“Lights” in This World
“Lights” in This World
Many Christians would desire to be a better light for God than they are in this dark world. After eighteen hundred years, during which light from God has been shining (1 John 2: 8) the world remains shrouded still in its own gloomy darkness. Light is in individuals. This passage (Eph 4: 8) declares that a Christian is light. Light came into this world in the person of Christ, because He came to make God known, and “God is love”. Darkness here was just because God was not known.
The only light for God is in the display of His nature still. We are reduced then to this conclusion, that light is dependent upon love. It is very easy to read that there is no light where love is not, and “He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love” (1 John 4: 8). With us, light is only, in measure, because our love is in measure. With God both are absolute, “God is light” (v 5) and “God is love”.
My impression is that any one’s light is commensurate with his love, hence we see what an intensely individual matter Christianity is. Light, as in us, is an active moral principle which displaces within all those principles that are not of God. Light is in display in proportion as love is known (God’s love). I have not to copy this individual Christian or that, to become a better exponent of light. If light cannot be found where love is not, let me not be self-deceived, the matter lies in myself! It is love that I require to be in the good of. Light will be displayed, and it cannot be hid, where love is, but it is in vain to think that knowledge or anything short of love will produce light. Love is seen on earth in light, while knowledge only puffs up. Again, we have not to count to get light apart from love in any special person or company since the writing of the messages to the seven churches! Love to the brethren, because they are Christ’s, remains as a proof of love to Him and is itself the feeble light, and hence is the subject of commendation amid the waning light of the companies of “the last hour”, 1 John 2: 18 NT. Darkness is all around because Christ is refused, and in Him light and love are refused.
Neither the following of the best individual, nor the joining of the best company, will set me today as a more distinct light for God here. Increased affection will, but this (as I think) alone will do it.
If I might be allowed to make a suggestion it would be that though we are all conscious how love is first produced in us (1 John 4: 19), we are some of us weak as to how the growth of love in us is then promoted. Love is only developed in us by occupation with love. If “God is love”, then it is as God is known, that love is developed in the soul. It is certain that we grow in the έπιγνωσις τοΰ θεοΰ, “the knowledge of God”, Col 1: 10; 2 Pet 1: 2. No man gets it all at once.
Since God is love, He must be known before love can be known. God was always love, and He was always this man-ward. Because He was and is love, He has dealt with what is utterly repulsive to Him. It was repulsive to Him because it shut up His love in Himself.
God’s nature could not change because sin came into the world. God’s nature is love, and so His righteousness (Rom 3: 25, 26) demanded the removal of that which in man was utterly foreign and repulsive to the display of His love. The opposite of love is all that which characterises this world, see Titus 3: 3. It involves and includes the whole question of sin and sins. This God has fully dealt with, and has removed for Himself in the cross. In doing this God has displayed that His nature is love and that it is love man-ward, see 1 John 4: 9.
Now it is plain that nothing satisfies love but the company of its object, see John 14: 18-23. In the company of men now, and when “the tabernacle of God is with men” (Rev 21: 3), we read the unswerving constancy of God’s love to man. It is just in so far as I am in the continuous good of what God is to me now that I come out as a light for God here. As God’s nature is displayed in any of us, we become a light in this poor dark world, even as it was in Christ, when He was here as man. I would say then, ‘Occupy yourself with His love and the company of the people of God whenever you have the opportunity’. It is the only means of growth in the knowledge of Him, and your light will then shine.
Where love is, and only there, is the soul manifesting light, and I think that as the day grows darker we shall find this out in others and in ourselves too more and more. The privilege of light and love is that of all Christians, but (as I see) every man’s light man-ward at any time, is measured by his love God-ward at that same time.
From Food for the Faithful—vol 2, 1899
