God is Light
1 John 1v5
7th February 2020
In the first four verses of this letter, John established his spiritual authority to restate the true Christian message, which he heard from Jesus's own lips. Now he begins to lay out this message. He begins by saying:
1 John 1v5
This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is
no darkness at all.
If somebody asked you to lay out the Christian message, this may not be the first thing you'd say. But John the apostle, Jesus's best friend, a witness to the miracles, the death and the Resurrection of Jesus begins by saying "God is light".
The Christian message is, of course, the message that Jesus Christ, the second Person of the Holy Trinity, God incarnate, gave to His original followers, and especially to the original 12 apostles. The function of the church and, in particular, of Christian leaders, teachers and preachers, is to speak out the message that the apostles heard from Jesus. In the first century, they preached the message in churches, and they wrote it down in the books of the New Testament, which we still have, and we are to teach the same message.
Let me state this as clearly as I can: The Christian message contains nothing that is not included in the Bible. We can talk about anything we like, but the Christian message is entirely contained within the Bible.
David Jackman, in his commentary, says, much more eloquently than I could, "As always, the apostolic task was to announce to others what they had heard from the Lord. The church's task similarly is to keep this ‘pattern of sound teaching', to 'guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you' (2 Tim 1:13-14) and to do this by ‘entrusting it to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others' (2 Tim 2:2). So there is an unbroken chain of witnesses to the truth of God as revealed in Christ and to the apostles from the beginning down to the present day. We are no more at liberty to redefine or ‘modernize' the message than they were. God's revealed truth is not negotiable."
The Bible is true. We don't need to update it or apologise for it. We just need to read it, preach it, believe it and live it out.
The first element of the Christian message that John wants to re-state is: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. The Christian message is not fundamentally about us; it's fundamentally about God.
The Bible and many other books use light as a metaphor in various ways. In the Scriptures, light is a metaphor for several things.
Light is a metaphor for wisdom:
Psalm 119:105
Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path.
Light is a metaphor for truth:
2 Peter 1:19a
We also have the prophetic message as something completely reliable, and you will do well to
pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place
Light is a metaphor for moral goodness, or righteousness:
Isaiah 5:20
Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for
darkness…
Ephesians 5:8-9
For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light
(for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth)
John 3:19-21
This is the verdict: light [Jesus] has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead
of light because their deeds were evil.
Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their
deeds will be exposed.
But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what
they have done has been done in the sight of God.
John 8:12
Jesus said, "I am the light of the world".
So, when John says "God is light" he's saying that God is wisdom, truth, and righteousness. And when John says "in him there is no darkness at all", he's saying that God is utterly, perfectly pure. In God there is wisdom and absolutely no foolishness. In God there is truth and absolutely no error or dishonesty. In God there is goodness and absolutely no immorality.
It would help us if we could fix in our minds the idea that God is not like us but better; God is absolutely perfect. It's hard for us to conceive anybody being absolutely perfect, but He is! As the Authorized Version's translation of James 1:17 says, in God "there is no shadow of turning". The first element of the Christian message, then, is this: God is perfect.
Because God is perfectly wise, perfectly honest, perfectly moral, perfect in every way, we can totally trust God, and it makes no sense at all to criticise God.
Since God is perfect, there is nothing in Him to criticise. It makes no sense to find fault with God.
It makes no sense to be angry with God, although some of us are, sometimes. That's an emotional reaction, but in our heart of hearts we must know that it's crazy to do so. God cannot let you down; He's perfect. You may feel like God has let you down, but He can't, because He's perfect.
And it makes no sense at all to try to improve on the Bible, since the Bible is God's revealed written word to us, so the Bible is perfect. Why change that which is perfect?
And, of course, Jesus – the living Word of God – is perfect. The leaders and the people called for Jesus to be crucified because He claimed to be God, and upset the religious system of His day. But I think another reason why they killed Jesus was because He was perfect, and they couldn’t handle it.