Light and Darkness

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Last week, we looked at how Jesus reinterprets the image of our Creator God for us. The revelation that Jesus is the image of the Spirit of God is a concept we’ll carry through all our ongoing conversations. It is fundamental to our understanding of the biblical story, but more than that, it is a core truth that impacts how we live our lives. This week’s word goes hand in hand with that discussion. The word is “light”, and Jesus and his early followers had quite a bit to say about it. Since Jesus is always our starting place on this kingdom story journey, let’s begin with what he and his disciples said about “light” and its related word, “darkness”.

 The Apostle John begins his gospel with these words about Jesus: “In Him was life, and the life was the Light of mankind. And the Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not grasp it.” (John 1:4-6 NASB). Later in the gospel, Jesus makes the claim for himself saying, “I am the Light of the world; the one who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life.” (John 8:12 NASB) And he said, “Believe in the light while you have the light, so that you may become children of light.” (John 12:36 NIV).

 John and Jesus are taking their listeners back to the opening pages of Genesis, back to the very beginning of the creation story. Remember, it begins with the earth in a state of chaos, confusion, and emptiness. Darkness was over the surface of the deep waters and the Spirit of God (the Hebrew word, “ruach” means spirit, breath, or wind) was hovering above it all. Then, into the chaos and darkness, the Creator Spirit breathed his life into creation and said, “Let there be light; and there was light.” (Genesis 1:3 NASB). The Creator called the light, good, and then separated the light—set it apart—from the darkness.

 A few things we should take note of here. First, the story tells us that the darkness is present before the Spirit begins creating life. The word “darkness”—the absence of light—in both Hebrew and Greek means “obscurity”, but it is also symbolically associated with blindness, ignorance, distress, misery, evil, sin, and death—the absence of life. 

 Jesus and the New Testament authors go even further. They connect this darkness with a spiritual power or force which rejects the light, love, and life of the Creator and instead, chooses to stand in opposition to it.  We’ll come back to this idea later.

 The next thing we notice in the story is that when the invisible Spirit of the Creator speaks, or symbolically breathes life into creation, what becomes visible is “light”. It’s not sunlight, as the sun has not yet been created at this point in the story. The interesting thing is, throughout Scripture, when biblical characters get a peek into the heavenly realm—when they catch a glimpse of the Spirit of God—what they see is radiant, colorful, light, lightning, or fire. These images of light in Scripture are the visual expressions of the very presence of the Spirit of God himself. The Apostle John summed it up this way: he said, “…God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.” (1 John 1:5 NIV). But light is not only a spiritual symbol in the Bible. It has meaning within most religious and spiritual belief systems. On the literal level, it represents one’s ability to see clearly, but symbolically, it is also associated with life, wisdom, goodness, truth, hope, and divine presence.

 It makes sense then, that the next thing the Creator does in the story is to declare that the light is good, and to separate it from the darkness. Notice, it doesn’t say that he gets rid of the darkness, only that the light has been separated from it. Where darkness used to be all encompassing, it is now contained or restrained by the light of life—the manifestation of his invisible presence infused into creation. 

 It’s interesting to note that the Hebrew word for “separate” used in this passage, “badal”, means “to set apart”. It also appears later in the Hebrew scriptures alongside another word which also means “set apart or sacred”. It’s the word “holy”. As we’ll see later, the word “holy” is always associated in Scripture with people, places, or objects that are set apart as special because they belong to God. 

 Now, back to our story. After the Creator deemed the light good and set it apart from the darkness, he proceeded to create everything else within that light, declaring it all good in the process. 

 In fact, symbolically, there is light throughout the rest of the creation story; from the lights created in the skies to give light even at night and to act as signs that point to the light of the Creator, to the close of each symbolic day being called evening and morning, both with some semblance of light. 

It’s as if the Creator Spirit—the Spirit of light and life—wants his creatures to know him, to look to him, to remember that he is with them. And then, when we get to the seventh day (Genesis 2), the day the Creator finishes his work and rests with his creation, there is no mention of an ending to the day—no evening and morning—a symbol of light and life everlasting. 

 So, what happened? Why is it that the darkness is no longer separated? The Old Testament prophets spoke of this darkness that is now in creation. The prophet Isaiah said, “Therefore justice is far from us, And righteousness does not reach us; We hope for light, but there is darkness…we grope for the wall like people who are blind…” (Isaiah 59:9-10 NASB). But he also prophesied, “The people who walk in darkness will see a great light; Those who live in a dark land, The light will shine on them.” (Isaiah 9:2 NASB). Somehow, darkness crept back into God’s good creation and into the Image-bearers themselves. It caused a spiritual blindness, and it obscured and distorted the good and loving image of the Creator we talked about last week. The prophets warned that the Image-bearers and creation itself, were in need of that life-giving light, but they also declared that indeed, that light would come. 

 Jesus announced that he was that promised light, and that he had come so no one would have to remain in that darkness. Instead, they could have the light of life again. Remember, Jesus said this darkness is an adversarial spirit or power in and of itself and that it comes only to steal, kill, and destroy (John 10:10). He was tempted by it in the wilderness (Luke 4:2), he told his listeners they had been blinded by it (Luke 6:39), he spoke of judging it (the Greek word means, “to separate”) (John 16:11), he said he had come to cast it out (John 12:31), and when he was unjustly arrested and sentenced to death, he told his accusers that they were actually colluding with the power and authority of this darkness (Luke 22:53). We’ll talk more about what’s going on later, but when we relate Jesus’ words with the symbolism of the creation story, we can see the connection—Jesus is saying he has come to separate light from darkness once again.

 Jesus told his followers that if they would come to him, if they would just trust him, he would open their eyes so they could see the truth. They could be reconnected with the source of light itself—the original Spirit of life—and become children of light. He offered them an opportunity to finally see the image of their Creator God clearly, to allow his light to separate and heal the darkness within them, and to enable them to walk in their intended image-bearing identity and purpose once again—to reflect his light into creation and allow it to separate light from darkness all around them.

 What are your thoughts about this life-giving light? Where have you seen it reflected in our world today? And what about us? Do our own thoughts, words, and actions reflect that light and life?