“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.” John 12:35,36
Devotional Thought For The Day
This wouldn’t surprise people who are ignorant of God’s gracious love, mercy, and forgiveness, His will that all men be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. They assume that a potentiality for enlightenment and self-accomplished salvation has been provided for all by Jesus [which many unbelievers assume is of dubious value], and that this is about all that Jesus accomplished. Shortly after He said these things He was arrested, convicted, and duly executed by the proper authorities. They deem reports of His subsequent resurrection to be the result of a grief-induced hysteria of His rabid followers, who went on to invent a new religion – Christianity. So, they might superficially consider this report about Jesus’ behavior to be quite reasonable and expected. Important teachers have more important things to do than hang around with students who won’t listen to them. These are the same people who have determined they have nothing to learn at church or Bible Study, and sadly, many of these are former members of Christian congregations. What Jesus said is being fulfilled in them today: “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.” We do well to consider these words a bit more carefully.
John goes on to discuss what Jesus meant with this warning, and His subsequent withdrawal from these listeners. He wrote: “Though He had done so many signs before them, they still did not believe in Him.” [Jn. 12:37] John identifies this as fulfillment of Isaianic prophecy: “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.’” The reality of “schlero-cardia,” hardened heart, and subsequent incorrigibility, is an ancient Scriptural depiction and warning. We see it described in Genesis 6, and more personally, with specific details, in the Exodus account and God’s interactions with Pharaoh through His servant Moses. This is not a negation of God’s will that the wicked turn from his ways and live [Ezek. 33:11], but rather a very sad and sorrowful acknowledgement that part of the freedom God grants human beings is to reject Him and His gracious love, to plunge oneself into the darkness and lose all spiritual compass and sentience. This is the kind of “mind” that we often encounter in our daily lives – especially among the arrogant “intellectuals” and the “with it” moderns of our day. It is not retreating to cloistering when we brush the dust off of our feet and “hide” ourselves from such people. No matter what evidence is presented to them, they still will not believe in Him.
The words of Jesus apply equally to us, to those who have believed in Him. We too do well to guard against self-assurance, pride, and arrogance – the belief that “the light” is within our control and subject to our whims, that we have firm enough grip on it that we can safely go in and out of the light as we see fit. This is a form of the very hard-heartedness that we are warned about. Rather, the light of Jesus shines where He determines, where He has promised to be with us – in the preaching and teaching of His Word, Holy Scripture, in the fellowship of His dear redeemed people of faith, and in the Sacrament of His body and blood for forgiveness. And He also encourages us: “While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of light.” This is His will and His instruction, and all who truly believe in Him will take heed – “lest darkness overtake you.” And we all know of tragic instances where people who walked in the light for a time, in fellowship with us, no longer walk with us or with any Christian congregation [1Jn. 1:5-10; John 6:66; 1 Jn. 2:19]. God forbid we take these words of Jesus lightly and think that we can defy gravity.
John goes on to remark that “Isaiah said these things because he saw His glory and spoke of Him.” In what respect could Isaiah have seen more of Christ’s glory – including the details of His crucifixion and resurrection – than has been revealed to us in the pages of Holy Scripture, the New Testament eye witness accounts? So the judgment upon incorrigible darkness is even greater in these latter days – in a world built upon the gracious dynamics of the Christian church. There is another very similar and shocking warning in Scripture: “For it is impossible, in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding Him up to contempt.” [Heb. 6:4-6] So let us take seriously and heed the words of our Savior and Master: “While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of light.”
Prayer For The Day
Dear Lord Jesus, do not allow the many concerns, worries, anxieties, fears, pleasures, amusements, and carnal goals of this present temporal world to lure us out of the light and back into the darkness. There are so many deadly directions that we can be misguided into – we are weak; preserve us by Your grace, mercy, and power. Keep us in Your light, in Your presence, and make us children of light. Amen.