God IS Light

1 John 1:4-7

New Living Translation (NLT)

⁴ We are writing these things so that you may fully share our joy. ⁵ This is the message we heard from Jesus and now declare to you: God is light, and there is no darkness in him at all. ⁶ So we are lying if we say we have fellowship with God but go on living in spiritual darkness; we are not practicing the truth. ⁷ But if we are living in the light, as God is in the light, then we have fellowship with each other, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, cleanses us from all sin.

Thought for the day!

One of the ways that we divide creatures in the animal kingdom is by whether they naturally function best in the night or in the day. I think it's mostly about how well they can see. Some animals can see things in the dark that you or I couldn't begin to see - like owls. We call those animals nocturnal. We human beings aren't nocturnal by nature but our eyes can adjust to the darkness enough that we can find a seat in a darkened movie theater if we just wait a few minutes.

In John's letter, he is addressing people who are trying to live as nocturnal Christians - those who have become so accustomed to living in the darkness that they may not even realize it. John wants his readers to know that it is absolutely impossible to call yourself a follower of Jesus while you're living in the darkness. "This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all" (1 John 1:5). It calls to mind the opening to John's gospel where he introduced Jesus as the light that shines in the darkness, the light no darkness can overcome. But this time, when John introduces his theme of light and darkness, he's also applying it to those who are professing to be followers of Jesus.

When John wrote his letters near the end of the first century, he might well have been the last breathing apostle. He lived through a time when this new religion that came to be called Christianity was being formed. People were sorting it out as they went. Much of what we take for granted as basic Christianity 101 was still emerging: how to worship God, appropriate ways to support one another in community, the doctrine of the Trinity, the mystery of the incarnation, what, if anything, was required to gain admittance to the church. It all had to be hammered out by the Christian community under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. And often before orthodox theology was established, there were disagreements.

In the time of John there was a strong movement called gnosticism that presented a challenge to the Christians. The gnostics were people who had trouble accepting the humanity of Jesus. They couldn't figure out how it was possible for Jesus to be God and for him to die, so they rationalized it away. One explanation was that God's Spirit had temporarily taken over Jesus' body at the time of his baptism but it left again before he went to the cross. Other gnostics theorized that Jesus was never a real human being but only appeared as one. John was probably speaking directly to the gnostic influence on the early church when he began this letter by making it perfectly clear that he had seen Jesus with his own eyes and touched him with his own hands, and he was a real flesh and blood human being, yet fully God.

Today's ADVENture!

When you experience the light of the sun remember that you have been called to walk in the light of Christ!