This article has been written by a member of Whiddon Valley Evangelical Church, Barnstaple, Devon, and is used here with their kind permission.
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I am the Light of the World
The “I AM” Sayings of Christ: “I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life” (John 8:12).
“God is Light”
“Light” is a very popular concept in the Bible when speaking about God: “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). When John tells us that “God is light”, he is not merely telling us what God brings or what God gives: he is telling us what God is like in His being: pure, unadulterated Light, without any trace of darkness whatsoever: literally, the Greek reads something like, “and darkness in him does not exist, not one bit”. It is not surprising, then, that when we read in Genesis chapter 1 that God “created the heaven and the earth… and darkness was upon the face of the deep” (Genesis 1:1-2), the very first thing that He made, in order to dispel the darkness, was “light”: “And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good” (Genesis 1:3-4). God’s kingdom, just like God Himself, is a kingdom of Light and Life; and when God made man, the pinnacle of His creation, He “created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them” (Genesis 1:27). Being created in God’s own image, the image of one who is Light and Life, man enjoyed true spiritual life and the true knowledge of God, and was able to enjoy fellowship with, and communicate with, God his Creator: “For with thee is the fountain of life: in thy light shall we see light” (Psalm 36:9). And so, as God looked upon His creation, at the end of day six, we read “And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31). Adam and Eve had everything they could have wished for: a beautiful paradise to live in and enjoy, with all manner of plants and animals over which God gave them dominion (Genesis 1:28); they had each other for company (Genesis 2:18), and, above all else, they enjoyed fellowship with their Creator God. Oh, that things had continued thus!
“The People that Walked in Darkness …
God had also created a world of pure spirits, called “angels” (“messengers” of God). The chief of these angels was “Lucifer (literally, “Day star”), son of the morning” (Isaiah 14:12). Lucifer was not content to humbly serve God: “For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High” (Isaiah 14:13-14). What is said here in Isaiah 14 refers primarily to the king of Babylon (verse 4), but it is also a remarkable picture of what happened to the chief of the angels, who is now referred to as “the devil” (“slanderer”) and “Satan” (“accuser”). Just like the king of Babylon, Satan’s sin was arrogance and pride, and, as a result of his rebellion against God, he lost his holy character: “How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!” (Isaiah 14:12; see a similar picture of the king of Tyre in Ezekiel 28:1-19). Having lost his original purity and beauty, Satan became an evil, and very powerful, enemy of God. Satan knew that the best way to “hurt” God was through the one who was the crowning achievement of God’s creation: Man. Thus Satan appeared to Eve, in the garden of Eden, under the guise of a snake, and sowed doubts about God’s goodness into her mind: “Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?” (Genesis 3:1). Here was a test for Adam and Eve’s free will: would they listen to the lies and deceit of the devil (John 8:44; Revelation 12:9), or would they believe the word of the God of truth and Light, their Creator. They chose to believe the devil’s lies, and the rest, as they say, is history; and, to this day, we reap the terrible consequences of Adam and Eve’s fall at the hands of the devil.
Man was now a fallen creature, just like the devil; darkness had entered into man’s soul, God’s image had become marred, and mankind had lost that original true life, true knowledge and true holiness that God had created him with: “Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions (schemes)” (Ecclesiastes 7:29). Man became “alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that (was now) in them, because of the blindness (hardness) of their heart” (Ephesians 4:18); “In Eden – sad indeed that day – my countless blessings fled away, my crown fell in disgrace” (William Williams, hymn no. 560 in Christian Worship). As a result of man’s fall, we read that when the sound of Jehovah God was heard “walking in the garden in the cool of the day… Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD (Jehovah) God amongst the trees of the garden” (Genesis 3:8). Man was now spiritually dead, cut off from the Life of God, just as God had warned (Genesis 2:17), and stood guilty and condemned before a holy God. In their now darkened state, Adam and Eve, had lost that sense of, and desire for, fellowship with the God who is Light. Our original parents were consequently ejected from Paradise (Genesis 3:23-24), and went on to produce offspring in their own, now fallen, image (Genesis 5:3). And now, as the Psalmist, David, writes, “The LORD (Jehovah) looked down from heaven upon the children of men (all of Adam and Eve’s descendants from the beginning of time), to see if there were any that did understand (know God), and seek God (desire the true knowledge of God). They are all gone aside (turned away from the God of Light), they are all together become filthy (morally and spiritually corrupt): there is none that doeth good (does what is perfectly good in God’s holy eyes and from pure, unselfish motives – done out of love for God, and with a view to His glory), no, not one.” (Psalm 14:2-3). No longer was man in God’s kingdom of Light and Life; we were now in Satan’s kingdom of Darkness and Death. Without the true knowledge of God, man was now truly in the dark.
I have spent a lot of time talking about the darkness which has befallen mankind so that we can appreciate what the coming of Jesus meant when He came proclaiming, “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12).
… have Seen a Great Light”
With the incarnation of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, Light entered this world of spiritual darkness: “I am come a light into the world, that whosoever believeth on me should not abide in darkness” (John 12:46). Jesus Christ, God’s Son, came into the world to set us free from our spiritual ignorance and bondage. In the coming of Christ was fulfilled the words of Isaiah, written 700 years before His birth: “The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined” (Isaiah 9:2; quoted in Matthew 4:16).
During the Feast of Tabernacles, which was just ending (John 7:37), large candelabras lit up the Court of the Women, which contained the Treasury (John 8:20); this is where Jesus spoke the words of our text: “Then spake Jesus again unto them (the people in the temple, including some Pharisees, verse 13), saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life” (John 8:12). In the person of the Son, the Word of God, who was in the beginning with God, and who is God, the Creator of all things (John 1:1-3), God entered the world He had created in order to restore the Light of God (life, truth, and purity), into the hearts of men and women who were in darkness: “In him (Christ) was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness” (John 1:4-5). As “the light of the world”, Jesus brings life-giving Light which dispels the darkness of sin, and death, and ignorance, which came into the world as a result of man’s fall. To those who come to Him by faith, Jesus restores what Adam lost: fellowship with the God in whose image he was originally made, and for whose glory he was created. Where the Light of Christ shines, man is able, once again, to walk with God and enjoy the peace, joy, and satisfaction, which, no matter how hard we try, this fallen world cannot give us, no matter how much of it we have.
Jesus is, to the spiritual world, what the sun is to the natural world; He is “the Sun of righteousness (who arises) with healing in his wings” (Malachi 4:2), dispelling darkness and death. And this Light, which Jesus shines, and which Jesus is, is for the “healing” and benefit of all nations: not just the Jews, as they were expecting, but for the Gentiles also. This is how the prophet Isaiah describes the entry of Christ into this world: “Arise, shine; for thy light (Zion’s light) is come, and the glory of the LORD (Jehovah) is risen upon thee. For, behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people (plural: “peoples”, i.e. “the nations”): but the LORD (Jehovah) shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee. And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising” (Isaiah 60:1-3). Jesus came to Israel as the Saviour of the world; as godly Simeon prayed, when he beheld, and then held, the baby Jesus in the temple: “for mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face of all people (plural: “all peoples”); a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel” (Luke 2:30-32). So how did mankind respond to this matchless condescension of the Creator God, with whom they had been in rebellion since they embraced the darkness of Satan’s lies? Did they welcome Him with open arms and willing hearts? John 1:5, partially quoted above, reads, in full: “And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not (did not understand and accept it)”. And John 1:10-11 reads: “He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own (the Jews, God’s chosen people through whom the Messiah, the Saviour, was to be born), and his own received him not”. He was rejected by Jews and Gentiles alike. Why? Why did the world which He had made, not receive Him who is its Light? We receive the awful answer in John chapter 3: “And this is the condemnation (judgment, divine verdict), that light (literally, “the Light”) is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved (exposed)” (John 3:19-20). The sad fact is, fallen mankind would rather God just left them alone to get on with their sorry lives as they want to, without any interference from their Creator: the wicked “say unto God, Depart from us; for we desire not the knowledge of thy ways” (Job 21:14); and then, when things go wrong, they blame God! What a sad indictment of mankind is this: “men loved darkness rather than light”! “(People) prefer ignorance to knowledge, error to truth, sin to holiness; and, in effect, misery to happiness” (John Brown: “Discourses and Sayings of our Lord”). God warns of the consequences for those who reject the Light of Christ in this life, and choose to remain in the darkness of sin and ignorance: in the next life, they will “be cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 8:12).
The Man Born Blind
It is no coincidence that, having claimed to be “the light of the world”, Jesus, shortly afterwards, performs a miracle which is designed to prove His claim. On leaving the temple precincts (after the Jews tried to stone Him – John 8:59), Jesus comes across a man who was born blind (John 9:1). Jesus’ compassion went out to the man, and caused Him to stop and perform a wonderful healing miracle. Jesus’ miracles were not only gracious acts of kindness, they were also attestations of His authority as one sent by God the Father, and they were also spiritual pictures for us to learn from: “They (the miracles) furnish us with illustrations of the deep spiritual necessities of men, which the mission of Christ into the world was designed to meet” (William M. Taylor: “The Miracles of our Saviour”). On seeing this blind man, and knowing that He would heal him, Jesus spoke these words: “I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work (i.e. we must do God’s work while we have the opportunity to do so). As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world” (John 9:4-5). Notice that the blind man does not ask Jesus to heal him; he is blind, and does not know who is passing by until someone chooses to tell him. No, Jesus initiates the contact. In the person of this blind man, just as in the case of the Gentiles, we have one of those people of whom Isaiah speaks: “I am sought of them that asked not for me; I am found of them that sought me not” (Isaiah 65:1; quoted in Romans 10:20). Jesus then “spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and he anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay” (John 9:6). A few verses back from Isaiah 65:1, just quoted, we read, “But now, O LORD (Jehovah), thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand” (Isaiah 64:8). Perhaps it is not just an incidental matter that Jesus makes clay and puts it on the eyes of the man born blind. In this blind man is “clay” for Jesus to work on, in order to “work the works of him that sent (him)”. “Here was the very man, prepared for Christ as clay is prepared for the modeller” (C. H. Spurgeon: Sermon on John 9:5-7). Jesus now tells the man what to do: “and (Jesus) said unto him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam (which is by interpretation, Sent)” (verse 7). “At the Feast of Tabernacles the waters of Siloam were used to symbolize the blessings of God upon the people, and Jesus had related the symbolism to himself (John 7:37-38)” (Homer A. Kent: “Light in the Darkness: Studies in the Gospel of John”). Jesus sent the blind man to “Siloam” (“Sent”) for healing, just as the Father, out of love for mankind, sent the Son into the world for its healing. The blind man obeyed Jesus’ word: “He went his away therefore, and washed, and came seeing” (verse 7). This is what happens, spiritually, when we believe and obey Christ’s voice “in the word of the truth of the gospel” (Colossians 1:5): the agent in which our sins are washed away is the blood of Christ, which “cleanseth us from all sin” (1 John 1:7), and it is applied to our hearts by the Holy Spirit (Titus 3:5 – “the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost”).
In the ensuing verses, we see how this man progresses along the journey of Light and Life on which he has now begun. The man was healed on the sabbath day (verse 14), which gave a gathering of the pernickety Pharisees, who didn’t like Jesus violating their sabbath laws, a reason to examine the man for his “crime” of being healed on the sabbath! There was a disagreement among the Pharisees as to whether Jesus was a man of God or a sinner (verse 16). The healed man, however, was in no doubt as to what sort of person Jesus was: “He said, He is a prophet” (verse 17). The Pharisees did not like this forthright commendation of Jesus and, rather than accept that Jesus had, in fact, performed a miracle, they question whether the man who was healed had ever been blind at all (verse 18). The Pharisees therefore now call for the man’s parents and ask them whether this was, indeed, their son, and whether he was born blind, and how he was now able to see. The parents confirm that he is, indeed, their son, and that he was born blind; but they do not want to get involved in the question as to how he was now able to see: “because they feared the Jews (the religious leaders): for the Jews had agreed already, that if any man did confess that he (Jesus) was Christ, he should be put out of the synagogue (i.e. excommunicated – expelled from the synagogue fellowship)” (verse 22). The Pharisees now question the man a second time, and show their growing animosity: “Give God the praise (i.e., “Tell us the truth as God is your witness”): we know that this man is a sinner” (verse 24). The Jewish leaders have already made up their minds regarding Jesus – that He is a charlatan and a perverter of the people, and no amount of evidence to the contrary is going to persuade them otherwise! The man seems unprovoked by their hostility, and calmly answers: “Whether he be a sinner or no, I know not: one thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see” (verse 25): here is the testimony of a true disciple of Christ – once we were in spiritual ignorance, but now we enjoy the Light of God’s truth in Christ (Ephesians 5:8-9). After some more toing and froing, the Pharisees tell the man that they are disciples of Moses, who they know God spoke to, but as for Jesus: “we know not from whence he is” (verse 29). The man now gives an answer which shows how much light he has now received: “The man answered and said unto them, Why herein is a marvellous thing, that ye know not from whence he is, and yet he hath opened mine eyes. Now we know (echoing the words of the Pharisees, and demonstrating their ignorance of true wisdom) that God heareth not sinners: but if any man be a worshipper of God, and doeth his will, him he heareth. Since the world began was it not heard that any man opened the eyes of one that was born blind. If this man were not of God, he could do nothing” (verses 30-33). Thus the lowly beggar confutes the “wisdom” of the “blind” Pharisees! This was too much for the arrogant Jewish leaders, so they excommunicated him on the spot: “they cast him out” (verse 34). Where did this man find the courage to stand up to these religious bigots, with all their threatenings, when others, through fear (verse 22), wouldn’t? The answer is found in Psalm 27:1: “The LORD (Jehovah) is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? the LORD (Jehovah) is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?”
“Cast out” the man may have been by the Jewish authorities, but not by Jesus (cf. John 6:37), who now seeks him out and finds him (verse 35). What does it matter if we are reviled and rejected by men, as long as Jesus promises, “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee” (Hebrews 13:5)? Jesus now says to the healed man, “Dost thou believe on the Son of God? He answered and said, Who is he, Lord, that I might believe on him? And Jesus said unto him, Thou hast both seen him (Jesus had, after all, opened his eyes), and it is he that talketh with thee. And he said, Lord, I believe. And he worshipped him” (verses 35-38). Thus the man’s transformation is complete: from blind man to worshipper of Christ. And this is the process we must all go through if we are to become followers of the Lord Jesus Christ – “the light of the world”. “Lord, I was blind: I could not see in thy marred visage any grace; but now the beauty of thy face in radiant vision dawns on me” (William Tidd Matson, hymn no. 621 in Christian Worship). What a wonderful contrast between the “seeing”, yet spiritually blind, religious leaders, and the man who, though born blind, now “saw” the Lord Jesus Christ for who He truly was – the Son of God. No wonder Jesus tells the Pharisees that, though they claimed to be able to see, they were in fact blind: blind as to their true spiritual condition and, therefore, they remained in their sins (verses 39-41). Don’t be like the blind Pharisees, who refused to come to Christ that they might have Light and Life. Whether you consider yourself to be a religious person or not, you owe the God who made you your worship, love and obedience. God sent His Son into this dark world as the Light of the world; Jesus went to the cross to defeat the darkness that had entered the world as a result of man’s fall, by making an atonement for sin, so that all who come to Him by faith, and walk in His Light, might enjoy true life and happiness.
“Ye are the Light of the World”
The experience of the blind man echoed what happens when men and women believe the good news of the Gospel. Listen to what the Lord intended when He commissioned the apostle Paul to preach the Gospel: “To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me” (Acts 26:18). Of course, the apostle Paul did not have the power to “turn (men) from darkness to light” any more than you or I have, and he certainly did not have the authority, in and of himself, to forgive men their sins; but he was Christ’s instrument by which He shone the Light of His Word into the hearts of men and women who were in spiritual darkness; and this commission belongs to each one of Christ’s disciples: “Ye (my disciples) are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle (lamp), and put it under a bushel (a measuring bowl), but on a candlestick (lampstand); and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven” (Matthew 5:14-16).
The man who was born blind used his newly acquired “light” to shine into the hearts of the Pharisees; sadly, they rejected the light, because “the god of this world (Satan) hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them” (2 Corinthians 4:4). The natural man, being darkened in his understanding (Ephesians 4:18), prefers the darkness of sin and ignorance (John 3:19), to the humbling light of God’s truth, which proclaims salvation by free grace through faith in Christ alone (Ephesians 2:7-8). But there will be those, given to Christ by the Father (John 6:37), who will come to Him by faith as He shines the Light of His Word into their hearts: “For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness (at the creation of the world), hath shined in our hearts (to bring about a new creation), to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6; cf. 2 Corinthians 5:17).
Let us therefore, who have experienced the transforming Light of Christ in our hearts, “walk as children of light” (Ephesians 5:8), as we follow Him who is “the light of the world” (John 8:12), “in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation (generation), among whom (we) shine as lights in the world; holding forth the word of life” (Philippians 2:15-16). And let us continue to follow Him, through the darkness of this world, until that day when, “The sun shall be no more thy light by day; neither for brightness shall the moon give light unto thee: but the LORD (Jehovah) shall be unto thee an everlasting light, and thy God thy glory. Thy sun shall no more go down; neither shall thy moon withdraw itself: for the LORD (Jehovah) shall be thine everlasting light, and the days of thy mourning (in this world of sin and darkness) shall be ended” (Isaiah 60:19-20).
Jesus said, “I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life”. Amen.
