Son of man. So Jesus said to them, ‘The light is among you for a little while longer. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtake you.’ The one who walks in the darkness does not know where he is going. While you have the light, believe in the light that you may become sons of light.
When Jesus had said these things, he departed and hid himself from them. And though he had done so many signs before them, they still did not believe in him, so that the word spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled: ‘Lord, who has believed what he heard from us? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?’ Therefore, they could not believe, for again Isaiah said, ‘He has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, lest they see with their eyes and understand with their heart, and turn, and I would heal them.’
Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and spoke to him. Nevertheless, many even of the authorities believed in him, but for fear of the Pharisees, they did not confess it, so that they would not be put out of the synagogue, for they loved the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God.
And Jesus cried out and said, ‘Whoever believes in me believes not in me, but in him who sent me, and whoever sees me sees him who sent me. I have come into the world as light, so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness. If anyone hears my word and does not keep them, I do not judge him, for I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world. The one who rejects me and does not receive my words has a judge. The word that I have spoken will judge him on the last day.
For I have not spoken on my own authority, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment, what to say and what to speak. And I know that his commandment is eternal life. What I say, therefore, I say as the father has told me. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Let us pray. Lord, you’ve given us your word. You have given us your word to hear, to believe, and to obey. Fill our hearts with the desire to obey. Open our minds to receive your word, to know your word, and to love your word so that we might obey. Give us the courage and strength to believe you and to walk in your light always. We pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.
So across this whole gospel, the evangelist John has portrayed the duration of Jesus’s ministry as lasting for about three years. At least John notes Jesus traveling to Jerusalem for the Passover on three separate and distinct occasions, whereas the synoptics, the other three gospels, only describe one such visit, his final. So we can conclude that Jesus’s ministry did last for at least three years. It could have been longer, but it was certainly not less.
And although it does seem kind of ironic that John is the one who presents the longer duration due to the obvious dearth or lack of Jesus’s teaching content like what’s found in the other gospels. Now, while the majority of Jesus’s teaching that is recorded here in John’s gospel is contained within the upcoming upper room discourse, the evening when Jesus celebrated his last supper and the Passover with his disciples, there has still been a significant amount of teaching that is mixed in with the record of Jesus’s miracles, those confirming signs of who he is as God.
There has been enough teaching to cause many of our modern study Bibles to include a note on this passage describing it as a summary of Jesus’s teaching. But I would suggest that it is not exactly the content of his teaching that is being summarized here. I would suggest that rather than being a summary of Jesus’s public content, the evangelist instead presents and repeats the framework for rightly understanding all the things that Jesus taught.
The framework explains the where and how his teaching fits within the story of our redemption, leaving the majority of Jesus’s content to be presented by the earlier other three gospels.
So now, here before he sequestered himself from the public, from both his enemies and his many followers, Jesus said to them, ‘The light is among you for a little while longer.’ Now we remember that Jesus has already identified himself as the light of the world several times, an expression or a title that is rightly associated with the Lord through the symbol of the golden lampstand. Through the reference of time of ‘for a little while longer,’ it’s evident that Jesus here is foreshadowing his impending departure from the world.
Then he continues, telling them to ‘walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtake you.’ The one who walks in the darkness does not know where he is going. Jesus was telling them to walk while they have the light, while he is there present with them. As this being a command for obedience, saying to ‘walk’ was a common metaphor or a euphemism that was used to describe a regularly prescribed pathway or an ordered process.
Throughout John’s gospel, light and darkness have always been contrasted as a dualistic opposition, with the light being associated with goodness and God while the darkness is associated with wickedness, sin, and evil and the devil. Describing being in the light as something to be desired, with the darkness as something that should be avoided and feared. Jesus commanded them to flee the darkness for the light.
Jesus’s description of the light is an echo of Leviticus 18:5, where God commanded Israel saying, ‘You shall therefore keep my statutes and my rules. If a person does them, he shall live by them. I am the Lord.’ So here Jesus is really commanding them to live and love, to work and act in all righteousness, to flee from evil and sin, to seek the Lord and obey him rather than the devil so that they may have life, eternal life.
‘While you have the light, believe in the light that you may become sons of light.’ But then Jesus adds an additional caveat to walking in the light. They must also believe in the light. Not only was Jesus commanding their obedience, he was requiring their confident faith, their pistis. He was requiring them to absolutely trust and depend on the light.
This additional element of required faith is what facilitates the adoption of believing persons as sons and daughters of light, as the children of God. This additional element of required belief, of faith, had to be something more than just the mere conscious decision because it is so consequential and it is transformative. I mean, despite the Pharisees and the other Jews putting forth their best effort to walk in the light according to God’s law, the excesses of their self-righteousness demonstrated that they did not confidently believe in the light. Rather, they proved that they did not actually trust the light.
So in the dualistic contrast, if they did not become sons of light, then logically they must remain sons of darkness, because those are the only two options available for humanity: either to be a child of God or a child of the devil.
Well, the testimony of our human nature, our bad choices and decisions, the constant lustful desires of our hearts, and our total inability to be the good that we know we ought to be, against our best efforts, prove that we are all, by original nature, born children of the devil.
Apart from the providential grace and loving mercy of God, surprisingly, the world is actually correct when it suggests a universal brotherhood of man, asserting that everyone worships the same God and arguing that all roads lead to the same spiritual destination. The world is right from a certain point of view, but only right apart from the miraculous and wondrous providential work of God.
Apart from the merciful grace found in Jesus Christ, there is a universal brotherhood of man. Because ever since Adam’s fall, we have all been naturally born to a singular father in hell. All of those countless gods and their myriad pantheons, all the different perverse fantasies that have been worshiped throughout human history, are merely different faces or facets and avatars of the same singular devil.
Every spiritual road and path that is stretched out before humanity, every one of them leads to the very same hell, to the same righteous judgment, and to the same just condemnation, except for that solitary, small, narrow, and exceptionally difficult path that the Lord God has provided as a merciful alternative. The path that is found only by God’s grace and only traversed in the power of the Holy Spirit. The path that is illuminated by the light of life. The path that is only open to the righteous, to those who carry the keys of Jesus’s blood through faith and trust in him alone.
So this framework that’s presented by John that helps us understand is a framework of covenant. Remember, it is the framework of the covenant of grace. The framework that supported the Mosaic administration is the same one that upholds the gospel. Remember, covenants in the ancient Near East followed a standardized formula with a historical preamble or prologue, stipulations, blessings and curses, and oaths.
We can plainly identify those elements right here and in the context of this gospel because Jesus has identified himself as the light of the world, as the false who is theos. That’s the prologue. The parties that are involved in this covenant that are named here are identified as the light being the suzerain, the king, and his present hearers, the ones who believe in the light, as his vassal subjects.
When Jesus commands to walk while you have the light, this is contrasted against the one who walks in the darkness. This says that they should walk in the light, meaning that they need to be obedient to Jesus’s commands and instructions—instructions that are no different from the Lord’s commandments and the covenant stipulations given originally through Moses.
While the inclusion of Jesus’s command to believe in the light might seem to be a slight difference, as being something new or extra as a requirement, it was actually just a verbal declaration of something that was already understood and required: belief and confidence in the covenant-giving suzerain, trust in their ability and their willingness to follow through with their promises.
This is the key concept and premise within the Hebrew expression of a term that we often interpret and translate as steadfast love, but which more specifically describes covenant faithfulness and covenant loyalty. This describes the fidelity that’s expected within the expression of love. And the expected blessing that shall be received by his subjects is the blessing of becoming sons of light, while the curse is that implicit judgment and the condemnation of having the darkness overtake them, causing them to remain as the sons of darkness.
Despite there being no obvious or immediate oath declared, we know that every promise of God comes with his binding oath. A person’s profession of faith and our submission to the sacrament of baptism is our responsive oath to God that gets sworn before the world here in the presence of Christ’s church.
But why is this formula and framework so important for us to recognize and understand? It’s important and necessary because it shows the continuity between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant, between the Old Testament and the New Testament, between Moses and Jesus, between the law and the gospel. It shows us that God does not change, that he has not changed, and it gives us confidence to believe that he shall not change.
It shows us that the salvation of the elect, that our redemption, justification, and adoption as the people of God, as his beloved children, has always and only ever been by the same means through faith in the Lord, which is faith in Jesus Christ according to his gracious covenant.
It is important and necessary because it explains the why of our responsibility in the how of our salvation. Jesus commanded those who would follow him to walk in the light, commanding that we must flee from the darkness lest we belong be lost. So if we truly do believe in the light, then we will respond to the light with the obedience of faith.
If we truly do believe in the light, then we will respond to the light in the obedience of repentance as we turn away from the darkness of our past sins. And if we truly do believe in the light, then we will respond to the light in the obedience of our love for Christ, with covenant fidelity by trusting him.
So those who truly do believe in the light and who demonstrate the earnestness of their faith by responding appropriately, they are blessed by being made to become sons and daughters of the light. Those who follow Christ do these things in this kind of belief by keeping the commandments of God and faithful love. By trusting that his commands are given for our good benefit. By obeying his word because it is the right, proper, and good thing to do. Because he is sovereign and because we must.
Not because of the benefits that we hope or think we might earn through works of obedience. Remember, we do not obey and trust Christ in order to receive God’s blessing. We obey and we trust Christ because of the blessings that God has already bestowed on us.
And that is why recognizing this covenant framework is so important, because such covenants were dictated by the greater suzerain following an earlier work of their grace or help after the suzerain has already come to the vassal’s rescue. The agreement of future continuing covenant fidelity by the new vassal was their faithful response to the suzerain’s work.
Although their covenant fidelity was preserved through the fear of sanction of the suzerain’s curse, their original salvific blessing and the continuation of them being blessed always depends on an initial act of grace by the king. And so we conclude that those who have become sons of light believe in the light and they walk in the light because they have been called by God and drawn into the light for their salvation and preservation.
Meanwhile, this formula and framework are also important and necessary for us to recognize and understand because John uses it to explain the how of our salvation in relation to the just judgment of God.
The evangelist summarizes two more points, saying, ‘And Jesus cried out and said, whoever believes in me believes not in me, but in him who sent me. And whoever sees me sees him who sent me. I’ve come into the world as light, so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness. If anyone hears my words and does not keep them, I do not judge him, for I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world. The one who rejects me and does not receive my words has a judge. The word that I have spoken will judge him on the last day.’
The first point that John summarizes here concerns why Jesus was born—the reason for why the Son of God became incarnate. Jesus said, ‘I have come into the world as light so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness.’
Jesus Christ, the Son of God and God the Son, the Logos, who is Theos and Andros, came into the world as the false, the light of the world, so that all those who believe in him—those who have faith in him—would be rescued and would be removed from the darkness of sin. As the light, Jesus clarifies that those who believe in the light must necessarily have belief in him.
He concludes that within the gospel administration, the new covenant, whoever believes in him, in Jesus, believes not in him, but in the one who sent him, equating their faith in Jesus with faith in his Father, the Lord God. This conversely means that the ancient Israelites’ faith in trust in the Lord under the old covenant was equated with faith in Jesus Christ.
The second point that John summarizes concerns the authority and purpose of Jesus’s word, the source and degree of its authority, as well as its consequential role for judgment. Recording Jesus’s claim, ‘For I have not spoken on my own authority, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment what to say and what to speak.’
Jesus did not claim to speak or teach under his own authority. He appealed to a higher authority, to the highest. Jesus’s authority to speak and the authority that is inherent within his word came from God the Father. Jesus’s word has divine origin and divine authority. Jesus’s word is God’s word because Jesus is God, the Word, the Logos.
So Jesus’s word carries the full authority of the universal and absolute sovereign. His power and enforcement, the sovereign Lord, cannot be denied, thwarted, or circumvented. Any such appearance is only a matter of his temporary condescension to permit it, because justice will surely be done. And since vengeance belongs to the Lord, his judgment and retribution against all sin and wickedness is something that is absolutely certain and sure.
But a skeptic would surely object to Jesus’s claim of authority, just as they would deny his claim to divinity, just like the Jews did. Yet Jesus said nothing new, nothing different, and nothing innovative over the course of his ministry. Everything he said was consistent with the Old Testament Hebrew scriptures. What Jesus said with this authority and the spiritual things that Jesus commanded were the same as what Moses had said and commanded in Torah under the Lord’s authority. The same authority that’s now being claimed by Jesus.
Jesus’s word just repeated Moses’s word, which repeated God’s word. Jesus’s word had the same authority as Moses’s, which is God’s word. The word of Jesus, as the word and law of God, is the word of life as confessed by Peter. As Moses promised the people in Deuteronomy, saying, ‘You shall keep my statutes and my rules. If a person does them, he shall live by them.’ And which Jesus reaffirms now: ‘I know that his commandment is eternal life. What I say, therefore, I say as the father has told me.’
Now, most everybody loves to hear that ‘for God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.’ But the verse that follows it tends to make us pause and feel uncomfortable: ‘For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.’
Because really, everyone likes the idea of love and dislikes the idea of condemnation. I mean, it really is no wonder that one of the most commonly misinterpreted, misunderstood, and misapplied statements in scripture is, ‘Judge not, lest you be judged.’
But unfortunately for our feelings, the love of God remains closely associated with the judgment and condemnation of sin. Once again, Jesus reiterates his purpose in the world, saying, ‘I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world.’ But that salvation could only be effected through the condemnation and punishment of sin—an effect that could only occur after judgment.
Jesus explains, ‘If anyone hears my words and does not keep them, I do not judge him. The one who rejects me and does not receive my words has a judge. The word that I have spoken will judge him on the last day.’ So the good news is that Jesus did not come to judge and condemn the world’s sin. Jesus didn’t need to judge it because it already had and has a judge: God’s word, the word of Christ.
The judge is the word that Jesus spoke and that Moses spoke because the word spoken by Jesus is that authoritative standard, the absolute and unchanging, impartial, and nonsubjective word, rule, and law of God. God gave us his word to live by. God’s word is the judge over our lives. God’s word is the standard by which we shall all be judged.
This word divides all people into one of three categories according to how we respond to it. The first category contains those who hear and reject the word of Christ. These people stubbornly refuse to accept it and they do not obey it, though they will still be judged according to it because it is the divine law. Because ignorance of the law does not excuse.
Just as in our civil lives, we do not get to choose what laws we are obligated to obey, though we each choose which laws we are willing and sometimes eager to disobey. These are the atheists, the pagan, the heathen, and infidel—people who choose and prefer to live according to their own preferences and understandings. And though they choose to live according to human law rather than God’s law, they are still judged by the word of Christ and condemned.
Now the second category contains those who hear and receive the word of Christ but still do not obey it. While they know its good benefit, its righteousness, and its just nature, some feel as if it does not do enough or go far enough, while others wrongly assume that the whole of it does not actually apply to them.
The first kind are legalists, like the first-century Jews, who affirmed God’s law but failed to understand it or keep it rightly. The second are antinomians, who wrongly assume that since love covers a multitude of sins, they may justify everything in the name of love, wrongly assuming that since our sins are forgiven under God’s grace and because we are not under law but under grace, Christians can continue to willfully and wantonly sin so that Christ’s grace would abound even more. Legalists disobey God’s law by going beyond it, adding to it, and restricting things that are not actually forbidden, while antinomians disobey and disregard God’s law purposefully.
Both are judged by the word of Christ and justly condemned. The third category contains those who hear, receive, and accept the word of Christ, rejoicing and obeying it. They recognize and accept its authority and power over their lives, submitting themselves to it gladly.
These are earnest, faithful, repentant, and obedient Christians. They walk in the light because they believe in the light. And they too shall be judged by the word, but because they have received the righteousness of Christ imputed by their faith—and because Jesus has already suffered their deserved condemnation, they shall be accounted righteous and will receive the blessing of eternal life, for they have already become the sons and daughters of the light.
So finally, how are we to rightly walk in the light since we are believing in the light, right? And we are wanting to be in this third category. Step one, self-examination. Examine yourself. Don’t worry about others. Examine your heart and your motivations. Examine your feelings and your thoughts. What sins are you retaining and protecting within your heart? What sins are you stubbornly refusing to give up? What idols have you not yet torn down? And what idols have you recently set up on their high places?
You need to pray. We each need to pray and ask the Holy Spirit to bring up any such sins and bring them out of the safe harbor where they have been hidden within our hearts. Step two, repentance and confession. Once we recognize and identify our remaining and latent sins, whenever we’re feeling convicted by the Holy Spirit for our sin, we need to confess them to God first and to whomever else we are wronging with them.
After we have confessed our sin, we must also repent of them. But we must do more than just apologize. It’s more than saying you’re sorry because that is not true repentance. We must offer and provide appropriate recompense for our sin. And then we need to stop engaging and indulging in those sins. We need to stop and turn around. We must turn away and do what is right rather than whatever was wicked.
Step three, move forward in faith. After we’ve identified our sin, after we have confessed our sin, and after we have repented of our sin, then, and this is the hard part, might be the hardest, we must accept and believe scripture’s assurance that God has forgiven our sin by washing it away in the blood of Jesus Christ. We must believe and trust that the justifying work of Christ covers our debt of sin. We must live and walk knowing that even though we will sin again, because our hearts have been more rightly inclined by the Holy Spirit, we shall now live in a manner that is pleasing to God our Father.
When we do unfortunately sin again, he will be gracious and merciful to forgive us when we repent. But however, we can’t even begin to do any of these steps unless first we know the word of Christ. Unless we know God’s word better and more well than we do. Unless we know the content and the specific details of the word of Christ. Unless we understand what it means and how to rightly apply it to our life.
So improving our biblical literacy and our interpretive understanding is everyone’s step zero. Step zero: know the word of Christ, which is God’s word. This is the most important step because it is the foundation upon which all the others stand. We must each better know and better understand the word of Christ because it is the self-revelation of God, because it tells us who Jesus is. It tells us what Jesus has done and what Jesus will do.
We must know the word of Christ because Jesus Christ is the word made flesh. The logos is Theos and Andros. And because in it, he is revealed to be the light of men, the light of life, and the light for us to live by. Studying scripture is the only way for us to truly know Jesus and to hear him speak.
We must know scripture first before we can believe in the light. We must know and understand the word of Christ because it contains and explains God’s law, the rules and stipulations of the covenant that God’s people must live according to if we’re going to walk in the light. We must know the word of Christ if we’re going to follow and try to keep his word. If we are to obey Christ faithfully, we must know what Christ commands us not to do.
We must know and understand what he commands us to do. We must know and understand the word of Christ because it contains God’s perfect standard for holiness and holy living. The word of Christ is the standard against which we are judged to either be righteous and just or wicked and evil sinners. And when we know the word of Christ, it becomes a mirror showing us that we do not measure up to God’s standard and that we cannot measure up to it on our own.
Knowing the word of Christ shows us where we need to repent of our sins and ask for forgiveness. And when we know and understand the word of Christ, it shows us that Jesus alone measures up.
It shows us how we can be considered to have measured up through faith in him, explaining how his righteousness may become counted as our righteousness. It shows us how we may be made righteous because he has taken our unrighteousness onto himself. It shows us how he suffered the punishment of hell that we deserve so that we may enjoy the blessing of life eternal he deserves.
We must know and understand that the word of Christ because when we do, we are comforted and assured by the Holy Spirit that we are being transformed and sanctified, to know that we are being made to become more and more like Christ and conformed to his image as the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation—that we have been made to become sons and daughters of the light.
Then we may know that we are being made holy as God is holy and that we now have the true hope of life because we are living according to the word of Christ. So study and know and believe the word of Christ. Trust him. Examine yourself and ask the Holy Spirit’s help to root out your latent sin.
Confess and repent of your sins. Because if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And then live in the assurance and conviction of your faith and trust in God that by the blood of Jesus Christ, your sins are forgiven. Amen.