Thursday, March 25, 2021
“In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.” John 1.4 NKJV
Of course the Creator should have life within Himself, especially if He was going to breathe life into what He had made. It’s kind of mission-critical. There is life in God. God has life within Him, and when He dwells with us—indeed within us, since He gave the gift of the Holy Spirit to His Church—of course there is life in us too.
Life is persistent in all that God has made. Even though He subjected it to futility, even though all of us will still die, life is persistent. I don’t see hopelessness in the fact of the fall; I see that, even though death has come in like an enemy and a thief, its sting has been taken, resurrection is irresistible, and the life that is in God stands like a victor over all history’s battlefield.
And not only is life victorious, it is “the light of men.”
John uses both light and life as foundational elements in the language he chooses to describe who Jesus is. Light and life are both “the essence and mission of” the Christ, according to the notes in my study Bible.
The light is not only how we can see and apprehend the truth, it gives us perspective. It provides context. It is what allows us to discover who we are and where we stand. It shows us the source and the destination of the life that God has caused to dwell in us, and it is all reason, logic, truth, soundness, doctrine, law, liberty, and salvation. It dwells in God, and it is the free gift to all who have been made in His image. As irresistible as light is against the darkness, some still run from it and not for it. This is most unwise, as we will discover tomorrow.
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