January 6, 2023
Life and Light
“In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men.” John 1:4 (NASB)
When I was about twelve or thirteen years old, I lived in Germany. We only had 220-volt electricity there. One morning I got up and saw a fork in an outlet. I didn’t think about what it might do to me when I touched it, so I grabbed it and pulled it out. It’s much more impactful when you touch it compared to 110-volt here in the United States. When I touched the fork, it threw me across the room and into my closet. I laid there for a moment thinking “that really hurt.” I started to open my eyes from the shock (literally), and then I realized something. I couldn’t see anything! I called out in fear to my mother and said, “Mom I can’t see!” She gracefully told me, “quit playing and come into the living room, breakfast is ready.” I think I laid there for another few moments before light came back into my eyesight. I lost the thing that I took for granted for each day, eyesight. Even for a short time, to be blind is a scary place.
The eye is an interesting and complicated organ. Our ability to see through our eyes starts when light reflects off an object at which we are looking and enters the eye. It then allows our brain to process the impulses sent from the optic nerve. In the spiritual realm, when we look to Jesus, we see the genuine Light of the World. Without Him, we stand in darkness. The absence of light is darkness, but the presence of light dispels darkness.
When all were born into this world, all was darkness. This is termed as our fallen or original sin nature. This came from the sin in the garden of Eden. After this time, we were in darkness. The term “In Him was life,” represents what Jesus Christ bought and brought to us when he came into our life. Jesus (the Word of Life) by His death upon the cross gave all a chance to see the Light and receive His forgiveness. He brought a new life (the Living Word) into us when we accepted Him upon our salvation. It then became the light of men. “The light was the life of men” is also true. This is a statement that curiously is like the view of some physicists who find in electricity (both light and power) the nearest equivalent to life in its ultimate physical form.[1]
When God brought life into mankind’s life, it brought a whole new way of living for each of us who know Christ as Savior. It brought forth a fountain of new fresh life from His Word. It brought forth not only salvation, but a way to live out that salvation. It should be to the glory of the One who gave us this life.
Take a moment today to thank God for sending His Son today to dispel that old darkness and bring new life and light to your life. Don’t go around in darkness child of God, for it is a scary place to be… Stand in the Light!
[1] A.T. Robertson, Word Pictures in the New Testament (Nashville, TN: Broadman Press, 1933), Jn 1:4.