And it is quite plain what the character of {193} God as manifested in Christ is. It is love; and to imitate God is therefore to 'walk in love,' that is, to conduct one's life with love as its conscious motive and atmosphere. Moreover, the love of Christ is a love which shows itself in self-sacrifice. 'He offered himself as an offering and sacrifice to God on our behalf; and God, who had of old made it plain by His prophets that He could find no satisfaction in animal victims, accepted 'as a sweet savour' this free-will offering of self-sacrificing love. In the self-sacrifice of Christ, therefore, we have the clear disclosure both of what God is and of what God will accept from man. But this ideal of life as lying in love and in the deliberate self-sacrifice of one for another is the plain negation of some maxims for life generally accepted in heathen society. It is the plain negation of sensual self-indulgence at the expense of others, or at the expense of our spiritual nature, of 'fornication and uncleanness of all kinds,' of filthy conduct, of the sort of jesting or wit which ignores all moral restraints. It is the plain negation again of selfish greed or the unlimited desire to get--'covetousness.' These things are out of the question for a body of saints, that is, men dedicated to a holy God. {194} [Sidenote: _Life in the light_] The tone and language which befits such a dedicated life is the tone and language of thanksgiving. But clearly Asiatic Christians were only too ready to forget the essential incompatibility of their new profession with the old sinful habits around them. So St. Paul emphasizes 'This ye know for certain that fornication or unclean living on the one hand, or the turning of gain into a god on the other, surely excludes a man from the kingdom of Christ and God[1].' And he reiterates 'let no man deceive you with empty words.' Such vices, being in plain contradiction to the divine will, make men subjects of the divine wrath, and for you this should be startlingly plain. You have been brought out of the realm of darkness of which once you formed a part, into the realm of light, of which you now form a part, the realm whose light is Christ. There is no fellowship between the light and the darkness[2]. To live in the light means to bring forth fruit of goodness and righteousness and truth, the fruit of a character like Christ's. For you have in Christ a definite standard by which you can test what is well pleasing to the {195} Lord. It is your business, therefore, to keep yourselves altogether separate from the works of darkness which bear no fruit. Not only so, but it is your business to 'reprove' or convict the dark world of sin; not, of course, by making the works of darkness the subjects of your curiosity and conversation--that indeed must not be--but simply by the contrast which your own lives present. In the light of your lives the secret shame of the heathen life will be unmasked.