4:4 god of this world. The “god of this world (or ‘age’)” is Satan. In John 12:31, Jesus called him “the prince of this world” (see also John 14:30), and John noted that “the whole world lieth in wickedness [literally, ‘the wicked one’]” (I John 5:19). When even brilliant intellectuals seem unable to understand and accept the easy-to-understand gospel of Christ, especially His works of creation and redemption, it is because their minds have been blinded to these wonderful truths. We must pray for God “to open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God” (Acts 26:18).

4:6 out of darkness. Paul here draws a beautiful analogy of our new creation in Christ to His primeval creation of the world. Both the world and we were initially born in darkness—we in spiritual darkness, through innate sin, and the world in physical darkness (Genesis 1:2). Then, as God called for physical light to “divide” the darkness (Genesis 1:3-5), so He has divided the darkness in our hearts, by the spiritual illumination of Him who is “the light of the world” (John 8:12). Yet, just as there continues to be a “conflict” between day and night, as it were, so there continues a battle in our souls between the old darkness and the new light. In the age to come, however, “there shall be no night there” (Revelation 21:25), and thenceforth we always “shall walk in the light of it” (Revelation 21:24), having been made “like Him; for we shall see Him as He is” (I John 3:2).