“You can fight against hatred and sadness and chaos, but you cannot fight love, joy, and peace. If you do, you will lose. For light vanquishes darkness, even as the morning conquers the night.” [Jan. 7, 2016, spoken to some of my negative thinking students.]
Christ said, “I am the light of the world” (John 8: 12). How is He the light of the world? The apostle Paul said that light makes things known (Eph. 5: 13). We enter a dark room; we switch on the light. Now we know what is around us, what is coming at us. With the light we can see what the future holds for us.
Darkness is the opposite and is the absence of light. And people are sitting in darkness at present, just like they did as Christ was beginning His ministry in Galilee (Matt. 4: 16; Isa. 8: 22). And then they saw a great Light, just like the masses in our age will see at His second coming. Yet, a remnant will see that Light before His return, and they will respond to God’s plan and purpose to reproduce Himself through Christ in them.
Spiritual darkness has descended upon the people, and they know that they are in darkness. They realize their sinful state because they do not want their deeds brought to light. They know innately that what they do is not done in agape love but in selfishness. For this reason those eaten up with darkness hate the light because the light exposes their evil actions. Their death warrant is already signed; their rejection of Light’s pardon seals it (John 3: 19-21). But some will come to the light.
How, then, is Christ the Light of the world? His life illuminates God’s purpose. He is the plan to carry out that purpose. For the Father has poured it all out, written it all down, and has enacted His whole plan to reproduce Love, which is God Himself–it is all in the Son of God. Knowing Christ is knowing the Father’s plan, for “He has declared” the Father (John 1: 18). Christ has “unfolded in a teaching” God’s plan; He has laid it all out for us to see. For He is the Logos, the Word made flesh.
God is love. His purpose is to reproduce Himself (Love) in the earth. This love is His life. And His life of love is the light that illumines our path here on earth. It is the ray of light that overcomes the darkness of hatred and despair. And this Love/Light/Life is poured into Love’s Son, the Logos/Word that declares all this, which is the Father’s heart and mind.
How Love Is the Light
We know that God is love and God is light. Therefore, Love is Light. Since Light makes things known, then Love makes manifest as well. Love sheds light on what and who God is. Where love is present, the Spirit of Love makes God known. We see God when we see love–true selfless love from above, as we see in Christ’s laying down His life for His friends. Thus, Christ saying, “I am the light of the world.”
John’s Letter to Fully Matured Christians
John wrote to Christians of all spiritual growths about these matters. “I write unto you, fathers, because ye have known him that is from the beginning” (I John 2: 12-14). It is as if John is speaking to us now: “You fathers have settled the sin question that plagues little children of God; sin is eradicated out of your lives. And you as ‘young men’ have conquered the devil and his temptations. And now you are fully matured spiritually and have known God that is from the beginning. As one of God’s friends, you not only know, but have His mind and heart that existed from the very beginning. You know His purpose of reproducing Himself. You know His plan to implement that purpose–a plan to create a kingdom, a government with His Son as the King, who will rule and reign for 1,000 years here on earth. You know that some of us humans will rule with Him, as His Spirit will inhabit them fully, thus fulfilling His purpose.
“You fathers have known Him from the beginning, how the Father shaped His purpose and plan into thoughts expressed in words, which comprises the Logos, the Word of God. And you know now how the Father poured the Word into His Son, ‘made of a woman, made under the law.’ And you know that the Son was the Seed of Love, giving up His life a ransom for many. And you know that the harvest of that Seed in our hearts is the ultimate realization of the fulfillment of God’s Purpose of reproducing Himself. This harvest is called ‘the manifestation of the sons of God,’ or the unveiling of the sons of God. Fathers, you now, like Paul and Peter and John among others 2,000 years ago, are privy to the mind of God and His Son, thoughts so precious and ancient, that little finite minds fizzle into the ether of the spiritual world, that heavenly paradise that was in the beginning before the earth ever existed.”
Now We Know
It has all been written down in the scriptures of truth. It is there for the spiritually hungry, for the thirsty, for the famished. For only a few will find this way of truth (Matt. 7: 14). Christ is the way, the path to God’s heart. Only those desperate enough to want to change their current life will find this path in the wilderness of sin. Only those who are willing to go through Christ’s sufferings will be exalted in that day.
Christ’s life illuminates man’s path to comprehending just who God is and what He is accomplishing in the earth. We can only see God and His purpose and plan when we see the love shown in Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, which is the greatest love. When we believe in His resurrection–in us–then we enter into this hidden realm of which we speak.
Christ is the Light that makes known the Father’s purpose. And we all should take heed to the “more sure word of prophecy…as unto a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawn and the day star arise in [our] hearts” (II Pet. 1: 19). And that “day star” is the Spirit of truth that is the Word which is a “light unto our path” (Psm 119: 105).
And this light will speak “to the law and to the testimony” (Isa. 8: 20).
Kenneth Wayne Hancock