The Light of the World
The Light of the World
“...Jesus spoke to them, saying, ‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.’” John 8:12
“This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.” 1John 1: 5-10
Light is a remarkable and interesting part of our world. Have you noticed how flying insects are attracted to the light, perhaps like the one on your front porch at night? For most things, light is attractive but not to all. Light pushes back the darkness. Darkness is just the absence of light. The brighter the light the more it exposes imperfections. For example, if we get close to an extremely bright light, it reveals all the imperfections in our skin and body. There is no covering something up in extreme bright light. Sometimes, we think everything looks fine until we go outside in the bright sunlight and realize it exposes a problem. The opposite is also true, that most sin and imperfections are hidden in the darkness. People do their evil deeds in the darkness. Bright lights in a room expose the dirt and ugliness. Dangerous things can dwell in the darkness.
The above verses inform us that we should come to the light of the Lord. Light in this spiritual sense has to do with seeing with our spiritual eyes. When we first enter into a relationship with Jesus, we have not yet drawn close to His light and we don’t see our imperfections as much yet. But, as we are drawn closer to the Lord in our spiritual walk with Him, we also have our spiritual and inner imperfections little by little exposed by the light of Christ, as applied by the Holy Spirit. As these imperfections are exposed, we sometimes think the answer is to shrink back because we don’t want these matters exposed since it is painful to have these issues exposed to us and others. We follow the old adage that, “ignorance is bliss.” But it is usually not bliss forever. The Lord exposes our sins and faults with His light in order to heal us. We need to be thankful when they are exposed because the only way to heal them is for them to be revealed. A surgeon can’t remove a cancer without exposing it so it can be cut out and removed. The same with sin, we should let the Holy Spirit expose these sins and imperfections, confess them as the verses above say, and then they are cleansed by the blood of Jesus. He knows about them anyway. Our inclination is to cover them up, deny, or rationalize them rather than rejoicing that the Lord is exposing them and then healing them by His blood.
The above verses tell us to walk in the light. Jesus says that He is the light of the world. So to “walk in the light” means to walk in Jesus. Romans 8 tells us to walk “according to the [Holy] Spirit” and that we are to put to death the deeds of the flesh by the Holy Spirit. We know that the Holy Spirit in our spirit communicates Jesus to our spirit,Who is in Heaven at the right hand of God. It is the role of the Holy Spirit in us to war against our flesh and put it to death (“death here means “inactive” not literal death) Galatians 5:16-17 tells us that to “...walk by the [Holy] Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. For the flesh sets its desire against the [Holy] Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please.” The “flesh” in this context is not our physical flesh but it is the natural instincts of our physical flesh, corrupted by the fall of man and the devil. It is also our independent selfish instincts that lacks dependence on God and wants our way instead of God’s way for us.1 So, as we move (walk) as we are guided by the Holy Spirit, we are cleansed by the light of God’s word.
Another weapon in this battle against the sins of our flesh is the cross of Christ and His purifying blood that was poured out for the forgiveness of all our sins. The cross was an instrument of death. Christ’s death on the cross included each of us in Him by the act of God and in His reckoning in order to cause the death of the old evil part of us (referred to by God as our “old man”) in Christ’s work on the cross. (see Romans 6:3-7).2 The principle of the cross, made possible by Christ’s actual death on the cross, is still spiritually at work today in the life of every believer in order to put to death the flesh. That death principle of the cross works as we allow it by faith to do so in our inner person (our soul and body).3 Jesus told us to take up our cross daily and follow Him. Luke 9:23-24 (“let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me. For whoever wants to save his soul-life shall lose it; but whoever loses his soul-life for My sake, this one shall save it.”). This is talking about allowing this death principle of the cross, to work in us by faith daily, to bring this about. This principle of the cross is powerful to bring death to our flesh, if we take it up daily by faith. But what is this cross to which He is referring. It is Christ’s cross at Calvary and which God baptized all of us into as described above and in footnote 2 below. When we accept this cross by faith, then the mystery of our death and resurrection with and in Christ works to produce Christ’s resurrection life in our souls to replace the flesh and its rule over us. “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered Himself up for me.” Gal. 2:20.4 Thereafter, the Holy Spirit causes the flesh to be replaced by the image of Jesus and His life, instead of the death principle which before reigned in our soul. As Paul says in 2Corinthians 4: 10-12, “always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. For we who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus’ sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death works in us, but life in you.” However, the flesh is never completely eradicated but is being crowded out by the life and image of Christ produced by the Holy Spirit, as room is made in our soul by the death principle of the cross. Once, we by faith submit ourselves to the working of the cross, by which we were placed in union with Christ, the mystery of the cross operates to nullify the flesh in us and create by the resurrection life of Jesus the image of Christ in our soul and body in its place. Hallelujah!
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1 “Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: sexual immorality, impurity, indecent behavior, idolatry, witchcraft, hostilities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the [Holy] Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. Now those who belong to Christ Jesus crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the [Holy] Spirit, let’s follow the [Holy] Spirit as well.” Galatians 5:19-25
2. “Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through [spiritual] baptism into death, in order that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also [be united] in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old man has been crucified with Him, that our body of sin, might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin for he who has died is freed from sin.” Romans 6: 3-7
3. Our spirit is that inner-most part of us that comprises our conscience, intuition, and fellowship with Jesus through the Holy Spirit. Our soul is our mind, will, and emotion. God’s original plan for Adam and those that followed, but for the fall, was for the spirit to be dominant and allow God to fellowship with us through our spirit and then to our soul, and finally to our body. However, the fall corrupted that plan allowing the soul to be dominant through the knowledge of good and evil resulting in our spirit being deadened to God but not to evil.
4. But we also need to realize that although we were placed by God into Christ in His eyes on the cross, we had nothing to do with His suffering for us and we did not participate in that part of the cross of Christ’s substitutionary death for us. Only that part of us called the “old man” in Romans 6:3-7 was in Christ in God’s eyes in order for the “old man” to die. Even though our “old man” died on the cross, our flesh was not dealt with at the time of the “old man’s” death. The flesh is dealt with gradually as is being discussed above after our initial new birth in Christ and as we live our Christian life under the shadow of the cross.
