LIGHT AND LOVE

LIGHT AND LOVE

These two little words taken from scripture, are both used to help us understand a bit more about our "Creator God". The first one appears several times in the Bible, starting in the very first book (Gen 1:3) "Then God said let there be light, and there was light." Then at the start of the gospel of John we see it again (John 1:4-5) "The Word gave life to everything that was created, and His life brought light to everyone. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it." Here the light is clearly Jesus, the Son of God, who came into our world as a human, in order to become our Savior. (John 1:14) Then in (1 John 1:5) we read "This is the message we heard from Jesus and now declare to you: God is light, and there is no darkness in Him at all." We are all familiar with darkness, which can be defined as the absence of light. When we enter a dark room, and turn on the light switch, we all know that the darkness disappears. Where does it go? The light simply "overcomes" it, because of the truth expressed in (John 1:5). This is a divine principle we need to learn early in our Christian journey: "Light" [Jesus] always overcomes "darkness" [Satan]! Jesus defeated Satan at Calvary, some 2000 years ago, when he shed His life's blood to pay the price of our sins. (Rom 6:23) Satan was not destroyed at that time, only stripped of his authority and power. His total destruction will only come at the end of the 1000 year reign of Christ. (Rev 20:7-10).

Now we turn to (1 John 4:8), which reads in the NLT "But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love." This is one of the most basic statements in all of scripture! The Greek word John used here, as directed by the Holy Spirit, was [Agape]. We might call it the "God kind of love". We find it used in many scriptures such as

(1 Cor 13), often referred to as the love chapter. Then of course it is used also in (John 3:16), probably the best known verse in the Bible. There are several other Greek words that have a completely different meaning from [Agape], that unfortunately in most English translations, they are all rendered as love. Our English language is a poor comparison to the Greek in which the NT was written! Therefore, it is critical for those of us who have never studied Greek, to be familiar with a good concordance like Strong's. In (Heb 4:13) we read in the NLT "Nothing in all creation is hidden from God. Everything is naked and exposed before His eyes, and He is the one to whom we are accountable." This could be very scary, if it were not for the fact that we have been discussing: God is certainly "Light", and sees everything we do, but He is also "Love", so we don't need to fear being accountable to Him! Unless, of course, we have been trying to keep something hidden from Him. A careful reading of (1 John 1:5-10) should clear up any cause of fear in this regard. And of course consider the Cross of Calvary, where we see the perfect example of the love of God being shown!

Sincerely submitted.

Dave Jamer