Friday, June 6 You were once darkness, but you are now light.​—Eph. 5:8.

[Áine]

Friday, June 6

You were once darkness, but you are now light.—Eph. 5:8.

 

The apostle Paul had spent quite some time in Ephesus, preaching and teaching the good news. (Acts 19:1, 8-10; 20:20, 21) He loved his brothers very much and wanted to help them to remain faithful to Jehovah. The Ephesians to whom Paul wrote were once enslaved to false religious ideas and superstitions. Ephesus was famous for its gross immorality and brazen conduct. Obscene talk was commonly heard in the city’s theaters and even at religious festivals. (Eph. 5:3) Many of its inhabitants were “past all moral sense,” an expression that literally means “having ceased to feel pain.” (Eph. 4:17-19) Before learning what was truly right or truly wrong, the Ephesians did not feel pangs of conscience. Paul could thus describe them as being “in darkness mentally and alienated from the life that belongs to God.” Some of the Ephesians, though, did not remain in darkness. w24.03 20 ¶2, 4; 21 ¶5-6