The Vision (2.9.24): God is Light!

 

Image: Winter morning, North Garden, Virginia, February 2024

Note: Devotion based on last Sunday's sermon on 1 John 1:5-10.

This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all (1 John 1:5).

John declares, “God is light.” What, however, does this mean? Technically speaking, the scientists will tell us that light refers to electro-magnetic radiation that can be perceived or detected by the human eye at certain wavelengths and which travels in a vacuum at 186, 282 miles per second.

The Bible tells us that God created light when he said, “Let there be light, and there was light” (Genesis 1:3, 14-16).

When John wrote, “God is light,” he did not mean to say that God is part of the creation. What he meant to say is that God is like light. This is true in at least two ways.

First, God is like the light in that he brings clarity and illumination.

Go into a dark basement and grope about and then flip the light-switch, and the things that were hidden are revealed as they are bathed in light. John is saying God is like that and knowing God is like that. Apart from God we are confined by fear and ignorance.

Second, like light God is powerful and even incomprehensible to mere men. Light can be so powerful that we cannot look directly upon it. Look at the sun directly and you will go blind. God is like the light in this way. He makes himself known to us, but we as mere men cannot look upon him directly, lest our senses be scourged.

This is what the hymn writer was getting at when he wrote, “Immortal, invisible, God only wise, in light inaccessible, hid from our eyes….”

So, when John says God is light, he is saying God is THE only one who allows us to see all things as they truly are. And he is so great and so powerful that we mere men are in no wise able to look upon him directly and comprehend all that he is.

There is one more important part of this statement that needs emphasis. John says he, as an apostle, is conveying this because this is what he heard directly from Christ himself: “This is the message which we have heard from him….”

We might ask when Christ declared, “God is light”? If we look through the Gospels, we cannot find that statement, but we can find in John 8:12 where Christ said, “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12), and where he later said, “I and my Father are one” (John 10:30).

At the beginning of John’s Gospel, the apostle refers to Christ as “the light of men,” adding, “And the light shineth in the darkness” (John 1:4-5). Later he says, “No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him” (John 1:18).

God is light. Christ is the light of the world. When we see and know Christ, we see and know God.

Grace and peace, Pastor Jeff Riddle

WM 184: 1 Cor 3:23: From Paul to Arius to Calvin

Notes for WM 184:

I am currently preaching through Matthew on Sunday pm; the 1689 confession on Sunday pm; and teaching through 1 Cor on Wednesday evenings.

Last week we were looking at 1 Cor 3:18-23 and spent some time discussing 1 Cor 3:23: “And ye are Christ’s and Christ is God’s.”

We discussed how an Arian (follower of Arius, the fourth century heretical teacher from Alexandria might have misused this passage).

Arius taught that Son of God was an exalted creature incarnate in Jesus, but that he was subordinate to the Father.

The controversy over Arian’s teaching is what prompted the Council of Nicaea and the Nicene Creed that was affirmed in it.

What other passages would the Arians have appealed to?

1 Cor 11:3; John 14:26; Mark 13:32; 1 Cor 15:28.

See the letter of Arius to Eusebius of Nicomedia:

Orthodox responses to heterodox interpretations of 1 Cor 3:23:

When Paul says “And ye are Christ’s and Christ is God’s,” he could have been thinking of Christ’s work as the incarnate mediator. Cf. John 1:18: “No man has seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.”

Other key passage:

On the incarnation: Phil 2:5-11 (esp. vv. 5-6);

On Paul’s declaration that Jesus is Lord: Phil 2:11; Rom 10:9; 1 Cor 12:3; cf. 1 Tim 3:16.

The Gospel declarations that Jesus is equal in essence with God: Mark 2:5-7; John 10:30; John 20:28.

We need “all the counsel of God” (Acts 20:27).

See Calvin’s commentary on 1 Cor 3:23:

Calvin is keenly aware of how this passage might be misused.

He likely is looking back to the Arians, and perhaps also looking around at his own day and the revival of Arianism, or Unitarianism, in some circles. And he, no doubt, was also looking forward to dangers that might arise on the horizon.

Conclusion:

Study of 1 Cor 3:23 demonstrates the need for care in rightly dividing the Word of God (2 Tim 2:15).

JTR

James on the Immutability of God

Image: "Bouldering" at Grayson Highlands State Park, Grayson County, Virginia, August 2020.

More reflection on the doctrine of God from Sunday before last's sermon on James 1:17-20:

James 1:17 Every good and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.

The reference to every good and perfect gift may refer to the Lord’s generous supply of our every material need.

It may also refer to spiritual gifts, graces, and blessings.

These things come down “from above.” The idea is of a God who is transcendent, who is exalted, who is high and lifted up. As the Lord said through Isaiah, “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:9). In that same chapter Isaiah records the Lord saying that just as he sends forth the rain and the snow to water the earth, so also he sends down his word, which will not return to him void, lest it accomplish that which pleases him (vv.10-11). I think James may well have had Isaiah 55 in mind as he composed this passage.

Theology is being taught here. God the Father is not lateral with us. He is not our buddy, our colleague, our peer. We are not co-creators with him in any ultimate sense. He is above, and we are below. He gives, and we receive. He blesses, and we are blessed.

James was a Calvinist!

He makes another point about the identity or nature of God in v. 17b: “with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.”

The point here is that God does not change. To use the language of the philosophers, God is immutable. God does not possess or express passions as men do.

In Numbers 23, the pagan King Balak tries to hire a pagan prophet Balaam to curse Israel but every time Balaam opens his mouth to curse Israel, out comes blessings.

When Balak expresses his frustration about this, Balaam responds:

Numbers 23:19 God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?

There are so many things that are comforting about this. God’s moral law does not change. God’s plan of salvation does not change. And, perhaps most comforting of all, God does not change his mind about us, just as he did not change his mind about Israel of old. God’s decree of election to salvation does not change. As Christ put it: “no man is able to pluck them out of my Father’s hand” (John 10:29).

JTR