John 1:5 NIV
[5] The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
‘We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.’
So said Prime Minister Winston Churchill, in one of his finest speeches, on the outbreak of World War 2. Even today, those raspy, cigar-smoke tinged words have resonance, even though World War 2 isn’t even a memory for some of our grandparents.
John presents Jesus as being the fault line in a spiritual war: a struggle between light and darkness. This struggle is written large in his Gospel, his first letter and his apocalypse, Revelation.
The field for this great battle is not the fields of France or Belgium or any of the Low Countries. Neither is it Italy or North Africa, or even Pearl Harbour or Japan. It is, in fact, is the hearts and minds of every human being.
Whether we like it or not, we find ourselves polarised, forced to take sides in a battle for the ages. Jesus is plain that we must be willing to be on the opposite side of the battle from family members and loved ones (Matthew 10:21-25).
The single biggest question we will have to answer our entire lives is this:
Whose side are you on?
But before we rush to conclusions, I urge you to read this post in its entirety. It might be easy for us to pick a side without thinking. Jesus counsels against that (Luke 14:26-35). The ramifications for the choice you make will be wide-ranging and life-changing. Which is why my advice would be to read this post carefully and then decide.
So let’s begin by looking at one of the forces involved: The Darkness.
What does this represent?
John 3:19-20 NIV
[19] This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. [20] Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed.
1 John 2:9-11 NIV
[9] Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates a brother or sister is still in the darkness. [10] Anyone who loves their brother and sister lives in the light, and there is nothing in them to make them stumble. [11] But anyone who hates a brother or sister is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness. They do not know where they are going, because the darkness has blinded them.
The darkness, for John, symbolised a place of sin and greed and selfishness, where people were determined to deceive for financial, or other, gain. They cared little for those who were the victims of their little scams.
It’s John, after all, who makes this evocative observation when Judas leaves the upper room to betray Jesus:
John 13:30 NIV
[30] As soon as Judas had taken the bread, he went out. And it was night.
And he had good reason to do so.
Darkness in Jewish culture was always connected to sin:
Ephesians 5:3-13 NIV
[3] But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people. [4] Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving. [5] For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person—such a person is an idolater—has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. [6] Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God’s wrath comes on those who are disobedient. [7] Therefore do not be partners with them. [8] For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light [9] (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) [10] and find out what pleases the Lord. [11] Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. [12] It is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret. [13] But everything exposed by the light becomes visible—and everything that is illuminated becomes a light.
Why? Because carrying out sinful acts at night, in the dark, gave you opportunity to pretend that you were righteous in the daylight. It permitted the incredibly hypocrisy that Jesus called out loud and clear when He took on the Pharisees and teachers of the law (Matthew 23:13-26).
This is where we see the battle lines drawn. Jesus is not just against sin - that much is obvious – He is also against those who sin in the night, but pretend to be righteous in the day. While the light stands for honesty, integrity, clarity and lucidity, darkness stands for duplicitousness, deceit, pretence and hypocrisy.
And that ought to make us shudder.
We make this verse about a battle between good and evil far too easily, because it is.
But if we are brutally honest, far too often we stray over the battle lines into No Man’s Land and find ourselves in a dalliance with the enemy, and that is somewhere we should not be.
So we see what the darkness is all about. What about The Light?
We need to re-read carefully what John wrote about it in his first letter:
1 John 1:5-10 NIV
[5] This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. [6] If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. [7] 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, purifies us from all sin. [8] If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. [9] If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. [10] If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us.
John’s message is as stark as it is clear. Sin is darkness. To walk in the light, we must acknowledge who we are, what we have done and who we have become. We must be honest. We have walked in darkness.
To leave the darkness we confess it. We confess it all.
That means appreciating the darkness for what it is: a dangerous, demonic deception.
It means embracing the light for what it is: the best way to live life, in honesty, integrity, clarity and lucidity.
It means accepting who we are, coming to God and receiving His cleansing for our sins.
As Paul taught, in some of his most famous verses:
Romans 3:22-24 NIV
[22] This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, [23] for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, [24] and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.
Romans 6:23 NIV
[23] For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
We live in that light by continuing to be open and honest about who we are, what we have done and who we have become, but also about the person God is making us into. We turn away from everything that misled us into the darkness in the first place:
Romans 13:12-14 NIV
[12] The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. [13] Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. [14] Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh.
What this means is not that we confess our sins when we become a Christian and that's it. This is one a ‘one and done’ thing.
No, each time we are tempted and stray into the darkness, we have a choice. We can either stay there or we can choose to live in the light, confessing and repenting of what we have done.
That is how you know if you are a true follower of Jesus Christ. If you enjoy life in the darkness and feel nothing when you sin against God, other people or even yourself, then whatever you have said or done in your past, you are not following Jesus Christ now.
But if you come into the light, confess it, repent of it and make no attempt to cover it up, then you are truly living in the light and acting in obedience to Jesus Christ.
But, of course, no-one said it was easy. For most of us, this will be a struggle. It doesn’t come naturally for us. We have to battle our human nature every time. However, what we read next is a beautiful encouragement for all who are best with this battle, because we move on from the darkness and the light to The Victory:
John 1:5 NIV
[5] The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
John wrote these words during one of the most difficult times in all of history to be a Christian. Persecution under Emperor Nero was a constant threat. His fellow believers were being harassed, jailed and killed with impunity by the state. Paul rather poetically describes them as being treated like ‘the scum of the earth’ (1 Corinthians 4:13-14).
It must have felt like endless darkness.
The Norwegian coal mining town i
of Longyearbyen on the Svalbard peninsula is famous for the fact that during winter the sun never rises and during summer the sun never sets. The weather in winter is also unbelievably harsh.
It takes a special person to live there. Even at latitudes that are nowhere near as northern, the winter nights can be very dark. It’s quite common for people to awaken in the dark, go to work in the dark, come home in the dark and sleep in the dark.
This lack of sunlight causes issues with people’s Circadian Rhythms – their body clock, if you will – that can trigger a psychological condition known as Seasonally Affective Disorder – or SAD for short. Sufferers find the darkness difficult to cope with and enter into a depressive state. The only cure is to have a lamp in your home that mimics the sunlight.
Life also has its seasons. John was going through an incredibly dark one. Many in our world are feeling similar emotions. It’s often hard to see an end to it.
But it is to these people that John writes these words:
Light wins.
Light always wins.
Because darkness cannot defeat it.
The Greek word here means ‘to understand or comprehend’, but also ‘to lay hold of, obtain, attain or make your own’.
In other words, the darkness cannot capture the light.
In fact, darkness is a state where light is absent. Where there is light, there is no darkness.
Darkness cannot understand it, let alone defeat it.
This is a critical lesson to learn. It changed everything for us.
When my wife and I were dating, I remember us sneaking out of her parents’ village house with a couple of torches, making out way alone the almost silent street, down the back of the local church until we reached a little brown-sand, palm-tree-lined beach. And there we sat, in the dark, watching as the sun rose over Lake Danao on the opposite side of Ormoc Bay and cast its glistening rays over the mountains and the sea, and the first ships heading out towards Cebu City.
It was a beautiful sight.
It’s interesting to be in the tropics. They are so close to the equator that sunrise and sunset barely change – sometimes as little as thirty minutes either side of 6pm.
But it’s not that way for everyone.
There are many in this world whose darkness is so great that they wonder if the light will ever come.
The Jews were like that. Four hundred years they had waited as God seemed silent and they had scrapped for their right to worship and their very identity.
Now they were under Roman domination militarily and Greek domination culturally and linguistically. So-called messiahs and saviours had come and gone, their movements extinguished like a candle as soon as they were captured and killed.
Their hope must have been burning really low.
Some had obviously given up. They had succumbed to the darkness - not quite the cynical, nihilistic darkness we have nowadays, but not far off. They lived a profoundly dishonest, hypocritical life, maintaining their position in life with a veneer of religiosity, covering a whole body of lies.
Which only darkened the lives of those around them.
But hope was coming.
A Christmas special of the science fiction series Doctor Who once proclaimed Christmas as being a celebration of being ‘halfway out of the dark’.
That is half-true.
The reality is that Christmas is a celebration of Jesus coming the light of the world to dispel the darkness and bring all of us into the light. His victory is certain and sure, but bought at the highest price.
And that presents us all with a huge challenge:
1 John 1:5-10 NIV
[5] This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. [6] If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. [7] 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, purifies us from all sin. [8] If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. [9] If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. [10] If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us.
We have to choose between the darkness and the light: not just when we become believers, but every time the darkness comes knocking in our lives. We can either live in deception and destruction or integrity and lucidity.
We cannot have both.
Darkness or light.
We have to choose.
So which will you choose?
Prayer
Lord Jesus, I understand the challenge this verse brings. Light is always victorious over darkness, so I have to choose between victory or ignominious defeat. I choose light. I choose You. Show me what this means for me. Amen.
Questions
1. Describe the Biblical pictures of darkness and light in your own words. What do they mean to you?
2. Why will light always win the day?
3. Which do you choose: darkness or light?
Comments