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As I am writing this post, I am sitting alone in my living room. My lights are off, and my blinds are open. I’m in a dark room with a few sporadic LED lights shining from my internet router and my Keurig. I see the neighbor’s motion detector light come on from time to time, and the street light is making it so I can navigate the darkness without tripping over my coffee table.
I am meditating on what life would be like without electricity. When a house has no power, it is pitch dark until power is restored or until a lantern is lit. Before the invention of the light bulb and the innovation of modern electrical wiring, those who would do anything productive after sunset would have to light oil lamps or candles or lanterns to do anything, and even then, the trivial embers fail to match the brightness of the day’s sun.
There is something powerful about this contrast between darkness and light. Many have called darkness the absence of light. And they’re not wrong. Light comes from energy, and it produces heat. Light is a force that acts on whatever it touches, to warm it or help provide the ability to see.
Darkness, on the other hand, is not a thing per se; it does not act on objects. Darkness just is. It is the default state of creation. Before God commanded light to exist, darkness was all one could have seen.
Darkness Hides
Darkness thrives where light does not inhabit, and where darkness thrives, so does chaos. That is why Scripture frequently associates evil and death with darkness and, conversely, goodness and life with light.
Jesus uses this imagery in his concluding words to Nicodemus:
“And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God” (John 3:19-21).
The way verse 19 begins has confused me since I first paid attention to this verse in Bible College, but something clicked when I read a couple verses back and look at the original language. Verses 17-18 say, “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”
“Condemn” is a legal word referring to a judge’s sentence given to a law breaker. It is the same word used when Jesus says not to judge in Matthew 7:1. Some translations of John 3 even use the word “judge” in place of “condemn.” So Jesus says that his first advent was not to judge the world, but he also says they are already judged who do not believe in him.
Then he begins verse 19 by saying, “This is the judgment.” It is the noun form of the verb we have been discussing. It could also be translated as “this is the condemnation” or “this is the verdict,” as the New International Version renders it. In other words, these are the charges in heaven’s court room against the world that does not believe in Jesus: “The light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil” (verse 19).
This “light” Jesus speaks of is himself. He had just spoken a few verses earlier about God sending his Son into the world to save it, and here he says that light came into the world. John 1:4 refers to Jesus as “the light of men,” and later in John 9:5, Jesus calls himself “the light of the world.” And rather than loving him, people loved darkness; they loved his absence.
With no light to expose them, the evils of mankind’s depravity would go unchecked. Have you ever turned on a light suddenly to find a group of cockroaches scurrying away to hide? When the light was off, they felt safe wandering the open floor of the kitchen or the bathroom, but when the light came on, their survival instinct kicked in, triggered by their vulnerability, and they got out of sight as soon as possible.
This is what happens when people try to hide their sin. The porn addict waits until his wife goes to sleep or goes out of town, and he takes advantage of her absence to feel safe indulging in evil. The lesbian hides behind the pride of her community to convince herself that she is not guilty of sin. The white supremacist puts on a mask of patriotism to convince himself that he is defending his heritage while he defaces the image of God. But when the search history is checked, when a godly sexuality is biblically defended, when even the secular world recognizes the insidiousness of racism, they all face the temptation to retreat further into the darkness of their excuses to hide from the truth.
Light Reveals
Darkness is dishonesty. It camouflages one’s true state of affairs. But when light enters the room, the only choice is to either hide from it or embrace it.
The choice one makes will identify their disposition. Jesus says that “everyone who does wicked things hates the light” (John 3:20). The Greek word here for “does” literally means “practicing.” The same word is used for “whoever does what is true.”
The one practicing the truth is willing to come to the light, willing to be honest about their life, because they are not afraid for their works to be exposed. And this is not because they live perfectly blameless lives. No, they of all people recognize their need for the mercy of God. For everyone who practices the truth once practiced wickedness before they were born of the Spirit.
Yet, this person finds true the words of 1 John 1:7, which tells us that when we “walk in the light,” we find that “the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.” And again, verse 9 says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
Sometimes, we may voluntarily go to the light of Christ through confession. Early in my ministry career, I got into a sexual relationship with someone I was dating. Knowing this was wrong, I confessed to my pastor at the time, and that set me back onto the right path of being cleansed from the unrighteousness that plagued my heart. I stepped down from ministry to heal and build back my relationship with God.
Other times, however, the light might come searching for us. We might try to hide our sin, but when the light catches up to us, we find we are more vulnerable than we thought.
In our last post, we learned that true faith is a disposition of loyalty to Christ. And here we see that walking in the light is living with a disposition of honesty. Our loyalty will never come without traces of sin, but our loyalty is maintained when we refuse to hide like cockroaches, but instead we walk right into the spotlight of Christ, allowing him to change us and cleanse us from that unrighteousness.
So, do you love the light or hate it? Do you practice the truth or hide from it? Do you walk in darkness or expose it?
What will your choice be?
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