John 1.9-11
The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.
The true light. It’s not unusual to hear religious claims of “seeing the light”. We even have a period in Western history known as the “Enlightenment”, where human reason became the gold standard. Of course, it’s much easier to sound reasonable than it is to be reasonable. One can reach a valid but foolish conclusion if one starts out with false presuppositions. The presuppositions are key.
John called Jesus the true light and, as it happens, Jesus agreed with him. Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” – John 8.12. Well, that wasn’t very humble of him. Just who does he think he is?
C.S. Lewis, an atheist who eventually converted to Christianity, grew weary of people accepting Jesus as a great moral teacher, but rejecting him as God. He reasoned against this position: “A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with a man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the devil of hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us.”
…which enlightens everyone… So, here is Jesus making bold claims about himself. This leaves us with the options that Lewis has proposed. John is clearly presenting Jesus as God. Once we move past the veracity of the claim, we are left with the question of what this implies. If Jesus is the light of the world, he is the source of all wisdom. Our obvious response ought to be that since he has wisdom we should run to him. We should want wisdom, too. Wisdom enables us to know how to live. Even more, we will learn that Wisdom enables us to live.
While the force of the passage is that Jesus brings light to a dark world, implying that the world is full of confusion and resistant to understanding, there is also the suggestion of common grace. It was a world Jesus made. It was a world that Jesus came to visit. It is not as if the world is without any understanding. People who do not know Jesus are capable of getting some things right, of learning skills, of discovery, and even of serious commitment to moral behavior. These abilities are gifts from God. He continues to bestow them on people even when they are apathetic or rebellious towards him.
…the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him… The passage continues with the theme it has already introduced—that, even though Jesus created the world, the world failed to recognize him. We breeze past this statement as if it were of little consequence. After all, the very existence of God is a question to us. Does he exist? The world has become accustomed to the absence of God, and even come to assume it. To talk about God in polite society is rather an embarrassment. Even young children, if they have not been taught early of the existence of God, seem puzzled when adults talk of him. Is he an illusion…or is it that we have become comfortable in our superficiality. (If I cannot see it, it does not exist.)
The passage focuses on God as creator of all. We are all victims, perhaps, of the “familiarity breeds contempt” syndrome. This was not always the case for us. As God created the world out of chaos, a similar experience takes place for every developing child. The child is not a creator, of course, but a discoverer, who hears sounds and begins to make sense of them; who sees colors and is delighted by them; who begins to see shapes and to recognize the purposes of objects; who experiences human communion through tender sounds, gentle touchings, and the ministrations of care. Then, magically, language forms in the developing mind that cannot help but strive to form meaning out of chaos. Let us not forget the forging of other skills, such as crawling and walking and running, and learning many ways to physically manipulate the stuff and substances of the human environment. None of this ever stops, really, though it is most dramatically evident in young children. People continue to discover, effectively forming meaning out of chaos throughout their lives. At least this is true for those who develop according to God’s design.
The more we learn about the physical world, the more clear it becomes how complex and full of design our world is, whether we examine it on a macro or micro level. The world’s prevalent narrative is that this grand formation assembled itself but this is, of course, contrary to scientific principles and all human experience. Designed complexity does not happen without a designer. The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.- Psalm 19.1. The world is skeptical about God, and that is okay. But it is not okay to be a sophomoric skeptic. We must look twice and take time to gain understanding. If we are in a hurry, and if we find God inconvenient, we will be counted among those who ought to have recognized God but who failed to.
Even his own did not receive him. This is a bit of hyperbole because all the early disciples were Jewish. But the nation that God had called out from among the nations—the nation that was called to be a light to the nations—it was this nation that failed to recognize Jesus. The failure was so complete that, instead of falling down in worship, its leaders formally judged him to be a blasphemer. The failure was so complete that its leaders engineered Jesus’ murder.
What happened to a people that zealously proclaimed allegiance God and, yet, when he came to be with them they did not recognize him? Worse, they despised him. This is not a question that should cause us to wonder about the Jewish leaders. This is a question we must ask of ourselves. Have we become self-satisfied? Have we decided that we have worked all our lives in God’s service and that we now deserve our comforts, our respect from society, our influence, and our stuff? Do we measure our righteousness on the basis of our conformity to rituals and regulations? Have we forgotten who God is? Do we remember his heart and that the core of life is loving him and one another? Have we placed all these other things above love and above him? Would we recognize him if we saw him on the street? Would we find him offensive if we had a conversation with him?
It’s critical that we hold the stuff in our lives with a loose hand, remembering that all we possess is by God’s grace. And remembering that all the stuff will not survive the conflagration. And remembering that we either use the stuff for the Kingdom or, no matter how attractive it may appear, it will function as a spiritual ball and chain on our lives. The one treasure that we must never lose sight of is the face of Jesus. He is the source of life; he is the source of joy; he is the source of love. He is the light of the world.
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