Ephesians 5:13

13. But The reverse of this dark concealment. All things, including those lurking depravities that are reproved, that is, truly detected by you, who are truly the light, are made manifest in their true enormity of character.

For whatsoever doth make manifest More correctly, whatsoever is made manifest, is no longer a lurking obscurity, a darkness, but it becomes in truth a light. On which difficult passage we may note:

1 . Scholars are now mostly agreed that the Greek word for doth make manifest, is not active, but passive; is being made manifest. Ellicott says that it occurs in the New Testament fifty times, but never with an active meaning.

2 . By the manifested things becoming light, is not meant that the men become converted, for it is not the men, but their licentious things that are the subject. Their base darknesses and seducing problems, by being detected and light-penetrated, become light.

The dark falsehood becomes luminous truth. And all the more is the previous darkness of the problem made evident and abominable.

3 . Differing from our English translation, and from Alford and others, who connect by the light with manifest, we refer it to reproved. The direction is: Do you, the light, reprove them; for whatever is by the light reproved is manifest in its true character. The required end is not that it may be manifest by the light, but simply, that it may be made manifest; and to this end it is duty that they should be reproved by the light. Moreover, manifest should come immediately before for, as being the term for which the for introduces the explanation. This keeps in view the imperative reprove of Ephesians 5:11, for which Ephesians 5:12 renders the imperative reason.