Paul begins this chapter with an enormous calling: “Therefore, imitate God like dearly loved children. Live your life with love, following the example of Christ” (Ephesians 5:1–2). Everything that follows grows out of those words.

Paul addresses sexuality, our speech, greed, the way we use our time, alcohol, worship, marriage, and the way Christians relate to one another. At first glance, Ephesians 5 can feel like a collection of instructions about Christian behavior. But Paul isn’t just handing the church a longer list of things Christians should and shouldn’t do. He is describing what life looks like when people are being shaped into the likeness of Christ.

“You were once darkness,” Paul writes, “but now you are light in the Lord, so live your life as children of light” (5:8). Notice what Paul doesn’t say. He doesn’t say that we were in darkness and have now discovered some better ideas. He says we were darkness and that something much deeper has happened. Our identity has changed because of Christ. Now we are light in the Lord.

That doesn’t mean Christians suddenly become perfect people who never struggle with temptation, poor judgment, selfishness, or sin. It means grace has brought us into a new life, and we can no longer make peace with the darkness Christ is saving us from. That’s why Paul speaks so directly about sexual immorality, greed, degrading speech, drunkenness, and foolishness. These aren’t arbitrary restrictions placed on Christian freedom. They are ways of living that distort the good things God created and pull us away from the life God intends.

Holiness isn't learning to despise the world God made. It's learning to love what God made enough to receive it according to God’s purposes.

Our bodies are good. Marriage is good. Sexuality is good. Food and drink are gifts. Time is a gift. Human relationships are gifts. But good things become destructive when desire becomes our master.

Paul says something similar about time: “Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise people” (5:15). Our days shouldn’t simply disappear beneath distraction, appetite, resentment, entertainment, or whatever happens to demand our attention next. We’ve been given a life to live with God. And Paul doesn’t expect us to accomplish this through greater self-control alone. His answer comes in verse 18: “Be filled with the Spirit.”

The alternative to darkness isn’t grim religious discipline. The alternative to being controlled by our appetites is being filled with the Holy Spirit. And look at what follows: singing, worship, thanksgiving, and life together.

Paul imagines a community whose minds and hearts are being continually formed by the truth of God. Psalms, hymns, prayer, thanksgiving, Scripture, worship, and Christian fellowship become part of the way the Spirit reshapes our desires.

What fills us eventually forms us. Paul's instruction is both practical and spiritually beneficial. We shouldn’t only ask whether something is technically permitted. We learn to ask, as Paul says in verse 10, what is “pleasing to the Lord.”

Does this desire lead me toward Christ? Does this habit make love of God and neighbor easier or harder? Is this relationship being shaped by self-giving love or by what I can get from another person? Is the way I’m spending my time forming me into the person God is calling me to become?

Paul eventually brings that same Christ-shaped pattern into marriage. The section begins in verse 21, before Paul addresses either husbands or wives individually: “Submit to each other out of respect for Christ.” Then Christ becomes the model for married love.

Whatever disagreements Christians have had about the precise shape of marriage roles, Paul leaves no room for domination, selfishness, or cruelty. The pattern placed before husbands is Christ giving himself for the church. Christian marriage must therefore bear the character of Jesus, who loves, serves, gives, cleanses, nourishes, and cherishes.

And that returns us to where the chapter began. “Live your life with love, following the example of Christ.” That is the thread running through Ephesians 5.

We are children learning the family resemblance. We were darkness, but in Christ we have become light. The Spirit is at work within us, teaching us to recognize what belongs to the old life and forming desires, relationships, habits, and priorities that look increasingly like Jesus.

So perhaps today we don’t need to examine every area of our lives at once. We can simply bring one part of our life into the light and ask: Is this helping me become more like Christ?

Grace has already brought us into the light. Now, by the power of the Holy Spirit, we learn to walk there.

Choose one ordinary part of your life today—your entertainment, speech, schedule, spending, relationships, or another recurring habit. Prayerfully ask, “Is this helping me become more like Christ?” Then make one concrete change that responds to what God reveals.