Walking through the Bible: John 1:4
John 1:4: In him was life, and that life was the light of men.
In one way, John is now foreshadowing the purpose of Christ. He will go on to explain in Chapter 1 all about the light. And I believe we should get the picture of the magnitude of what John is saying. Imagine a dark place; one where you stumble about, unable to find your way. You stoop to the ground and crawl, feeling your way along every rock and dip in the ground. You are a slovenly disaster of a man. Your knuckles are cracked and bleeding. There’s an angst about you. You are in constant strife with the world around you. And then suddenly, a light appears. Suddenly, you can see before you, you can walk and understand the world you find yourself in. This to me is close to what we are beginning to get a glimpse of — though we should be clear that it is a mere illustration and will always be lacking compared to the full truth of this passage. Nonetheless, we now have the messiah entering the world as the “light of men.”
As the light, Christ is going to illuminate the truth, he is going to shine it into the world. The question that hangs on every word at this point is what will the world do with this light? At this point, it would be natural to assume that the world would gladly receive this light, gladly take it as a gift and now live within that light. And yet, there is also a part of us that knows that we at every step try to reject that light. If you have been saved and have been on that journey for some time, you will know of those times when you wanted to hide from God, when you wanted to be back in that dark and not know your own sin. It is only when you come to terms with the your true sinful nature by this light of Christ that you are able to stand in the light. And when doing so, it is not the case that you are prideful and arrogant, but instead, you are constantly aware of your fallen nature. You are constantly aware of the grace of God and you must — if truly living in that light — be both sober and joyous about your own salvation.
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Walking through the Bible is a verse by verse study of the Bible. A small segment of verses will be looked at each time and a brief, but relevant study of the text will be conducted.
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