. Time is one of the most valuable gifts that we have been given, and we do not know how much of it we have. Even so, just being perpetually occupied is not the way we wisely use our time. We can be very busy but accomplishing nothing worthwhile if we do not understand what the will of the Lord is. That should be the primary question in which our lives should revolve around: What is the will of the Lord?
This leads us to another important question: How do we know the will of the Lord? This we are told in Romans 12:2, “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what the will of God is...” We cannot understand what the will of God is for us as long as we are thinking the way that the world thinks. Therefore, having our minds renewed so we think as the Lord thinks, begin to see with His eyes, hear with His ears, and understand with His heart, is fundamental to the true Christian walk.
So, what is having the greatest effect on our thinking? Is it the news media? Is it what our secular teachers taught us? Or is it the ways of the Lord as revealed in the Scripture? I have been shocked by how many supposedly solid Christians, even Christian leaders, will hold to human philosophies that are in blatant conflict with the Scriptures, and will remain stubbornly resolute in their humanistic convictions when shown the Scriptures that refute their positions. This is one of the things we can be sure the light of Christ is going to reveal more and more—how weak the foundations of many Christians and churches are because they have not really had their minds renewed. As the Lord warned in Matthew 6:23b, “If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!”
It is unquestionably the forming of our minds according to the humanistic and worldly philosophies rather than sound biblical truth that is the number one reason why so many Christians remain in such confusion about the will of God in their life. According to Romans 12:1, if our minds have been transformed we will not only know what the will of the Lord is, we will be able to prove it! There is no one on earth who should be living with more boldness, peace, and success, than Christians. However, this requires thinking very differently than others do. Can that be said of us?