The Light of the World

In the cool, early evenings of December nights one of the greatest wonders is looking up at the emerged night’s sky to see the twinkling little lights that seem just a tad brighter as the weather grows frosty. These lights are a stark contrast to the pitch black of the night, but they remind us that even amid a dark world there can be and there is a bright, ebullient brilliance that remains. Kingdoms rise and fall, seasons change, technology grows and wanes, yet the stars remain, and more so than that the One Who created those stars remain. Our Creator did not solely give us the stars in the night’s sky to hold firm to of His Light, rather, He did so much more in sending us His Son, Jesus Christ to be the Light of the World.

John 1 explores just what it means that Jesus is in fact, “the Light of the World.” The Gospel of John begins in a much different way than the other three Gospels, but it sets the tone to recognize that from the very beginning Jesus was with God, He was not an afterthought or a Plan B after man fell, He was with God even from the Dawn of Creation.

John 1:1-3 explains,

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him not even one thing came into being that has come into being.”

What is vital that we recognize in the verses above as well is that the Word of God is living, powerful, and is Him. Logos, is the Greek word used here and it is in fact the one of the most debated word in the New Testament according to scholars. “According to The Lexham Bible Dictionary, logos (λόγος) is “a concept word in the Bible symbolic of the nature and function of Jesus Christ. It is also used to refer to the revelation of God in the world.” Logos is a noun that occurs 330 times in the Greek New Testament. Of course, the word doesn’t always—in fact, it usually doesn’t—carry symbolic meaning. Its most basic and common meaning is simply “word,” “speech,” “utterance,” or “message.”” (Logos.com) We know as human beings that our ways are not His ways, nor our thoughts His thoughts, but we can stand in awe, wonder, and distinct reverence in not only the intentionality of our Creator, but at the complexities of His character as revealed here in these very beginning verses of John. When we even begin to scratch the surface of realizing the function of Logos, we see that when God speaks, movement occurs. It is literally impossible for God to speak without all of creation then therefore shifting, for His Word is His intention. As it says in Isaiah 55:11,

“So will My word be which goes out of My mouth; It will not return to Me empty, Without accomplishing what I desire, And without succeeding in the purpose for which I sent it.”

This promise in Isaiah sees further confirmation and fulfillment through the sending of Jesus Christ into the world. John 1:2 helps us to recognize that Jesus was with God as He spoke and the Heavens came to be, as He whispered and stars appeared in the sky, and as He breathed life into Adam in the Garden and mankind began to walk the earth. Jesus was not merely a vessel crafted after things fell apart in that Garden, He was there before the Garden even saw its first sprout of an olive leaf, let alone the sin of a man and his wife.

In Him all are things, and through Him all that has ever been created has been from His Word. This even seeks to confirm the Name of YHWH, or the Name God calls Himself to Moses, “I AM.” God is eternal, and as we see in John 1:3 not one thing has come into being that was not created first and foremost by Him. This is not to then pervert our mindset to somehow say that God created us and the blame of the sins we commit are His fault because He made us. Rather, it is truly to say we exist because He created us, we are His craftsmanship. Our mere existence is a grace and a gift of His handiwork. Not a bird in the sky exists outside of His Authority of Creation. This is imperative that we realize that the lie that is often tossed about that somehow Satan has the same authority as God, or that he is as powerful as God is a pure, unadulterated lie. In the end it is God, our Maker, Who has all Authority in all of creation.

John 1:4-5 goes further to explain how life and Light combine, and that Christ is that Light and life,

“In Him was life, and the life was the Light of mankind. And the Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not grasp it.”

Genesis begins with a darkness, a void, and a desperately hungry desire for warmth. Through God’s utterance the Heavens, the Earth, and Light itself come into existence, the exact contrast to what had been before. We see that same contrast with Christ coming into an aching, hungry, desperate world. Israel was under the cruel rule of Rome, and the silence of God had lasted four-hundred years. By many accounts the darkness seemed bleaker than ever.

Singer-songwriter, Joel Ansett has a song entitled, “Lost for Now” that imagines the despair of the loss of light after the first day man experienced, but they joy that arose the next morning at the gentle, steady kiss of the dawn. He writes,

“Why would you warm up my heart and my skin
Just to leave me alone in the end
I truly don't know how to make it
Now that you're gone

Why? Why do you take?
Leaving my heart on a limb just to see how it breaks
Feels like everything is lost
'Til you hold me
Saying it's only lost for now

Can you imagine the joy eleven hours later?
There's a chorus of birds teaching me how to sing
Hard to believe all the people I see
Brighter today than they were in my dreams
I hear the notes of my pain and you're making a song”

The depths of despair that the sun had set were not the final say, and the guilty, broken, scorn world in which Jesus entered as a mere babe was not the final say for mankind either. Just as God’s voice entered the dark void to create Light, Jesus entered into the darkness to bring forth the Light of Redemption. We rejoice even more than in verse five that, “the darkness did not grasp it (the Light).” For the tidal wave of sin, of evil, or of Satan’s plans and schemes did not grasp Jesus to remove God’s salvation and plan for mankind. Consider how even death could not hold Jesus. For just like the metaphor in Ansett’s song did Jesus rise again from death, bringing with Him the joy, exultation, and kept promise of God Himself. Even when all of Hell rejoiced that Christ had perished after His crucifixion, it was not the final say, it was not the end of the story. God did as He promised, and Christ rose again. Salvation was and is real, and it was accomplished through Jesus.

Jesus is the Light of mankind, and it is through Christ that we can not only find salvation from the darkness but have within us His Light. As Jesus says a few chapters later in John 8:12,

“Then Jesus again spoke to them, saying, “I am the Light of the world; the one who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life.”

When we surrender our lives and commit to following Christ as our Lord and Savior, we are made new, we are adopted as children of God—not just His creation—and Christ abides within us through His Light. He is the Light of life. In the Garden, God breathed the breath of life into Adam that he may be a living, breathing man, but it is through the Light of Christ within us that we then therefore have the Light of Life within us. This is a distinct difference for it is not just that we have life in our bones, breath in our lungs, and contemplative thought in our brains, but it is that we then through Christ carry the Light (Jesus) within us when we come into salvation. This Light, this Life is eternal, it cannot be extinguished, and it changes everything in our lives-just as the Light changed everything in Creation. When we stop living just as God’s creation and we come into salvation through Christ, it is as if a candle was lit. Suddenly the purpose for the candle, the gift the candle can offer to others, and the literal light of the candle comes to pass. Christ is the Light that ignites us to be all we were crafted to be by God.

The Light of the World pierces the sullen, despondent fragments of a fallen world and it makes all things new. The Light of the World also serves as our constant confidence that indeed this world is not the end of our lives, for we will be eternally with Christ. As we enter a season where all around us artificial lights emerge, remember that the true Light of this World is Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the One Who was there even before the Dawn of time.

Sources:

https://www.logos.com/grow/greek-word-logos-meaning/

https://www.logos.com/grow/nook-light-of-the-world/

“Lost for Now” Song by Joel Ansett