Recap: We have embarked on an effort to ensure that we are worshipping the true God by exploring the three nouns used in the Bible to describe/define God. In the last post we reviewed the statement in Scripture that "God is love" (1 John 4:8, 16). I expressed the belief that, even though what we experience as love is only a wisp of the powerful, humanly incomprehensible force that emanates from the pure love of God, love is our greatest manifestation of the goodness of God.
Today, we'll examine God's own denominative declaration that He is light.
God is Light
This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. (1 John 1:5 ESV)
The apostle John's statement above is an example of "contrastive" language. Contrastive statements provide two opposing elements - supporting one, and negating the other. This literary device eliminates any possibility of speculative "wiggle-room" in the meaning of the message. In this case, John is determined to ensure that his readers understand; God is light. If darkness exists, it is not of God.
Generally speaking, the Bible uses light as a metaphor for three important theological concepts; (1) truth (spiritual understanding/enlightenment), (2) life (physical and/or spiritual), and (3) goodness. Simply put, when the Bible tells us that God is light, I believe that we are to understand that all truth, all life and all goodness emanate from a single source - God.
Truth
'You can't handle the truth!," Jack Nicholson explodes in the courtroom scene of A Few Good Men.
Who would have thought that Jack Nicholson (or whoever wrote that line of script) was uttering prophesy? Yet those words describe an ever-expanding chasm that separates the God-fearing from the God-denying today. While there have always been negators of truth throughout the course of history - people who couldn't handle the truth - it seems that there is an ever-increasing denial of objective truth in today's world. That is, there are many, who by "exchanging the truth of God for a lie"(Rom 1:25), have untethered themselves from the source of all truth, that is, God.
This expanding denial of objective truth portends a sad, unstable, and unpredictable future because, according to Scripture, it is the truth that sets us free (John 8:32). It is the truth that sanctifies (John 17:17). It is living & worshiping in truth that brings us out of darkness and into the light (John 4:23, John 3:21). And it is God, the source of truth, who establishes what is right and what is wrong through his word of truth, the Bible. By denying the power of his word, many have corrupted the true north of their moral compass. Jordan Peterson recently said this about the truth of the Bible:
"The Bible is true in a very strange way. It's true in that it provides the basis for truth itself. So, it's like a meta-truth. Without it there couldn't even be the possibility of truth. And so, maybe, that's the most true thing - the most true thing isn't some truth, per se - it's that which provides the precondition for all judgments of truth. I can't see any holes in that argument." (Jordan Peterson, 'You Probably Should Have Read the Bible', https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0KXzWMky9A)
In other words, the Bible - the words given to us from the God who is light - is the source for all judgments of truth.
Life
In [Jesus] was life, and the life was the light of men. (John 1:4 ESV)
According to the Bible, life on this planet did not begin with energy, or matter, or a "cosmic egg" or some undefined dense singularity as proposed by some in the science community. Life begat life. Life was, from the beginning, in Jesus. The "light of the world" (John 9:5) is the source of all life.
This understanding is reinforced by the apostle Paul in his speech to the academic leaders in Athens when he confirms that Jesus ". . . gives everyone life and breath and everything else" (Acts 17:25 NIV). The God who is light, begets and sustains all life. Every beat of the heart, every breath we take, every morning we wake, is decreed by the sustainer of life, that is, Jesus. "'In him we live and move and have our being' . . ." (Acts 17:28 ESV).
Goodness
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells his disciples, ". . . let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. (Matthew 5:15-16 ESV)
As disciples, we are like the moon. We are not the source of light but are designed to be wonderful reflectors of the true light, the light of the Son. Our acts of goodness to others not only bring glory to God, but are evidence and bear witness to the presence of God's goodness - yea, even to the very presence of God - in us.
Those who do what is right come to the light so that others can see God at work in what he is doing (John 3:21 NLT).
Darkness
I wanted to finish up with some brief thoughts about darkness. If light represents truth, life and goodness, contrastively, darkness in Scripture represents ignorance, death and malevolence. If God is light, then darkness is the absence of God. Darkness is the domain of the enemy whose goal is to separate us from God through deception (untruth), that causes evil ("un-goodness"), and leads to death ("un-life").
And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not. (John 1:5 KJV)
Darkness can't "comprehend" light in the same way that death can't comprehend life, and in the same way that ignorance can't comprehend truth. They have no fellowship together - . . . . what fellowship has light with darkness? (2 Corinthians 6:14 ESV). Hence, in the end, when the God who is light reigns supreme over the new heaven and new earth, darkness will cease to exist.
And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever. (Revelation 22:5 ESV)
Amen!
Final Thought
God did not come to conceal himself, but to reveal himself. He came to bring light - that is, truth and life and goodness - into the world. And God's light is available to everyone without exception. Any doctrine that limits the reach of God's light by casting a shadow on God's desire that all people be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth (1 Tim 2:4) is not a Christian doctrine.
For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God's glory displayed in the face of Christ. (2 Corinthians 4:6 NIV)
Next Post: God is Spirit.
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