Ye are all children of light
Or enlightened persons, whose understandings were enlightened by
the spirit of God, to see their lost state by nature, the
exceeding sinfulness of sin, the insufficiency of their
righteousness to justify them before God, the fulness,
suitableness, and excellency of Christ's righteousness, the way
of salvation by Christ, and that it is all of grace from first to
last; to understand in some measure the Scriptures of truth, and
the mysteries of the Gospel; to have knowledge of some things
that are yet to be done on earth, as the bringing in of the
fulness of the Gentiles, the conversion of the Jews, the
destruction of antichrist, the second coming of Christ, the
resurrection of the dead, the change of living saints, and the
rapture of both up into the air to meet Christ, the burning of
the world, and the new heavens and new earth, where Christ and
his saints will dwell; as also to have some glimpse of the
heavenly glory, of the unseen joys, and invisible realities of
the other world: and this the apostle says of them all, in a
judgment of charity, as being under a profession of the grace of
God, and in a church state, and nothing appearing against them
why such a character did not belong to them:
and the children of the day;
of the Gospel day, in distinction from the night of Jewish
darkness; and of the day of grace which was come upon their
souls, in opposition to the night of ignorance and infidelity,
which was past; and of the everlasting day of glory, being heirs
of, and having a right unto, and a meetness for the inheritance
of the saints in light:
we are not of the night, nor of darkness;
that is not the children of darkness, as the Syriac and Arabic
versions read; and the former changes the person, and reads, "ye
are not the children of the night" of the night of the legal
dispensation, or of Gentile ignorance; or of a state of natural
darkness, in unregeneracy and was no need to write unto them
concerning the time and season of Christ's coming, and lays a
foundation for the following exhortations.