Perhaps like many of you, I have a particular love for the hymns of our faith. As I reflect upon my younger days as a Christian, I have very fond memories of singing hymn #409 in the old Baptist Hymnal, ‘When We Walk With the Lord.’ It was written by a man named John H. Sammis, a Presbyterian minister, and it first appeared in 1887 in a collection called Hymns Old and New. The lines of the first verse still echo pleasantly in my mind:

When we walk with the Lord,
In the light of His Word,
What a glory He sheds on our way!
While we do His good will,
He abides with us still,
And with all who will trust and obey.

The notion that the life of a believer in Christ is like a ‘walk,’ however, does not find its original source in this blessed hymn. Actually, it comes from the Old Testament! Over and again, the Old Covenant people were commanded to “walk” in a distinctive way in light of their redemption by Yahweh’s grace and mercy. A good example of this is found in Leviticus 18:3-5 where the Lord speaks to the Israelites through Moses:

“You shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt, where you lived, and you shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan, to which I am bringing you. You shall not walk in their statutes. You shall follow my rules and keep my statutes and walk in them. I am the Lord your God. You shall therefore keep my statutes and my rules; if a person does them, he shall live by them: I am the Lord.”

This image of ‘walking’ is then picked up in the New Testament where it becomes a prominent figure of speech for the faithful life of a follower of Jesus. We see this very thing in 2 John. The beloved Disciple of the Lord employs it three times in 2 John 1:4-6. There he says:

“I rejoiced greatly to find some of your children walking in the truth, just as we were commanded by the Father. And now I ask you, dear lady—not as though I were writing you a new commandment, but the one we have had from the beginning—that we love one another. And this is love, that we walk according to his commandments; this is the commandment, just as you have heard from the beginning, so that you should walk in it.”

You can see from the context of this passages that the word “walk” is another way of speaking of one’s life, or lifestyle. Your “walk”—how you actually behave—reveals a lot about who you really are, where you have come from, who you belong to, and where you are going. While our ‘talk’ may be impressive indeed, it’s our “walk” that tells the truth about us. And this is the concern beating in the heart of the Apostle John as he writes to his brothers and sisters in Christ who are in one of the churches near Ephesus. His point is that those who have been saved by our Lord Jesus should have a most distinctive “walk.”

On Sunday, we will begin our look at these verses, and we will pray that the Spirit of God might teach us, in the most practical of terms, what it is to “walk with the Lord in the light of His Word.”