Summary
Light
Scripture sets light and darkness in sharp contrast. Light stands for truth—"your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path" Psalm 119:105—while darkness signifies falsehood, as when Paul speaks of being "a light to those in darkness" Romans 2:19. Light also signals holiness, the "armor of light" we are to put on Romans 13:12, in contrast with the way of the wicked, which is "deep darkness" Proverbs 4:19. Most decisively, darkness names Satan's dominion, from which Christ has rescued us and brought us "into the kingdom of his beloved Son" Colossians 1:13.
Against that backdrop, Jesus speaks two startling claims. First, of himself: "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life" John 8:12. Then, of his disciples: "You are the light of the world" Matthew 5:14. Christians do not generate this light; we reflect it. As the moon shines only by the sun, so the baptized shine because the Holy Spirit has taken up residence and joined us to Christ. The Light we bear is his.
Reflected light is meant to be seen. A city on a hill cannot be hidden, and no one lights a lamp only to hide it under a basket Matthew 5:14-15. The constant temptation of the Church is to retreat from a dark world—to curse the darkness rather than illumine it, to huddle behind safe walls and bask in Christ's presence privately while the world remains unlit. But John reminds us that "the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it" John 1:5. At the cross and empty tomb, the darkness threw everything it had at the Light and lost.
This is also the lesson of the Reformation. In his later years, Luther, weary of conflict, wished to withdraw, yet he would not, because he understood his life as a calling to summon the Church back to biblical truth whatever the cost. Luther insisted that the same kind of calling rests on every Christian. Most of us will not appear in history books; our vocations are lived out in ordinary places—around the family table, over lunch with a coworker, in conversations with a neighbor. That ordinary stuff of life is precisely where the light of Christ is meant to shine.
Jesus draws the conclusion himself: "let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven" Matthew 5:16. These are not works that earn favor with God—Christ alone has clothed us in his righteousness—but the works that flow freely from faith: speaking of Jesus and loving in his name. Light shines in word and in deed.
So the calling of the redeemed is not to curse the darkness but to be what we already are in Christ. Do not retreat. Do not hide. Be light.
Video citations
- "Light" October 28, 2018 — Would you open your Bible, please, with me, to the fifth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew. We are in a four-week study that I have entitled the Mission. Leveraging off of our study in the Book of…