God is Light
By Grant Gaines
2 Timothy 3:16 claims that the Holy Spirit is the ultimate author of all Scripture. Obviously, the Holy Spirit used human authors to convey God’s message and of all the human authors, my personal favorite is John.
Now John obviously wrote the Gospel of John, 1st,2nd, and 3rd John, and finally Revelation. Of the many reasons I like John’s writing style, the way he opens up his letters really appeals to me. Unlike other authors who go into long introductions such as Paul, James, or Peter, it’s as if John is waiting in the starting blocks and can’t wait to start writing. So rather than introducing himself in his letters, John jumps right into introducing the true “Star of the show” – Jesus.
That’s why we read in John 1:1 (NIV), “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Right there we learn that Jesus is eternal, He is God, and He is the physical embodiment of the Bible that we have the privilege to read every day – all in one verse. In the same way, John comes out guns a’ blazin’ in 1st John as he opens his letter by telling his audience that he has walked side by side with the eternal Immanuel for three years and desires for his audience to have the same intimate relationship with God as John now has.
And then after his short prelude, John states the following in 1 John 1:5 (NIV), “This is the message we have heard from [Jesus] and declare to you….” In other words, John is saying that in one sentence he is about to boil down Jesus’s three year ministry into one single idea. You could imagine how John’s audience leaned forward with complete and undivided attention as they prepared themselves to hear the “spark notes” version of what the Risen and Redeeming Savior said.
“This is the message we have heard from [Jesus] and declare to you: God is Light; in Him there is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5, NIV, bold mine). That’s Jesus’s message right there – God is Light and in Him there is no darkness at all.
Now this idea of God being Light is not unique only to 1st John, in fact it’s found scattered throughout the Bible. Obviously, in opposition to the light is the darkness which, according to the Bible, is anything that is sinful, evil, or that opposes God.
Now if you think about physical light and physical darkness for a moment, the two opposing forces have nothing to do with each other – there is no grey area between the two. And we’re not talking about dawn, or dusk, or twilight, we’re talking about perfect, unfiltered light and pitch black darkness – they can’t exist together.
And just as physical light and darkness can’t exist together, 2 Corinthians 6:14 (NIV) rhetorically asks the question, “…what fellowship can [spiritual] light and [spiritual] darkness have?” In other words, what fellowship can a perfect, holy, unblemished God, who is Light, have with sinful, evil, fallen human beings? After all, “God is Light; in Him there is no darkness at all.”
I want you to think about the physical light and darkness once more. Darkness has no power over light, darkness cannot take the initiative to approach light, and darkness has no power to cause the light to flee. Rather it is the light that has all of the power over darkness, it is the light that can approach the darkness, and it is the light that has all the authority to cause the darkness to flee.
In the same sense, spiritual darkness has no power over Light, it can’t approach Light, nor can it cause the Light to flee – the Light has all the control and power over the darkness.
With that in mind, we as fallen human beings have a problem on our hands, don’t we? Because if darkness has no power to approach light then the only way that that which is in the darkness can be brought into the light is if the source of light chooses to shine its light upon the darkness…and that’s exactly what happened.
John 1:14 (NIV) declares, “The Word (speaking of Jesus Christ who would later proclaim in John 8:12 (NIV), “…I Am the Light of the Word…”) became flesh and made His dwelling among us…” (John 1:14, NIV). To put it another way, God, who 1 Timothy 6:16 (NIV) describes as “unapproachable Light” approached the darkness. It’s as if Jesus left His dwelling place in heaven to become some sort of a lighthouse on earth so that all who were in the darkness could be brought into the light because we in the darkness had no power to approach Him on our own. That’s why we read in Ephesians 2:8-9 (NIV), “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith–and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God– not by works, so that no one can boast.” It’s God, it’s Jesus who saves us – we can take no credit.
You can’t pray enough, you can’t go to church enough, and you can’t read enough Christian blogs to illuminate yourself out of the darkness and into the light – only God can do that. That’s why David wrote, “The LORD is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear…” in Psalms 27:1 (NIV) because the only way that which is in the darkness can be brought into the light is if the source of light chooses to shine its light upon the darkness.
Now you would think that when the light of God shines on those in the darkness, the response would be the same as that of Isaiah in Isaiah 6 as he fell to the ground and began to weep because the glory and goodness of God exposed how truly sinful he was, but Jesus paints a different picture. Right after stating the most popular verse of all time – John 3:16 (NIV), “For God so loved the world that He gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life” – Jesus states, “This is the verdict: Light [speaking of Himself] has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light…” in John 3:19-20 (NIV, bold mine).
You see, when the light of God shines on some people and they realize how sinful they are, they not only choose the deeds of the darkness because they love their sin, but because they hate the light. They hate God for exposing them for what they really are – sinners in desperate need of a Savior, as we all are (Romans 3:23).
Hebrews 9:27 (ESV) states, “And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment,” which means that one day every one of us will one day pass away and then stand before God, who is Light. At that time the Father will ask us all one question, “How did you respond to My light?” How did you respond to the Gospel – the fact that the unapproachable light, Jesus, approached you when you were in the darkness (Romans 5:8) so that, “…no one who believes in [Him] should stay in darkness” (John 12:46, NIV)?
And according to Jesus in John 3, there are only two responses to this question, you either love the light or you hate the light, there is no middle ground because “God is light; in Him there is no darkness at all.” You love the light by, “…declar[ing] with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believ[ing] in your heart that God raised Him from the dead…” (Romans 10:9, NIV) and then doing away with, or repenting from, the deeds of the darkness (Acts 3:19). You hate the light by either actively or passively not following the instructions from Romans 10:9.
That’s what this life is all about: one decision with two choices, there is no “option C”. What’s your choice going to be today?
Comments? Questions? Suggestions?
©Grant Gaines 2013
