“Light and Darkness, Part IV” by Romans
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgsbaBIaoVc
We are continuing in our Series, Light and Darkness. This is our Fourth Installment. We will be reviewing and examining the many verses in Scripture where the two words “light” and “darkness” both appear, either separately or as a phrase. They have much to teach us. So let's begin...
Tonight, we will finish our focus where those words occur in the Gospel Accounts in general, and John in particular. Our first “hit” appears in John 8:12: “Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.”
The Sermon Bible tells us of this, “I. There is no figure more common in Scripture, and none more beautiful, than that by which Christ is likened unto light. Incomprehensible in its nature, itself the first visible, and that by which all things are seen, light represents to us Christ, Whose generation none can declare, but Who must shine upon us ere we can know aught aright, whether of things Divine or human.
Itself pure and uncontaminated, though visiting the lowest parts of the earth, and penetrating its most noisome recesses, what does light image, if not that undefiled Mediator who contracted no stain, though born of a woman in the likeness of sinful flesh? Who can question that the rising of Jesus Christ, was to the moral world what the sun is to the natural?
II. Without pleading that the state of the world, before Christ came, was a state of total darkness, we may yet affirm that Christ emphatically came as the light of the world. In no district of the earth—not even in Judæa, though privileged with revelation—was there anything that could be called more than the dawning of the day. Types there were—significative ceremonies—mysterious emblems, but these do not constitute the day.
At best, they were but a twilight, that gave promise of the morning; and if that be all we can affirm of Judæa, then certainly, until the light of which we have been speaking, there brooded over other lands a darkness that might be felt. Here and there were lingering traces of a patriarchial religion; but every year saw the gathering of thicker gloom, and streak after streak grew dim on the firmament.
III. Such was the state of the whole Gentile world when He appeared, whom the prophecy announced as "a light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death." Was the testimony exaggerated, or has it been justified by events? Wheresoever the Gospel has been published and received as a communication from God, the darkness has fled as night flies before the sun. It hath hung the very grave with bright lamps, and rekindled the spirit of an almost quenched immortality.
The pardon of sin, justification through the Mediator’s righteousness, the gradual overcoming of the corruptions of nature, guidance in difficulty, guardianship in danger, comfort in affliction, triumph in death—all these are in the portion of him who follows Christ—followeth Him in faith as his surety, in obedience as his pattern. And are not these the light—yea, the light of life?
H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 1829.
I. Jesus had often spoken this word before. Every act of mercy He did, spoke to the men who were the subjects of it. St. John dwells specially upon His cure of blindness. He takes that as an instance, and the clearest and liveliest instance, of the effects which were produced by all His miracles. Each sufferer felt that a power of darkness had taken hold of him; that a portion of the beauty and joy of the universe was hidden from him.
The appearance of a deliverer who could set him free from his plague, was the appearance of a Light. He was brought out of a cave; the air that breathed upon the rest of men, was breathing on him; the common sun was shining on him. Christ’s word was light; the entrance of it into the soul gave light, and that light diffused itself through every part of the man. It brought health and vigour wherever it encountered sickness and decay.
II. Divines are wont to make distinctions between Christ the Teacher of the world at large, and Christ the Teacher of the heart and conscience of each man. They talk of an outward Christ and an inward Christ. The Evangelists indulge in no such refinements. The Christ who was born of the Virgin, who suffered under Pontius Pilate, reveals Himself—not to the eyes of those who actually see and handle Him, but to a spirit within them.
And so there is no need of artificial rules and distinctions, such as doctors invent for their own confusion. The Light makes the distinction. It is not the distinction of Pharisee or Publican, of religious men or irreligious. It goes deeper than that. It is the distinction between that in every man which welcomes the light, and claims kindred with it, and that in every man which eschews the light and would fain extinguish it for ever.
It expresses itself in these words, "He that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness." The Light of the world is not put out. Now have death and the grave been converted into the great testimonies for life and immortality. Now may each man, who has the sentence of Adam upon him, know that he is a kinsman of the Son of God. Now may he follow Him; and so, when the darkness is thickest around him and within, not walk in it, but see the Light of Life.
F. D. Maurice, Sermons, vol. iv., p. 203.
References: Joh_8:12.—H. Melvill, Voices of the Year, vol. i., p. 109; W. J. Hall, Church of England Pulpit, vol. x., p. 421; Good Words, vol. vi., p. 274; Preacher’s Monthly, vol. viii., p. 369; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. iii., p. 193; A. McAuslane, Christian World Pulpit, vol. ii., p. 321; W. M. Taylor, Three Hundred Outlines on the New Testament, p. 80; G. Matheson, Moments on the Mount, p. 250; E. Bersier, Sermons, 1st series, p. 136. D. Fraser, Metaphors of the Gospels, p. 16. Joh_8:15.—Homiletic Magazine, vol. xv., p. 168. Joh_8:18.—Three Hundred Outlines on the New Testament, p. 82; W. M. Taylor, The Gospel Miracles, p. 101. Joh_8:22.—T. Foster, Lectures, vol. i., p. 51.”
Matthew Henry adds, “I. A great doctrine laid down, with the application of it. 1. The doctrine is, That Christ is the light of the world: Then spoke Jesus again unto them; though he had spoken a great deal to them to little purpose, and what he had said was opposed, yet he spoke again, for he speaketh once, yea, twice. They had turned a deaf ear to what he said, and yet he spoke again to them, saying, I am the light of the world.
Note, Jesus Christ is the light of the world. One of the rabbies saith, Light is the name of the Messiah, as it is written, (as we read in Daniel 2:22), And light dwelleth with him. God is light, and Christ is the image of the invisible God; God of gods, Light of lights. He was expected to be a light to enlighten the Gentiles (see Luke 2:32), and so the light of the world, and not of the Jewish church only. The visible light of the world is the sun, and Christ is the Sun of righteousness.
One sun enlightens the whole world, so does one Christ, and there needs no more. Christ in calling himself the light expresses, (1.) What he is in himself - most excellent and glorious. (2.) What he is to the world - the fountain of light, enlightening every man. What a dungeon would the world be without the sun! So would it be without Christ by whom light came into the world, (see John 3:19).
2. The inference from this doctrine is, He that followeth me, as a traveller follows the light in a
dark night, shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. If Christ be the light, then, (1.) It is our duty to follow him, to submit ourselves to his guidance, and in every thing take directions from him, in the way that leads to happiness. Many follow false lights - ignes fatui, that lead them to destruction; but Christ is the true light.
It is not enough to look at this light, and to gaze upon it, but we must follow it, believe in it, and walk in it, for it is a light to our feet, not our eyes only. (2.) It is the happiness of those who follow Christ that they shall not walk in darkness. They shall not be left destitute of those instructions in the way of truth which are necessary to keep them from destroying error, and those directions in the way of duty which are necessary to keep them from damning sin.
They shall have the light of life, that knowledge and enjoyment of God which will be to them the light of spiritual life in this world and of everlasting life in the other world, where there will be no death nor darkness. Follow Christ, and we shall undoubtedly be happy in both worlds.”
As we move forward in John's Gospel, we come to our next occurrence of “light and darkness” in John 12:35-36 were we read, “Then Jesus said unto them, Yet a little while is the light with you. Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you: for he that walketh in darkness knoweth not whither he goeth. While ye have light, believe in the light, that ye may be the children of light.
These things spake Jesus, and departed, and did hide himself from them.”
Of this, Alexander MacClaren tells us, “A Parting Warning: These are the last words of our Lord’s public ministry. He afterwards spoke only to His followers in the sweet seclusion of the sympathetic home at Bethany, and amid the sanctities of the upper chamber. ‘Yet a little while am I with you’; -the sun had all but set. Two days more, and the Cross was reared on Calvary, but there was yet time to turn to the light.
And so His divine charity ‘hoped all things,’ and continued to plead with those who had so long rejected Him. As befits a last appeal, the words unveil the heart of Christ. They are solemn with warning, radiant with promise, almost beseeching in their earnestness.
He loves too well not to warn, but He will not leave the bitterness of threatening as a last savour on the palate, and so the lips, into which grace is poured, bade farewell to His enemies with the promise and the hope that even they may become ‘the sons of light.’ The solemnity of the occasion, then, gives great force to the words; and the remembrance of it sets us on the right track for estimating their significance. Let us see what lessons for us there may be in Christ’s last words to the world.
I. There is, first, a self-revelation. It is no mere grammatical pedantry that draws attention to the fact that four times in this text does our Lord employ the definite article, and speak of ‘the light.’ And that that is no mere accident is obvious from the fact that, in the last clause of our text, where the general idea of light is all that is meant to be emphatic, the article is omitted.
‘Yet a little while is the light with you; walk while ye have the light . . . . While ye have the light, believe in the light, that ye may be the children of light.’ So then, most distinctly here, in His final appeal to the world, He draws back the curtain, as it were, takes away the shade that had covered the lamp, and lets one full beam stream out for the last impression that He leaves.
Is it not profoundly significant and impressive that then, of all times, over and over again, in the compass of these short verses, this Galilean peasant makes the tremendous assertion that He is what none other can be, in a solitary and transcendent sense, the Light of Mankind? Undismayed by universal rejection, unfaltering in spite of the curling lips of incredulity and scorn, unbroken by the near approach of certain martyrdom, He presents Himself before the world as its Light.
Nothing in the history of mad, fanatical claims to inspiration and divine authority is to be compared with these assertions of our Lord. He is the fontal Source, He says, of all illumination; He stands before the whole race, and claims to be ‘the Master-Light of all our seeing.’ Whatsoever ideas of clearness of knowledge, of rapture of joy, of whiteness of purity, are symbolised by that great emblem, He declares that He manifests them all to men.
Others may shine; but they are, as He said, ‘lights kindled,’ and therefore ‘burning.’ Others may shine, but they have caught their radiance from Him. All teachers, all helpers, all thinkers draw their inspiration, if they have any, from Him, in whom was life, and the Life was the Light of men.
There has been blazing in the heavens of late a new star, that burst upon astonished astronomers in a void spot; but its brilliancy, though far transcending that of our sun, soon began to wane, and before long, apparently, there will be blackness again where there was blackness before. So all lights but His are temporary as well as derived... But the Light is ‘not for an age, but for all time.’
Now, brethren, this is Christ’s estimate of Himself. I dwell not on it for the purpose of seeking to exhaust its depth of significance. In it there lies the assertion that He, and He only, is the source of all valid knowledge of the deepest sort concerning God and men, and their mutual relations. In it lie the assertion that He, and He only, is the source of all true gladness that may blend with our else darkened lives, and the further assertion that from Him, and from Him alone, can flow to us the purity that shall make us pure.
We have to turn to that Man close by His Cross, on whom while He spoke the penumbra of the eclipse of death was beginning to show itself, and to say to Him what the Psalmist said of old to the Jehovah whom he knew, and whom we recognise as indwelling in Jesus: ‘With Thee is the fountain of life. Thou makest us to drink of the river of Thy pleasures. In Thy light shall we see light.’
So Christ thought of Himself; so Christ would have as to think of Him. And it becomes a question for us how, if we refuse to accept that claim of a solitary, underived, eternal, and universal power of illuminating mankind, we can save His character for the veneration of the world. We cannot go picking and choosing amongst the Master’s words, and say ‘This is historical, and that mythical.’
We cannot select some of them, and leave others on one side. You must take the whole Christ if you take any Christ. And the whole Christ is He who, within sight of Calvary, and in the face of all but universal rejection, lifted up His voice, and, as His valediction to the world, declared, ‘I am the Light of the world.’ So He says to us. Oh that we all might cast ourselves before Him, with the cry, ‘Lighten our darkness, O Lord, we beseech Thee!’
II. Secondly, we have here a double exhortation. ‘Walk in the light; believe in the light.’ These two sum up all our duties; or rather, unveil for us the whole fullness of the possible privileges and blessings of which our relation to that light is capable. It is obvious that the latter of them is the deeper in idea, and the prior in order of sequence. There must be the ‘belief’ in the light before there is the ‘walk’ in the light.
Walking includes the ideas of external activity and of progress. And so, putting these two exhortations together, we get the whole of Christianity considered as subjective. ‘Believe in the light; trust in the light,’ and then ‘walk’ in it. A word, then, about each of these branches of this double exhortation.
‘Trust in the light.’ The figure seems to be dropped at first sight; for it wants little faith to believe in the sunshine at midday; and when the light is pouring out, how can a man but see it? But the apparent incongruity of the metaphor points to something very deep in regard to the spiritual side. We cannot but believe in the light that meets the eye when it meets it, but it is possible for a man to blind himself to the shining of this light.
Therefore the exhortation is needed-’Believe in the light,’ for only by believing it can you see it. Just as the eye is the organ of sight, just as its nerves are sensitive to the mysterious finger of the beam, just as on its mirroring surface impinges the gentle but mighty force that has winged its way across all the space between us and the sun, and yet falls without hurting, so faith, the ‘inward eye which makes the bliss’ of the solitary soul, is the one organ by which you and I can see the light.
‘Seeing is believing,’ says the old proverb. That is true in regard to the physical. Believing is seeing, is much rather the way to put it in regard to the spiritual and divine. Only as we trust the light do we see the light. Unless you and I put our confidence in Jesus Christ, the Son of God and Son of Man, we have no adequate knowledge of Him and no clear vision of Him. We must know that we may love; but we must love that we may know. We must believe that we may see.
True, we must see that we may believe, but the preliminary vision which precedes belief is slight and dim as compared with the solidity and the depth of assurance with which we apprehend the reality and know the lustre of Him whom our faith has grasped. You will never know the glory of the light, nor the sweetness with which it falls upon the gazing eye, until you turn your face to that Master, and so receive on your susceptible and waiting heart the warmth and the radiance which He only can bestow.
‘Believe in the light.’ Trust it; or rather, trust Him who is it. He cannot deceive. This light from heaven can never lead astray. Absolutely we may rely upon it; unconditionally we must follow it. Lean upon Him-to take another metaphor-with all your weight. His arm is strong to bear the burden of our weaknesses, sorrows, and, above all, our sins. ‘While ye have light, trust the light.’
But then that is not enough. Man, with his double relations, must have an active and external as well as an inward and contemplative life. And so our Lord, side by side with the exhortation on which I have been touching, puts the other one, ‘Walk in the light.’ Our inward emotions, however deep and precious, however real the affiance, however whole-hearted the love, are maimed and stunted, and not what the light requires, unless there follows upon them the activity of the walk.
What do we get the daylight for? To sit and gaze at it? By no means; but that it may guide us upon our path and help us in all our work. And so all Christian people need ever to remember that Jesus Christ has indissolubly bound together these two phases of our relation to Him as the light of life-inward and blessed contemplation by faith and outward practical activity. To walk is, of course, the familiar metaphor for the external life of man, and all our deeds are to be in conformity with the Light, and in communion with Him.
This is the deepest designation, perhaps, of the true character of a Christian life in its external aspect-that it walks in Christ, doing nothing but as His light shines, and ever bearing along with it conscious fellowship with Him who is thus the guiding and irradiating and gladdening and sanctifying life of our lives, ‘Walk in the light as He is in the light.’ Our days fleet and change; His are stable and the same.
For, although these words which I have quoted, in their original application refer to God the Father, they are no less true about Him who rests at the right hand of God, and is one light with Him. He is in the light. We may approximate to that stable and calm radiance, even though our lives are passed through changing scenes, and effort and struggle are their characteristics.
And oh! how blessed, brother, such a life will be, all gladdened by the unsetting and unclouded sunshine that even in the shadiest places shines, and turns the darkness of the valley of the shadow of death into solemn light; teaching gloom to glow with a hidden sun! But there is not only the idea of activity here, there is the further notion of progress. Unless Christian people to their faith add work, and have both their faith and their consequent work in a continual condition of progress and growth, there is little reason to believe that they apprehend the light at all.
If you trust the light you will walk in it; and if your days are not in conformity nor in communion with Him, and are not advancing nearer and nearer to the central blaze, then it becomes you to ask yourselves whether you have verily seen at all, or trusted at all, ‘the Light of life.’
III. Thirdly, there is here a warning. ‘Walk whilst ye have the light, lest the darkness come upon you.’ That is the summing up of the whole history of that stiff-necked and marvellous people. For what has all the history of Israel been since that day but groping in the wilderness without any pillar of fire? But there is more than that in it. Christ gives us this one solemn warning of what falls on us if we turn away from Him. Rejected light is the parent of the densest darkness.
The man who, having the light, does not trust it, piles around himself thick clouds of obscurity and gloom, far more doleful and impenetrable than the twilight that glimmers round the men who have never known the daylight of revelation. The history of un-Christian and anti-Christian Christendom is a terrible commentary upon these words of the Master.
The cries that we hear all round us to-day from men who will not follow the light of Christ, and moan or boast that they dwell in agnostic darkness, tell us that, of all the eclipses that can fall upon heart and mind, there is none so dismal or thunderously dark as that of the men who, having seen the light of Christ in the sky, have turned from it and said, ‘It is no light, it is only a mock sun.’ Brethren, tempt not that fate.
And if Christian men and women do not advance in their knowledge and their conformity, like clouds of darkness will fall upon them. None is so hopeless as the unprogressive Christian, none so far away as those who have been brought nigh and have never come any nigher. If you believe the light, see that you growingly trust and walk in it, else darkness will come upon you, and you will not know whither you go.
IV. And lastly, there is here a hope and a promise. ‘That ye may be the sons of light.’ Faith and obedience turn a man into the likeness of that in which he trusts. If we trust Jesus we open our hearts to Him; and if we open our hearts to Him He will come in. If you are in a darkened room, what have you to do in order to have it filled with glad sunshine? Open the shutters and pull up the blinds, and the light will do all the rest. If you trust the light, it will rush in and fill every crevice and cranny of your hearts.
Faith and obedience will mould us, by their natural effect, into the resemblance of that on which we lean. As one of the old German mystics said, ‘What thou lovest, that thou dost become.’ And it is blessedly true. The same principle makes Christians like Christ, and makes idolaters like their gods. ‘They that make them are like unto them; so is every one that trusteth in them,’ says one of the Psalms.
‘They followed after vanity and are become vain,’ says the chronicler of Israel’s defections. ‘We with unveiled faces beholding’-or mirroring-’the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image.’ Trust the light and you become ‘sons of the light.’ And so, dear friends, all of us may hope that by degrees, as the reward of faith and of walking, we still may bear the image of the heavenly, even here on earth.
While as yet we only believe in the light, we may participate in its transforming power, like some far-off planet on the utmost bounds of some solar system, that receives faint and small supplies of light and warmth, through a thick atmosphere of vapour, and across immeasurable spaces.
But we have the assurance that we shall be carried nearer our centre, and then, like the planets that are closer to the sun than our earth is, we shall feel the fuller power of the heat, and be saturated with the glory of the light. ‘We shall see Him as He is’; and then we too ‘shall blaze forth like the sun in the kingdom of our Father.’”
Finally, tonight, our last “hit” is found in John 12:46: “I am come a light into the world, that whosoever believeth on me should not abide in darkness.”
Matthew Henry writes, “Observe, (1.) The character of Christ: I am come a light into the world, to be a light to it. This implies that he had a being, and a being as light, before he came into the world, as the sun is before it rises; the prophets and apostles were made lights to the world, but it was Christ only that came a light into this world, having before been a glorious light in the upper world. (2.) The comfort of Christians: They do not abide in darkness.
[1.] They do not continue in that dark condition in which they were by nature; they are light in the Lord. They are without any true comfort, or joy, or hope, but do not continue in that condition; light is sown for them.
[2.] Whatever darkness of affliction, disquietment, or fear, they may afterwards be in, provision is made that they may not long abide in it.
[3.] They are delivered from that darkness which is perpetual, and which abideth for ever, that utter darkness where there is not the least gleam of light nor hope of it.”
To this, John Gill adds, “I am come a light into the world,.... And even as the light of it, being the sun of righteousness, that was to arise, and now was risen, to enlighten men with the light of the living; (see John 3:19);
that whosoever believeth on me should not abide in darkness; God's elect themselves, whilst in a state of unregeneracy and unbelief, are in darkness; when Christ shines in upon them, and infuses the light of faith into them, they are no longer in darkness; the darkness is past, at least in a great measure, and the true light shines;
in which they see light, see glory and grace of Christ, and the invisible realities of another world: nor do they continue in the darkness of sin, ignorance, and unbelief; but walk in the light of truth, faith, and holiness, until the perfect day comes, when all the shadows of remaining darkness will flee away.”
This concludes this evening's Discussion, “Light and Darkness, Part IV.”
This Discussion was originally conducted “live” on September 11h, 2019.
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