The True Light

1) What season are we celebrating?

a. Advent.

2) What is Advent?

a. Advent is the season before Christmas.

3) What kind of season is Advent?

a. Advent is a season of waiting.

4) Where are we waiting?

a. In a land of deep darkness.

5) What are we waiting for?

a. The Light to shine on us.

6) What do we do during Advent?

a. Prepare our hearts to welcome Jesus.

7) What do we confess during Advent?

a. Christ has come; Christ will come again.

Early in each of the gospels, the biblical authors seek to link the story of Jesus with what has come before. Mark opens by referring to “the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ,” and linking the story of Jesus to the prophecies of Isaiah. Matthew opens with his genealogy, which runs from Jesus back through the exile, through David, to father Abraham. Luke goes a step farther, with his genealogy reaching all the way back to Adam, the son of God. 

We might think that’s about as far back as we can go. If you ask someone, tell me about your ancestry, and they say, “Well, there was a guy named Adam and a girl named Eve and they lived in a garden…”, that’s about as far back as you can go. 

But not for John. John reaches farther back than Isaiah, Abraham, and Adam. His gospel will begin as far back as possible, to the beginning. 

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

These words obviously remind us of Genesis 1:1:

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

But John’s words are even more fundamental than Moses. In Moses’s beginning, he immediately speaks of creation, of divine action.

“God created the heavens and the earth.”

John reaches behind creation to that which was before creation. In fact, we see this clearly in the verbs that John uses. 

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.” The verb in each of these is “to be.” It refers to basic existence. 

Then in verse 3, John begins to speak of things that “were made,” or literally, things that “become.” “All things became through him, and without him did not anything become that has become.” Our translations rightly connect this “becoming” to “being made” or “being created.”

This is the fundamental contrast in reality: Being and Becoming. Things that just are; and things that come-to-be. Eternal and unchanging things and temporal and changing things. 

In the Old Testament, this contrast is always between the God Who Is and the World that Becomes. What’s more, the Old Testament is adamant that there is only one God Who Is.

“I am who I am.”

There is none like me. I am God and there is no other. As the Westminster Catechism says,

“Are there more gods than one? There is but one only, the living and true God.”

In contrast to God, there is the world of becoming, the world that comes-to-be, that was created in the beginning, full of change. 

What’s striking about John’s gospel, especially for his early Jewish monotheistic audience is that he places the Word right in the middle of Being. The Word did not come into being. He did not have a beginning, but he was in the beginning. And the Word from the beginning has two paradoxical features: he was with God and he was God. He was God’s Fellow and God’s Own Self. 

And notice that I’m saying “He.” The opening verse refers to the Word, the Logos. Verse 2 summarizes verse 1 and accents that this Word is not a thing, but a He. “He–the Word who was and is God–was in the beginning with God.”

Word as Message

When we hear the word “Word,” we often think of an individual word, a single word. But the Greek word “logos” means something more like speech, or discourse, or message. In the earliest Latin translations of the New Testament, it was translated as sermo, from which we get the word “sermon.” In the beginning was the Sermon and the Sermon was with God and the Sermon was God. 

And we ought to pay attention to the prepositions. The Word was in the beginning. He was with God. And all things were made through him. These three give three windows on the Word. Because he was in the beginning, he was God. He didn’t come into being. He just is. But he’s not just God; he’s also with God. Are there more gods than one? There is but one only, the living and true God. But the next question says,

“How many persons are there in the Godhead? There are three persons in the Godhead–the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one God.”

And third, the Word is the agent of creation. Creation is from the Father, and through the Son (and in the Spirit). God creates through speech.

“He spoke, and it came to be.”

And that speech is the Son. As one commentator put it,

“Jesus is what God says whenever God speaks.”

Notice how John emphasizes this point.

“Without him was not anything made that was made.”

If there’s a made thing in the universe, it was made through the Word. If there is something that came to be in reality, it came to be through the Word. That’s why the gospel of John ends with the statement that, if every one of Jesus’s deeds was written, the whole world could not contain the books. That’s because the world itself is the Word’s words. 

So then, we have the Eternal Word and the Creating Word. In verse 4, we see the Living Word.

“In him was life, and the life [that was in him] was the light of men.”

The Word’s life is man’s light. 

The Light

With the introduction of the term “light” in verse 4, we see a shift. From this point on, until John 1:14, the Word is referred to as the Light. He’s the Word–Eternal Word, Creating Word, Living Word. And now he’s the Light. The Light shines in the darkness (1:5); John bears witness about the Light (1:7-8); The true Light was coming into the world (1:9), and was rejected by some and received by others (1:10-13). 

So what does it mean that he’s the Light of men? This statement is made in the midst of multiple references to creation, to Genesis 1: In the beginning; all things were made through him; the light shines in the darkness (recalling Genesis 1:3, “Let there be light, and there was light”). So in the first place the Word is the natural Light of men. He is the ultimate, unavoidable foundation for all knowledge and understanding.

With the help of C.S. Lewis, let’s dwell on the meaning of the Word as the natural Light of men. In his apologetic work, Lewis was especially known for his clear and compelling use of the arguments from Reason, Morality, and Desire. He deployed these arguments primarily as a way of refuting naturalism or materialism, the view that nature or matter is all that there is. Nothing supernatural, or spiritual, or beyond what can be measured and quantified.

Naturalism is reductionistic. The naturalist says that human reasoning, whether about truth or morality, is simply the excess fluff of chemical and electrical reactions in the brain. Our reasoning doesn’t actually give us access to truth or goodness outside of us; it’s simply a brain secretion. You may think that your mind has access to reality, to truth, but it doesn’t; that’s an illusion produced by millions of years of evolution. Likewise, your moral standards are merely evolved social preferences that you mistakenly think transcend human thought. They are simply irrational projections of human values and emotions onto an indifferent cosmos. There is no standard of good and evil, independent of human actions, by which we can be judged. That’s naturalism. 

The argument from Reason runs something like this: human thought cannot merely be a fact about ourselves, but must instead be capable of giving us real insight into reality. Lewis frequently quoted Professor J.D.S. Haldane to the effect that,

“If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true . . . and hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms.”

One absolutely central inconsistency ruins [the naturalistic worldview]…. The whole picture professes to depend on inferences from observed facts. Unless inference is valid, the whole picture disappears…. Unless Reason is an absolute – all is in ruins. Yet those who ask me to believe this world picture also ask me to believe that Reason is simply the unforeseen and unintended by–product of mindless matter at one stage of its endless and aimless becoming. Here is flat contradiction. They ask me at the same moment to accept a conclusion and to discredit the only testimony on which that conclusion can be based.

In other words, all knowledge depends on the validity of inference, of logic, and therefore inference must in principle be more than a brain secretion but instead a “real insight into the way in which real things have to exist” (63). If this is so, then human thinking testifies to the existence of Reason in which the universe is saturated. Human logic bears witness to the eternal Logos. While this argument doesn’t get you the whole way to Christian theism, it does seem to be an effective refutation of strict materialism.

The argument from Morality is similar: Human beings make moral judgments. We call certain things good and certain things evil, certain things right and certain things wrong. In doing so, we are appealing to an objective standard of behavior that is outside of us. Whether we are judging our neighbor or Nazis, the very fact of our judgment testifies to our belief in a real objective Good that stands over us and to which we ought to conform. There is a real moral law which is constantly pressing upon us. Again, this argument doesn’t get us the whole way to Christianity, but the existence of a universal moral law does seem to imply a Lawgiver, and thus open the way for further discussion of what this Lawgiver might be like.

Finally, I’ll let Lewis express the argument from Desire in his own words:

The Christian says, ‘Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. (C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: HarperOne, 2001), 136–137.)

Now there are at least two common threads that run within each of these arguments. The first is that the existence of the defect testifies to the existence of the perfection. A belief in the existence of error entails belief in the existence of Truth. A belief in the existence of evil entails belief in the existence of Good. A belief in the existence of emptiness entails belief in the existence of Fullness. Thus, instead of the argument from Reason, we might equally speak of the Argument from Error. Instead of the argument from Morality, we might speak of the argument from Evil. Instead of the argument from Desire, we might speak of the argument from Emptiness. 

The second common thread is that such beliefs are, outside of insane asylums, indelible and ineradicable. We can’t get away from them. Whatever theories people may have, whatever philosophies people may invent, we are all going to go on identifying errors, making moral judgments, and pursuing satisfaction in something. And significantly, such indelible phenomena cry out for an explanation. And John 1 gives us that explanation.

When we recognize the implications of our indelible belief in error and truth, in evil and good, in desire and fullness, in futility and purpose, we can see in such simple everyday phenomena a witness to God’s reality. As Paul says,

“He is actually not far from each one of us” (Acts 17:27)

In a sense, we might say that God is as near to you as your thinking, your judging, and your desiring. Because the life of his Word is the light of men.

No matter what we think, in thinking we evidence a belief in inference, in logic, in error, and therefore in truth. And he is the Truth. In evaluating and judging, in condemning and approving, in accusing and commending, we evidence our belief in morality, in standards, in evil, and therefore in the good. And he is the Good. In desiring and pursuing satisfaction, in longing and in aching, in hoping and in feeling futility, we evidence our belief in meaning, in purpose, in fullness and in life. And he is the Life. And his life is the light of men.

Of course, we can, if we choose, suppress these truths. We can invent philosophies that deny (however incoherently) the reality of truth, goodness, and beauty. We can try to overcome that light. But reality is a stubborn thing. Or better, God is a relentless hunter. To use Psalm 139, he really does search and know us. He really does hem us in, behind and before (Psalm 139:5). We cannot successfully flee from him. If we ascend to the heavens, he is there. If we descend to the depths, he is there. If we travel across the sea, or to the farthest reaches of the galaxies, even there he is present and active and pursuing.

Or to bring this back to John 1, the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. The natural light of reason can be suppressed, but not obliterated. Every time we think, we reassert the inescapable reality of the Word as the natural light of men.

Coming into the World

But John’s gospel doesn’t stop with natural light. This true light which enlightens every man was coming into the world. This “coming into the world” is something different than being the natural light of men from creation. This is what we are marking here in Advent as we prepare to celebrate Christmas. 

When the true light came into the world, he shed a new kind of light, and this light enlightened men by dividing men. He came to his own – and since he made everything, everything is his own. Every person belongs to the Light. More specifically, he came to his own household, his people, to Israel. And they did not receive him. They rejected him. But not everyone. Some did receive him. Some believed in his name. 

To understand this division that the light brings, we can consider John’s words later in his gospel, in chapter 3.

"And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.” (3:19-21)

Why did some who dwelt in darkness reject the light? Because they loved the darkness because their deeds were evil. They hated the light because they hated exposure. They wrapped themselves in darkness and tried to make it their covering. 

So then, we have the Word, God’s Eternal Message, who was with God and is God, and through him God made everything. The life of the Word is the natural light of men, shining into the darkness with inescapable and unavoidable brightness. And this light, the true light, comes into the world and enlightens men by dividing men into those who recognize and love him, and those who do not. 

Application

So here we are, in the season of Advent, in a land of deep darkness. What should we do with what we’ve just seen in John 1? 

First, we ought to be encouraged by our awareness of darkness. Just as the existence of error points to the reality of truth, just as the existence of evil points to the reality of goodness, just as the fact of emptiness and desire points to the reality of fullness and satisfaction, so also the fact that we have a name for darkness means that we were made for the Light. In the land of the blind, they have no word for darkness or for light. And so if you feel the weight of darkness upon you this Advent, take heart. That weight is testifying to your soul that you were made for light. 

Second, I want to exhort all of us: Let’s be like John. John was not the Light. Throughout this gospel, John will say things like, “I’m not the Christ; I’m just the voice of one crying in the wilderness. I’m not the bridegroom; I’m just his friend, and he must increase and I must decrease.”

In John’s gospel, Jesus says,

“I am.”

John says,

“I am not.”

And so let’s be like John. 

And in this passage, what does John do? He’s not the light. He bears witness about the Light. He points to the Light. And he does so that all might believe in the true Light that is coming into the world. John is the apostle of Advent.  

And so let’s press this into the corners a bit. In your homes this Advent, are you bearing witness to the Light? Parents, are you pointing your kids to the Light? Or are you driving them into the darkness? In our Advent catechism, we ask,

“What do we do during Advent? Prepare our hearts to welcome Jesus.”

Are you preparing your kids to welcome Jesus, or to avoid you? In all of the hustle and bustle of Christmas preparations, are you keeping your eye on the ball? Are you communicating the brightness of God’s smile to your kids, or the darkness of his exasperated and frustrated frown?

It’s a great tragedy when, in our efforts to do good things for our people, we torch our relationships with our people. Dad, you can do it by working your job to provide, while forgetting that the first way that you bear witness to the light is by your glad time and attention for your family. Mom, you can torch the relationship by forgetting that decorations are made for people, not people for the decorations. Your vision for your holiday home, shaped by Instagram and other people’s expectations, can be a burden to your family that keeps them from seeing the light. 

John isn’t the Light; he’s the voice. And so if you’re a voice, like John, what does your voice say? What does your tone of voice say? Husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, friends and roommates: how’s that tone of voice? Is it making straight the way of the Lord so your spouse or sibling or friend can see the Light? Or is it throwing up roadblocks? 

Kids, do you speak respectfully and clearly and honorably to your parents?

Husbands, do you speak to your wife with exasperation and harshness?

Wives, do you speak to your husband with disrespect and condescension? 

Roommates and friends, do you speak to each other with frustration and dismissal?

For all of us, can we point people to the Light by our manner of speech – kind, patient, thoughtful, strong, clear, and full of delight and joy in the Light and in our people?

Keep pressing in here. John’s aim is to

“make straight the way of the Lord” (v. 23)

To lay low the mountains and to raise up the valleys. It’s clear from John’s ministry that this fundamentally means calling people to repentance and restored relationships, first with God and then with each other. And so for husbands and wives, for parents and kids, for brothers and sisters, for friends and roommates – how are those relationships? When I ask that question, does a name or a face or a conflict pop into your head? If so, that’s great news. The Light is shining in the darkness. Don’t try to overcome it. When the Light comes into the world, come to the Light. Don’t love the darkness and reject the light. Don’t keep your evil deeds hidden. Repent of them. And then bear fruit in keeping with that repentance. One way that we prepare our hearts to welcome Jesus is by doing what is true and so showing that our deeds have been carried out in God. As John says, those who receive the Light and believe in his name are given an amazing privilege – the right to become children of God, born not of human will or decision, not of blood and natural procreation. If you receive the Light, it’s because you’ve been born of God, and your works are done in him. 

Finally, what does it mean to receive him? Receive him as what? In this passage, it means receiving him as the Word, as the Speech and Message of God to us. It means receiving him as Light and Life. And it means receiving him as the only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth. Which brings us to the Table.

The Table

The Word who was in the beginning, the Word who was with God and is God, the Eternal, Creating Word became flesh and dwelt among us. The True Light came into the world, and is still coming into the world. At this table, we see the True Light in the simple bread and wine. And in seeing the True Light, in believing in his name, we receive him as the True Bread. So come and welcome Jesus Christ.