The gospel is the health-giving word (2 Timothy 1:13, 2:8). It is the antidote which cures the poison of sin and the medicine which defeats the disease of evil.
(13) The gospel is the word of life (Philippians 2:16). It is through its power that we are delivered from death and enabled to enter into life at its best.
GOD IS LIGHT
1 John 1:5
And this is the message which we have heard from him and which we pass on to you, that God is light, and there is no darkness in him.
IT is certainly the case that our individual characters will be determined by the character of the god whom we worship; and, therefore, John begins by laying down the nature of the God and Father of Jesus Christ whom Christians worship. God, he says, is light, and there is no darkness in him. What does this statement tell us about God?
(1) It tells us that he is splendour and glory. There is nothing so glorious as a blaze of light piercing the darkness. To say that God is light tells us of his sheer splendour.
(2) It tells us that God is self-revealing. Above all things, light is seen; and it lights up the darkness round about it. To say that God is light is to say that there is nothing secretive or furtive about him. He wishes to be seen and to be known.
(3) It tells us of God’s purity and holiness. In God, there is none of the darkness which cloaks hidden evil. That he is light speaks to us of his white purity and stainless holiness.
(4) It tells us of the guidance of God. It is one of the great functions of light to show the way. The road that is lit is the road that can be seen clearly. To say that God is light is to say that he offers his guidance for the path we must tread.
(5) It tells us of the revealing quality in the presence of God. Light is the great revealer. Flaws and stains which are hidden in the shade are obvious in the light. Light reveals the imperfections in any piece of work or material. So, the imperfections of life are seen in the presence of God. As the poet and hymn-writer J. G. Whittier wrote,
Our thoughts lie open to thy sight;
And naked to thy glance;
Our secret sins are in the light
Of thy pure countenance.
We can never know either the depth to which life has fallen or the height to which it may rise until we see it in the revealing light of God.
THE HOSTILE DARK
1 John 1:5 (contd)
IN God, says John, there is no darkness at all. Throughout the New Testament, darkness stands for the very opposite of the Christian life.
(1) Darkness stands for the Christless life. It represents the life that people lived before they met Christ or the life that they live if they stray away from him. John writes to his people that, now that Christ has come, the darkness is past and the true light shines (1 John 2:8). Paul writes to his Christian friends that once they were darkness but now they are light in the Lord (Ephesians 5:8). God has delivered us from the power of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of his dear Son (Colossians 1:13). Christians are not in darkness, for they are children of the day (1 Thessalonians 5:4–5). Those who follow Christ shall not walk in darkness, as others must, but they will have the light of life (John 8:12). God has called the Christians out of darkness into his marvellous light (1 Peter 2:9).
(2) The dark is hostile to the light. In the prologue to his gospel, John writes that the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it (John 1:5). It is a picture of the darkness seeking to obliterate the light – but unable to overpower it. The dark and the light are natural enemies.
(3) The darkness stands for the ignorance of life apart from Christ. Jesus summons his friends to walk in the light so that the darkness does not overtake them, for those who walk in the darkness do not know where they are going (John 12:35). Jesus is the light, and he has come that those who believe in him should not walk in darkness (John 12:46). The dark stands for the essential lostness of life without Christ.
(4) The darkness stands for the chaos of life without God. God, says Paul, thinking of the first act of creation, commanded his light to shine out of the darkness (2 Corinthians 4:6). Without God’s light, the world is a chaos in which life has neither order nor sense.
(5) The darkness stands for the immorality of the Christless life. It is Paul’s appeal to men and women that they should cast off the works of darkness (Romans 13:12). Because their deeds were evil, people loved the darkness rather than the light (John 3:19). The darkness stands for the way that the Christless life is filled with things which seek the shadows because they cannot stand the light.
(6) The darkness is characteristically unfruitful. Paul speaks of the unfruitful works of darkness (Ephesians 5:11). If growing things are deprived of the light, their growth is arrested. The darkness is the Christless atmosphere in which no fruit of the Spirit will ever grow.
(7) The darkness is connected with lovelessness and hate. If people hate one another, it is a sign that they walk in darkness (1 John 2:9–11). Love is sunshine, and hatred is the dark.
(8) The dark is the home of the enemies of Christ and the final goal of those who will not accept him. The struggle of Christians and of Christ is against the hostile rulers of the darkness of this world (Ephesians 6:12). Persistent and rebellious sinners are those for whom the mist of darkness is reserved (2 Peter 2:9; Jude 13). The darkness is the life which is separated from God.
THE NECESSITY OF WALKING IN THE LIGHT
1 John 1:6–7
If we say that we have fellowship with him and at the same time walk in darkness, we lie and are not doing the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with each other, and the blood of Jesus Christ is steadily cleansing us from all sin.
HERE, John is writing to counteract one heretical way of thought. There were those who claimed to be specially intellectually and spiritually advanced, but whose lives showed no sign of it. They claimed to have advanced so far along the road of knowledge and of spirituality that, for them, sin had ceased to matter and the laws had ceased to exist. Napoleon once said that laws were made for ordinary people but were never meant for the likes of him. So, these heretics claimed to be so advanced in their thinking that, even if they did sin, it was of no importance whatsoever. In the later years of the second century, Clement of Alexandria tells us that there were heretics who said that it made no difference how people lived. The second-century theologian Irenaeus tells us that they declared that truly spiritual people were quite incapable of ever being affected or harmed by sin, no matter what they did.
In answer, John insists on certain things.
(1) He insists that, to have fellowship with the God who is light, we must walk in the light, and that, if we are still walking in the moral and ethical darkness of the Christless life, we cannot have that fellowship. This is precisely what the Old Testament had said centuries before. God said: ‘You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy’ (Leviticus 19:2; cf. 20:7, 20:26). Those who would find fellowship with God are committed to a life of goodness which reflects God’s goodness. The New Testament scholar C. H. Dodd writes: ‘The Church is a society of people who, believing in a God of pure goodness, accept the obligation to be good like him.’ This does not mean that we must be perfect before we can have fellowship with God; if
