# 11 2021 Dev. 1 Jn.1:5. The Light of Life! Read chapter 1 first. The purpose of these devotionals is to draw closer to God and grow spiritually by applying His Word to our daily living. All passages are taken from the NIV.
1 Jn. 1:5 “This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.”
John is writing to followers of Jesus in the Roman providence of Asia between AD 85 and 95. John tells his people and us today that Jesus is the “Word of life” and “God is light”. He begins as he began his gospel: Jesus as “The Word of Life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us.” John is speaking out of experience, he saw the power of Jesus, he saw His love, His grace, His healing and had the privilege to participate along with the Spirit of Jesus throughout His life. What John is telling his people and those of us who follow Jesus that by faith we are also able to experience all that John is telling us. The Word of God is alive, powerful and effective and must be on display in our lives!
John likes to provide opposing images, as in the next section of this chapter: “Light and Darkness, Sin and Forgiveness”. John says you cannot say you have light if you walk in darkness. He is speaking of sin. Is there anyone without sin? John’s answer: “But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all[b] sin.”
John also is addressing specific heresies that are starting to rise among those who claim to follow Jesus; Gnosticism and Docetism (salvation by true knowledge) and rejecting Jesus as truly man and truly divine) Both of these heresies separate the spiritual from the physical and are opposed to each other. This is still going on today; we are starting to hear that the fall was moral and did not change the physical world at the time, assuming that death was in the garden from the beginning. The Bible disputes that idea; I will quote only one:
Rm. 8: 22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 23 Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies.” Death and sin was introduced to this world by the fall; forgiveness, salvation and eternal life is introduced to all who believe in the living Word of God. In the end there will be a New Heaven and a New Earth. That is our comfort and our hope, Praise be to God!
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