What is the light? It is the truth (the one who hears His voice)
● John 1:1-9a “The light…” - Source of light, radiance (Ex 34:30; Luke 2:9; John 14:9; Col 1:15, 19; Heb 1:3)
○ The manifestation of God’s self-existent life, divine illumination to reveal and impart life - through Christ
■ Having made us, and now (in Christ), having been born again (John 3:3), He creates us (Eph 2) as new creations, new creatures in Christ (John 3:3; Rom 6:4; 2Cor 5:17; Gal 6:15; Eph 4:24; Ps 51:10; Ez 11:19; 18:31; Is 65:17-18; Rev 21:4-5)
● 1John 1:5 “God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all”
● John 1:9b “...gives light” - Enlighten, God sharing his life, exposing and overcoming darkness - like the ignorance (prejudice) causes be sin.
○ Inspire and permeate with a feeling or quality - to impregnate - with the light or knowledge of God and His saving intentions
○ (to further) give understanding to
What is it to walk in darkness? To not see
● Ignorance of divine things, is associated with wickedness and the resultant misery
● To walk in moral depravity - in the arrogance that believes it does not need God, His forgiveness, or redemption - it is to stumble over Jesus for lack of perception or light 1Peter 2)
● To not be able to see what is right and just and fair
● When even the light in you is darkness, that is darkness indeed
○ When one is in darkness and yet think that they are in the light, that the darkness they are in is light to them, that is truly dark
○ What does it look like when someone’s (perceived) light is darkness?
■ Self deceived
● Jeremiah 17:9
● James 1:22, 26
■ Self deluded - Prov 14:12; 16:25; Matt 7:21; 25:39; Luke 18:18
● This may very well be the one to whom Jesus is saying “not everyone who says ‘lord, lord…’”, marked by the respondent’s astonishment “...but lord, did we not…?”, or the sheep’s response to the master “when did we see you hungry… and not…?”
John 3:16-21 16For 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. 17For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. 19This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. 20Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. 21But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.
Jesus IS the Light, shines the light, makes in us light, shines through us light - even INTO the darkness
● The darkness of sin
● The darkness of the heart of man
● The darkness of the heart of the believer
What does it look like? It is to detest and despise, to not extend mercy, grace and agape love; it is to hold in contempt others
What is it to walk in the light? It is to be aware and alert to God’s probing - to expose self to Hos word and Spirit
● It is Jesus who “I the Lord search the heart and examine the mind” Jeremiah 17:10
○ The motives
○ The thoughts and imaginations of, the reasoning
○ The battle in each - for submission to God’s truth and Spirit
● It is His Spirit that touches, or shines light onto our heart/spirit
○ Confirms its position in grace, by faith
○ Affirms the works as fruit of the heart’s faith as good and acceptable (just, as an act of (God’s) justification - or God’s declaring innocent and now acceptable - both the heart and the heart’s good work (Gal 5)
○ Exposes darkness to bring it into the light - it is WHY TRIALS, TESTS, CONFLICT, these times “shed light on…”