Faith + Life

Text: 1 John 1:5-6

5 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. 6 If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.(ESV)

John erects a huge billboard that screams HERE IS THE MESSAGE:  God is LIGHT.

Light?

Does that mean

• purity?
• perfection?
• sinlessness?
• power?
• energy?
• the absence of evil?

YES!

There’s more:  John tells us that if we claim to know God and our nature is defined by what he calls “darkness,”

• sin
• evil
• hiding
• shame

then, we lie to ourselves and others.

Think about this analogy: enter a dark room.  Turn on a light.  The light fills the void and the darkness is no more.  It’s gone.  It’s consumed.  It doesn’t exist.   Is the darkness responsible for its retreat?  Does it vanquish itself?

No, the light is the actor.

John is telling us that our human nature exists in darkness… evil… sin… shame…  We don’t choose to turn on the light.   The light finds us, or, in John’s parlance, God chooses to act in our lives.  God erases our darkness.  Sure, we can resist the light and even shut it out.  That’s our choice.  We can’t, however, blot out our knowledge that the light exists. (cf. Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, Republic, Book VII)

Perhaps one of the most difficult concepts about Christianity is that we are not the actor.  When God enters our life and chases away our darkness, our position is one of surrender…and God acts, benevolently.  He declares us to be free and treats us as if our past never was.  He bids us rise, not by our own strength, but solely by his.

Ask yourself these questions:

• Have I gotten out of the way?
• Where am I still protecting small areas of shadow?
• What elements of my darkness am I afraid to release?
• How do I actively or passively resist God’s transforming work?
• Do I really WANT to walk in his light?

Lord, free my from my fears of your light of my fears of freedom from that which I know most intimately: my faults.   Bathe all that I am and all that I do in your cleansing light! Amen.

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Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.