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LIFE AND LIGHT

John 1:4 (contd)

In him was life and the life was the light of men.

THE second of the great Johannine keywords which we meet here is the word light. This word occurs in the Fourth Gospel no fewer than twenty-one times. Jesus is the light of all people. The function of John the Baptist was to point men and women to that light which was in Christ. Twice Jesus calls himself the light of the world (8:12, 9:5). This light can be in men and women (11:10), so that they can become children of the light (12:36). ‘I have come’, said Jesus, ‘as light into the world’ (12:46). Let us see if we can understand something of this idea of the light which Jesus brings into the world. Three things stand out.

(1) The light Jesus brings is the light which puts chaos to flight. In the creation story, God moved upon the dark, formless chaos which was before the world began and said: ‘Let there be light’ (Genesis 1:3). The new-created light of God routed the empty chaos into which it came. So Jesus is the light which shines in the darkness (1:5). He is the one person who can save life from becoming a chaos. Left to ourselves, we are at the mercy of our passions and our fears.

When Jesus dawns upon life, light comes. One of the oldest fears in the world is the fear of the dark. There is a story of a child who was to sleep in a strange house. His hostess, thinking to be kind, offered to leave the light on when he went to bed. Politely he declined the offer. ‘I thought’, said his hostess, ‘that you might be afraid of the dark.’ ‘Oh, no,’ said the boy, ‘you see, it’s God’s dark.’ With Jesus, the night that surrounds us is as light as the day.

(2) The light which Jesus brings is a revealing light. It is their condemnation that people loved the darkness rather than the light; and they did so because their deeds were evil; and they hated the light lest their deeds should be exposed (3:19–20). The light which Jesus brings is something which shows things as they are. It strips away the disguises and the concealments; it shows things in all their nakedness; it shows them in their true character and their true values.

Long ago, the Cynics said that the truth is hated because it is like the light to sore eyes. In a poem written by the seventh-century English saint Caedmon, there is a strange picture. It is a picture of the last day, and in the centre of the scene there is the cross; and from the cross there flows a strange blood-red light, and the mysterious quality of that light is such that it shows things as they are. The externals, the disguises, the outer wrappings and trappings are stripped away; and everything stands revealed in the naked and awful loneliness of what it essentially is.

We never see ourselves until we see ourselves through the eyes of Jesus. We never see what our lives are like until we see them in the light of Jesus. Jesus often drives us to God by revealing us to ourselves.

(3) The light which Jesus brings is a guiding light. If people do not possess that light, they walk in darkness and do not know where they are going (12:36). When they receive that light and believe in it, they walk no more in darkness (12:46). One of the features of the gospel stories which no one can miss is the number of people who came running to Jesus asking: ‘What am I to do?’ When Jesus comes into life, the time of guessing and of groping is ended, the time of doubt and uncertainty and vacillation is gone. The path that was dark becomes light; the decision that was wrapped in a night of uncertainty is illumined. Without Jesus, we are like people on an unknown road in the pitch dark. With Jesus, the way is clear.