LIGHT OR DARKNESS

Thursday 20 March

The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness! Matthew 6:22-23 (NKJV)

For once you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord; walk as children of Light [lead the lives of those native-born to the Light]. For the fruit (the effect, the product) of the Light or the Spirit [consists] in every form of kindly goodness, uprightness of heart, and trueness of life. Ephesians 5:8-9 AMPC

Did you know that people outside of Christ do not have true life? They merely have an existence which means ‘breath’ but they are separated through sin from the life of God. Every person is born into this world in a state of spiritual darkness because of Adam’s wilful disobedience that is sin.

2 Corinthians 4:4 says ‘In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.’

‘For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light’ Ephesians 5:8

We were not just in darkness, we actually were darkness!

When it talks about the eye in our opening scripture it is metaphorically speaking of the eye of the mind. This is in the realm of the soul that also houses our imagination.

This is why it says if the mind or imagination is evil, ‘the whole body will be full of darkness’.

Romans 1:21 ‘because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened.’

And you, who once were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now He has reconciled…

Colossians 1:21 (NKJV)

1 Corinthians 15:45 says ‘the first Adam was made a living soul, the second Adam a life-giving spirit.’ Something happened that took mankind from the light and plunged us into darkness. In the midst of man’s hopeless state, the incarnate Christ stepped into history.

John 1:4 tells us ‘In Him was life and the life was the light of men.’ So we see a direct connection made between life and light. Some believe that this means that Jesus is the life that brings light for all mankind and therefore everyone has life and therefore light, but this is not the context here at all. Jesus brought life in Him. Anyone who received His life in salvation would also receive His light.

No life, no light. This is the reason why outside of Christ there is only existence and darkness.

2 Corinthians 4:6 declares ‘For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.’

When God said ‘light be’ there was no sun, moon or stars created yet. He spoke to the spiritual darkness and commanded spiritual light to shine out of it. And where is this light located now? In the heart or spirit of the believer.

Those who have received the eternal life of God in Christ. This is the kind of life that we have been looking at this whole time. And where is this darkness situated? In the hearts of unbelievers.

So where do we find or locate this light? In the image and likeness of God in mankind, Jesus Christ.

There is no such thing as a Yin Yang philosophy ‘a little bit of evil in good and a little bit of good in evil’. Light is light. Darkness is darkness. Evil is evil and good is always good.

The Bible encourages us to ‘not be overcome by evil but to overcome evil with good’; darkness with light.

No wonder we are told in 1 John 1:5 ‘This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.’

We are either children of light or children of darkness. There is no in between. The only difference is whether or not we have accepted the light of the gospel of Christ.

APPLICATION

Adopt the mindset that if Jesus is the light of the world and He lives in you as the daystar that has arisen in your heart then you also are the light of the world in your generation.