What does it mean that God is light?

Again, as the symbol of what God is, light is transparent, perfectly transparent. It is thus the symbol of intrinsic purity, of God's moral character. To say "God is light," is to say He is holy; not only relatively, but absolutely so. His holiness is essential, intrinsic. This means He is able to preserve Himself as He is. As light is unchangeable; so is God incorruptible, untarnishable; it is impossible for any moral poison to come into His moral nature. No evil, no sin can ever originate or be in Him. What He is in moral nature and character He has ever been and must ever be. He cannot be deceived; "cannot be tempted with evil" (James 1:13). "God is light" tells us that His moral discernment is absolutely perfect. It is a moral impossibility for God to look complacently upon sin. He cannot behold iniquity (Hab. 1:13). If, then, His perceptions are unerring, His moral discernment absolutely perfect, His judgments must be right. He must perfectly resent everything that is contrary to what He is in His own nature. He can never compromise with what is against or in opposition to His character. That He is light is the assurance and guarantee of all this.

In the same way that God did not define life, eternal life, for us in a dictionary, so the Lord Jesus did not give a verbal definition of light. God is light - it is part of His essential nature. It indicates His intrinsic and absolute purity. 'Light is immaterial, diffusive, pure and glorious. It is the condition of life. Physically, it represents glory; intellectually, truth; morally, holiness.' (M.R. Vincent) It is what God is in Himself in an absolute sense. Flowing from it are His attributes - which are relative - such as righteousness and holiness. His attributes are a consequence of what He is in Himself; they indicate what He is in relation to others.

Whereas the manifestation of life was received by what the apostles saw in Christ, the message of light was received by what they heard from Him. It is declared here as the standard against which the claims of men may be measured. The introduction (vv. 1-4) gave the purpose of the letter - fellowship and joy resulting from the manifestation and communication of eternal life. The message that God is light is introduced here to test the claims of all who say they have this fellowship.

The word of God uses this as a beautiful illustration or rather image. "God is light" is the message that we have received of Him, "and in Him is no darkness at all." "God is light," it is His nature, and He was eternally light before ever there was a universe to be illuminated (just as He was eternally love before ever there was ever a creature to be loved). "Light," to quote the words of one no longer amongst us, "is perfect purity, invisible in itself, and manifesting everything as it is before God." It is likewise said that God dwells in light that no man can "approach unto," and this is light inaccessible in itself.

But along with the manifestation of perfect grace comes the inseparable message of holiness. This is alike due to God, and necessary for the saints. What does it convey? "This then is the message which we have heard from him." They had heard it from Christ Himself; not exactly "of (περὶ) him," but "from (ἀπὸ) him," — "and report," for this is the exact word in our tongue — we "report to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all." We see the distinctness from the manifestation. This was about or concerning the Word of life, the unmixed grace of God in Christ. Here it is not "concerning" but "from," not a manifestation of love, but a message against sin. It is also the first occurrence of the apostle's habit to mix God with Christ, because He is God. So here, after saying so much of Christ, he gives a message from "Him." This might mean God, but he had just been speaking of Christ. Such a transition perplexes the commentators; but it is a beauty, not a blemish. The message from Him applies God as light (and this too was in Him) to our standing and state.

Natural enough that the heathen should make Chaos the parent of Erebos and Nyx. Darkness essentially characterised some, moral darkness all that they called their gods. They were indeed divinities of gloom, and lust, and lying. But not so is our God: in Him is no darkness at all. And it is Christianity that brings this out distinctively in essence, principle and fact; Judaism but partially. For there He avowedly dwelt in the thick darkness. Thence He menaced with death him that ventured of himself to approach, or otherwise infringed His law. Yet the law made nothing perfect (Heb. 7:19). We can say without reserve that God is light. He has fully proved His love. What can compare with His grace in Christ, as we read in the prefatory verses? But He is light also. We all know how common it is for men to descant on God as love, even to an extreme exaggeration in effect, not merely that God is love, but that love is God. Much less do we hear of the message that He is light. This, no doubt, is the ultimate folly of man's mind, that makes a mere idol of God. But if it be a truth that God is love, He is a great deal more than love. "Light" is a burning word, expressive of His intrinsic and absolute purity of nature; "love" of its sovereign activity to others as well as in Himself. There is no sacrifice of His light to His love; indeed if it were so conceived, it would entail the greatest loss on His children. But it is as untrue, as it is impossible. "God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all." Therefore is He intolerant of darkness in His own, who are made free of His presence, and have fellowship with Himself. What could be more contrary to Christ and to Christianity? We are told elsewhere, that we were once darkness who are now children of light. No doubt this did not belong to John; it had been already taught by the apostle Paul.

But light manifests, for "whatsoever doth make manifest is light." As in natural, so in spiritual things, in the dark nothing is rightly discerned. In a dark room there is no difference between a chair and a table, between a black man and a white. The difference exists, but it is not seen. So in the spiritual darkness of nature, "the natural man knoweth not the things of the Spirit of God." Good and evil, the things of God and the things of the world, all are blended and confused. The evil is there, but apart from the grace of God it is not judged. Bring the light of the sun into the dark room, and everything is discovered. Bring the light of God's truth into the soul, and everything is spiritually discerned, for God is light.

First, "he is in the light as God is in the light." Now God had said to Israel, "I will dwell in the thick darkness"; and at Sinai He told them to keep off; "for if so much as a beast touch the mountain it shall be stoned." There was a great deal of good there, but He was in His pavilion of darkness, not seen. God acted towards Israel, but did not show Himself. Now the veil is rent from top to bottom, and all is light. It is the very nature of the truth we are in, that God is now manifestly revealed; and he that is come in through the rent veil stands in the light of God's holiness, perfect purity in itself, and it shows everything that is not so.

The light is the revelation of God, and whoever receives that light by faith in it has got the knowledge of God in grace and love. The light is for men that are in darkness. Where the light is received the darkness is dispelled; then the soul requires instruction in the mind and will of Him with whom he is set in entirely new relationships: he wants instruction in the truth; and in turn, he becomes a light in the midst of this world's darkness. Light shows me things as they really are, but when I know the truth I see how different everything on earth is to that which it should be. So that the truth may be said to be light. "Thy Word is a lamp to my feet, and a light to my path" (Psalm 119:105). The light of the Gospel shows one how thoroughly under the power of Satan he has been. Christ is both the truth and the light. They are very near akin.

The moral attributes are descriptive of His nature and character and come out fully in the working out of purpose in His time ways among men. Thus Righteousness and Holiness describe His character and spring from His nature which is love. 1 John 4:8-14. This last is absolute and exists eternally as constantly reciprocated within the Godhead. He is also Light, but this is relative as standing in relation to darkness and is the exposure of sin, lawlessness and moral disorder.

To apply this to the figures referred to in a former paper: — what does "Light" signify? The broad grand truth in 1 John 1:5 is "God is light;" and the symbolism of creation discloses how that, as light shone into the chaotic darkness of a world-ruin physically, so God was to interpose in the spiritual darkness (evil ignorance) of the world for its instruction and salvation (light and life). Such is the grand parent meaning, evident to all, of this figure. But consider for a moment some of the collateral meanings; how that it is by the word that light comes (Gen. 1:3), and John 1, because the Word was God. Nothing is more truly a part of an intelligent being than his word which expresses his mind. So Christ is called the Word, — and therefore the Light in instruction — because He reveals the Father, or expresses personally what is in the mind of God (2). The light makes day and separates it from night; so those who are illumined by Christ are called children of day (1 Thess. 5:5), separated from the influence of darkness. And here notice "the evening and the morning," that is, the order of God's diurnal cycle, and thus the Jewish day was reckoned; while the world generally took its day-time before its night-time. With God night-time precedes His day-time; the good wine is kept for the last. With Christ and His followers the time of darkness, anguish, pain and death comes first; and then the deliverance. "Hail, holy light, offspring of darkness, first-born!" but with the world it is the reverse (4). The diffusion of light is at first without visible agency (Gen. 1:3); and then by the visible agency of a central source of great majesty which is to rule the day, and by attendants which, when he is invisible to the world, look on his face and reflect his light. And so in the new dispensation (5) the invisible source of light takes different aspects. Just so with Christ, who is spoken of as the "Morning Star" to those (the church) who wait now, and as "the Sun of Righteousness" to those who shall wait in the succeeding dispensation (6). Light reveals, and thus God by His word reveals the nature of everything, not only of sin — which thought seems to cling in our natural minds, always attributing a severe aspect to "God is Light" — but of everything right and lovely and of good report also, which aspect is seriously overlooked. "Verily the light is sweet and pleasant," Eccl. 11:7, not merely severe. Into the horror of perilous darkness its celestial beams bring comfort and healing on their wings, revealing beauty as well as deformity — judging all things. Final judgment is outer darkness. As the ancient Arctic dwellers would assemble on their hill tops to greet the sun's return after their long long winter night, hailing his beams with plans of joy; so should the world have hailed the advent of spiritual light, heavenly truth; "but their eyes were blinded." (7) The mystery of light cannot be explained (as might be expected in any symbol of deity); but the undulatory theory generally accepted is the same theory in principle as explains the progress of sound, thus giving us another association between the ear and the eye, the word and the light. (8) Light not only reveals colours — as Lord Bacon writes, "all colours will agree in the dark" — but creates all colour; for it is the separation of light into elementary parts, and the absorption of some of these parts, that is the cause of colours. If light be broken on a prism, as in the case of falling raindrops, it separates into different colours, whence the rainbow; and again, if all the colours be put gradually on a disc and the disc revolved, they will blend into white (called technically the recomposition of light). So the divine character is not seen in its full beauty until it comes as revealed in Christ into contact with the weeping clouds of earthly misery, and then the different attributes of God are seen in the transcendent majesty of their stronger, and in the ineffable grace of their more tender, elements. And it is in this sense that Joseph's "coat of many colours," received by him from his father, represents the eternal character of Christ, as also the blue and purple and scarlet of the tabernacle curtains. [ "Offspring" is poetry, or heathenism. In our God is no darkness, but He Himself is light, especially as revealed in Christ; and so are even we His children light in the Lord, though we were once children of darkness and Satan, and such alas! is man as fallen. Light is in no true sense the offspring of darkness, though in a world of ruin it precedes. But the light, in truth, was originally before the darkness. Ed.]

Well, now, in speaking of this revelation of God, for a moment, there was a double character in it, as it presents itself to me, and I would simply touch the points, leaving you to fill up the details, as the Lord may help each of us, for our own hearts' comfort, and edification too. There was a double character, if I may so convey myself, in this revelation of God. God was revealed, in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ here, in a twofold way: He was revealed as light, and as love, the two things that God is said to be in His own nature. He is light: "God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all." And, beloved friends, it is very important for our souls to take in that "message" heard of God, because, not only was He revealed in the Lord Jesus Christ as light and love, but that is the order, the divine order, in which the conscience and heart are made acquainted with that revelation, and that is a deeply important point for every one of us, the divine order in which the revelation reaches us — the revelation of God I am speaking of now. Let us dwell for a little on the order of that revelation, as it reaches our hearts through our consciences. Ponder well this order, that "God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all:" that is our first acquaintance with truth and with Christ, who is the truth; and, moreover, it is our first acquaintance with God, who is revealed in the Person of His own Son down here in this world. We first of all have to do with God, who is light, through our consciences, and it is in this way that our affections come into play because it is through the conscience that the affection is reached. Well, when our consciences are brought up, as it were, and acted upon by this blessed revelation, it is in all the convicting power of light. And that is very blessed, because there is then, not merely the exposing of all that we are in our nature — for we were sometime darkness, not merely in darkness. Remember that word, "Ye were once darkness." Quite true, we were in darkness, but we were darkness itself: "Ye were sometime" — not in darkness, but "darkness (skotos), but now are ye light (phos) in the Lord; walk as children of light." And then He goes on to speak, not exactly of the fruit of the Spirit, but the fruit of light; but we were darkness.