1 John 1:5-6: God is Light
1 John 1:5-6: 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. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. [1]
We hear many competing stories about Who God is. Many are mistaken, some are blasphemous. John, one of the incarnate Son of God’s disciples, explains Who God is by calling Him light. God is uncreated light, Who has made Himself visible to the world through Jesus Christ. [2] Conversely, darkness in, John’s writing, is anything that opposes God. [3] But everyone is in darkness. [4] John says, “we” because “[our] lives are set against God because of a heart filled with hatred and a will inclined to disobedience.” [5]
This darkness is why Christ, the light of the world, had to come and rescue His children. [6] We cannot save ourselves because by nature we are dead in sin. [7] Christ had to rescue us, and when He rescues, God the Father no longer sees our darkness, but the light of Christ in us. [8] This undeserved gift [9] should make all of us want to live as those who are in the light. [10] This light is for all who believe that Jesus alone is the way, the truth, and the light, Who reunites us to God, when our sins had separated us. [11] Living like the light does not earn salvation, but is a joyful reflection of it. [12] If you are in Christ, what sins can you put aside today? What Christ honoring actions can you take to live as one in the light, for God’s glory and your good?
This blog was written by Seth Dunn.
[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Logos Bible Software. All Scripture references will be ESV unless noted otherwise.
[2] Simon J. Kistemaker. New Testament Commentary: Exposition of the Epistle of James and the Epistles of John. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1986), 242.
[3] Walter Bauer, William F. Arndt, F. Wilbur Gingrich, and Frederick W. Danker. A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature: A translation and adaptation of the fourth revised and augmented edition of Walter Bauer’s Griechish-Deutsches Worterbuch zu den Schriften des Neuen Testaments und der ubrigen urchristlichen Literatur, Second Ed. Revised and Augmented by F. Wilbur Gingrich and Frederick W. Danker. (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1979). (BAGD), 757.
[4] Ephesians 4:17-24; Titus 3:3-11, etc.
[5] Kistemaker, The Epistle of James and the Epistles of John, 243.
[6] Kistemaker, The Epistle of James and the Epistles of John, 242. See also Luke 19:10; John 3:16, etc.
[7] Ephesians 2:1-10.
[8] Kistemaker, The Epistle of James and the Epistles of John, 243-244.
[9] Ephesians 1:3-11.
[10] Romans 6.
[11] John 14:6; Ephesians 2:11-14.
[12] Titus 3:3-7; 1 Corinthians 6:9-19; James 2:14-26; Galatians 2:15-21, etc.