AP

LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS

            Light is a concept we naturally consider as good and beneficial, while its absence – darkness – is alien and threatening. In the days of landlines and six young children sleeping at home, the manse phone once started ringing about midnight. In my rush to get to it – to speak to a fellow pastor who apparently lived the life of an owl – I thought I could save time by not bothering to turn on any lights. After all, I knew the lay-out of the house well. Not as well as thought I did, evidently, for I kicked a skirting board and broke my little toe. By the time I reached the phone, the toe was throbbing, and I was left grimacing but pretending all was fine. In the scale of tragedies, it does not rate, but it was a painful reminder for a week or two that light is a good thing.

            God is Himself light, and in Him is no darkness at all (1 John 1:5). His first words in creating the heavens and the earth were ‘Let there be light!’ (Gen.1:3) In Milton’s paraphrase of Psalm 136, which delights in the mercies of God:

‘He, with all commanding might

Filled the new made world with light.’

The world was created for light.

            So when God makes Himself known, He speaks in those same terms. His prophetic word is likened to ‘a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts’ (2 Pet.1:19). God promises that He will come to those who fear His name as ‘the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its (or His, if Charles Wesley has it right) wings’ (Mal.4:2). As fallen and rebellious sinners, we have darkened minds (Eph.4:18), much in need of God’s word to be to us a lamp and a light (Ps.119:105; Prov.6:23). By nature, we walk in darkness, but Christ is the light of the world, and those who follow Him have the light of life (John 8:12). It can even be said that we were darkness, but now are light in the Lord (Eph.5:8).

            In fact, counterfeits of the truth also use the image of light. Hinduism, for example, has its Diwali, a festival which symbolizes the victory of light over darkness. To Christians, the eighteenth century is looked upon as the time when God wondrously revived His people, using men like George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards. To the secularist, it was the period of enlightenment. As Immanuel Kant explained: ‘Enlightenment is man’s release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is man’s inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another … “Have courage to use your own reason!” – that is the motto of enlightenment.’ Even the darkness of unbelief – leading to the idolatry and violence of the French Revolution – had to be dressed up in ‘light’ clothing. There should be no surprise here for Satan disguises himself as an angel of light (2 Cor.11:14). To cope with the darkness, we fancy that we are in the light.

            Christian conversion is thus portrayed in graphic terms. Paul says: ‘For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ’ (2 Cor.4:6). It is not simply an improvement – as when I learn some skill I did not possess beforehand – but a re-creation. It is the difference between light and darkness.

            So overpowering is this that Saul on the road to Damascus experienced it as blinding before he knew it as enlightening (see Acts 9:1-18). A torch can dispel the darkness with the flick of a thumb, or the striking of a match, but Saul experienced three days of darkness before he came into the marvellous light of Christ. The end result was not a warm glow of self-esteem, but light that he had never known before. Matthew Henry warns us against impatience: ‘A godly man’s way may be melancholy, but his end shall be peace and everlasting light. A wicked man’s way may be pleasant, but his end and endless abode will be utter darkness.’

            Light is good for all the day-to-day things of life – to avoid a broken toe, for example! Far more than that, the light of God’s word gives us all that we need for time and for eternity. So we can say with the Psalmist: ‘in Your light do we see light’ (Ps.36:9).

– Peter Barnes