Jesus Lit the Way

What Did Jesus Do?

This is the message we have heard from him…that God is light.
1 John 1.5

There is a big difference between imagery that attempts to convey what God is like, and those few, essential words that describe not merely divine attributes, but capture the very essence, the nature of God. The Son’s message was all about making sure we don’t just know about the Father, but rather enter into an intimate and personal relationship with him. Such intimacy requires truly knowing the person of God, who and what he really is. Such knowledge is not a journey of seeking and discovering, much less imaging or re-creating, God after our own likes and dislikes; it is a walk upon which we are led to encounter and embrace God’s revelation of himself. The Father uses the Holy Spirit to equip us with the necessary spiritual faculties to receive his revelation, and the Father has elected the Son to lead us to him. It is the path from sin to righteousness, from condemnation to redemption, from death to life, from darkness to light. And it is Jesus who lit the way.

The message that John, and all of Christ’s disciples heard from the Son, and the message that they in turn proclaimed, is: God is light. Light—bright and pure—illuminating all truth, exposing all lies, banishing all sin, manifesting all holiness. Light so absolute and essential that there is no darkness, no hint of darkness, in him at all (1 John 1.5). Light totally exclusive to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Yet light which, incredibly, mercifully, graciously, God calls us to walk and in which we have fellowship with him, and with all believers. And all this is true because—Jesus lit the way.

As there is no darkness at all in the Father, so there is no darkness in those who have fellowship with him in and through the Son. No darkness at all, no “gray areas,” where darkness and light contend. It is therefore impossible for anyone to lay claim to fellowship with God while still walking in darkness (abiding in sin). To claim any refuge at all in gray areas is to live a lie (1 John 1.6). It is only by acknowledging the darkness (sin) that is within us, and by coming to Jesus, the Son who is eternally in the light of fellowship with the Father, and receive the light and cast out all darkness, that we walk in the light, partaking of that very fellowship even as we have fellowship with all believers. For it is only the blood of Jesus that cleanses us from all sin, eradicates all the darkness that is within us, and fills us with light, the light of God, who is light (1 John 1.7). Christ’s Church, conceived in, and called to live in, the love of God, so lives only as she is filled by and walks in the light of her Lord, Jesus, who lights the way for her.

Yet, even as we walk in the light, we would be foolish, or wicked, to deny the present and persistent reality of sin, of darkness, in our lives. Fortunately, the meaning of cleanses in verse seven describes a present state of being clean, and of ever and again being cleaned, by the blood Christ shed on the cross. The way which Jesus illuminates out of the darkness of sin into the light of fellowship with God, and with other believers, traverses the ground from our heart to Calvary, from Calvary to the grave, from the grave to the resurrection, and from the resurrection to the glory of the very presence of the Father to which the Son has ascended. Hallelujah! Upon those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness light has shined, so that they now have fellowship with God and with one another in and through the Light, even Jesus, who lit the way.

S.D.G.

Jim
www.jimwilkenministries.org
Marion, NC
PS 37.4