"In Him was life; and the life
was the light of men." - John 1:4
Weighted,
indeed, with meaning are the words, "In
Him was life!" Inherent in Him there is a fountain of life ever
overflowing and accessible to us. Through Him, we pass out of death into life.
Our sonship is real and wonderful. "Beloved,
now are we the sons of God." What we shall be when privileged to see
Him as He is belongs to the realm of things yet unrevealed, but not so the matter
of our sonship and newness of life through Christ. True is the word verifying
this fact: "The Spirit itself bears
witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God" (Rom.
This
life of Christ we are called upon to exhibit before others, as say the
Scriptures, "Always bearing about in
the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made
manifest in our body" (2 Corinthians 4:10). This being true, we are to
go on believing that life's meridian in spiritual experience is not a thing of
the past, but still before us. We are to understand that what we have attained
to is still far short of that which can be. Christian life ever follows the
divinely ordained way, "First the
blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear" (Mark
"In
Him was life" ~ Life in its perfect expression! Life pulsating with
undiminished devotion to the will of God, and ceaseless in its flow toward
those He came to redeem. Life indeed! Something so much a part of His own joy
that as He witnessed the deadness of those about Him, and to whom He came as
unto His own, He must utter His deep lament, "You will not come to Me that you might have life." (John
5:40.) Spurning this great opportunity, they grieved the heart of the Lord of
life, just as it continues to grieve Him when such as are now His own fail to
receive Him in all the fullness He longs to be to all His true people. He
continues to say even as in those days of long ago, "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it
more abundantly" (John
What,
then, in concise language, does this mean to us who rejoice in having passed
from the universal condition of death in Adam to newness of life in Christ? To
have received of His life means
"Christ who is our life"
will be continually working out in us the fulfillment of His promise, "He that abides in Me, and I in Him,
the same brings forth much fruit" (John 15:5). The object is fruit, more
fruit, much fruit. Progression is
everywhere presented in the Word of God. The days of creation represent this
law. Creative activity began at the
lowest point, and then worked up to the climax in the creation of man in God's
own image. The ministry of Jesus began with filling earthen water-pots with
sparkling wine to gladden the hearts of men. He finished that ministry in
pouring out His blood to save the souls of men. So it is with us in the matter
of our spiritual growth.
The
knowledge of His grace first dissipates the darkness, bringing us into His
marvelous light. Then by "the might
of His power to us who believe," we,
"beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same
image from glory to glory" (2 Corinthians 3:18). Thus, with Christ as
our life, we are indeed "God's
workmanship created in Christ Jesus." We are made for Him, through a love surpassing knowledge, and made
like Him by a power infinitely able
to complete so great a work in us. Possessing the life of Christ means having
“the mind of Christ,” eventually bringing to us the fullness of His character.
The fruit of righteousness will then have developed from blossom to bud, from
the immature in growth to the final lusciousness in flavor, and sweetness in
perfume.
Complementary
to the Bible as a means of teaching us God's wonder-working ways, we have the
great book of nature adding thereto with many remarkable manifestations. How
strong should be our faith in the power of God to bring to completion the
design He has in His plan for each one of us. We look, again and again, at what
man can accomplish by way of working out the seemingly impossible in the cultivation
of fruits and flowers.
As
we look at the creations man has wrought, well may we exclaim, "Can this man, and can God not?"
The Irish rose is a thing
of beauty, and fragrant with perfume as from the hand of God. A gardener
desires to multiply the number of his Irish rose bushes. He may go out into
the untitled woodlands and dig up a wild brier rose with all its coarseness in
stem and branch. This he transplants in the soil of his own garden that it may
take root there, but this garden is for sweet Irish roses, not for briers. So the wild brier is cut off close to the soil,
and a slit made in the remaining stub. Into this a bud of the Irish rose
is grafted, and
ere long the
stem and branches
grow upward bearing buds which blossom into roses, filling
the air with a sweet fragrance
the wild brier could never know. Even as our Master Gardener has said to us, so
might the gardener of our illustration have said as he went to the brier in
the wilds, "I have come that you might have life, and that you might have it
more abundantly." Will we not be as submissive in Christ's hands as
was the brier in the gardener's and let Him be life indeed to us?
"That was the true Light, which lights
every man that comes into the world" (John 1:9). Jesus, as that true
Light, came into the world to reveal God to men. He was truly Emmanuel --"God with us" -- God with us
in the person of His Son, whom having seen and heard it was as if the person
and voice of the Father had been seen and heard. In the radiance of His life among men, God was revealed as
holy, beyond the approach of fallen men, yet brought near in the supreme gift
of His love, His only begotten Son. He was manifest as love in its fullness of
sympathy for His fallen creatures, and yearning to translate them out of the
kingdom of sin and darkness into the realms of true life, light, and holiness.
As the Light of men, Jesus came to reveal that where sin had abounded, grace much more abounded. "Never man spoke like this Man,"
and never man lived so radiant a life as He of whom the Apostle wrote, "We beheld His glory, the glory as of the
Only Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth."
True,
men have mostly loved darkness rather than light, therefore the Light of the world,
the great revelation of grace and truth, has lightened but a few in the measure
now made possible to those willing to walk in the light as He is in the light.
Nevertheless, He will yet "lighten
every man that cometh into the world." He will yet arise over the
world as the “Sun of Righteousness, with healing in His beams,” and then it
shall no more be true, "Darkness
shall cover the earth and gross darkness the people," for then, "the
earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the
sea" (Isa. 60:2; 11:9).
We come
again to our own place of privilege in the will of God. He who said, "I am the Light of the world,"
also said, "You are the light of
the world." What a privilege this represents!
Jesus was a fountain of light; we can be but reflectors of the light received
from Him. In
same Epistle, we have another such beautiful and suggestive
expression: 'Because He who said, Out of
darkness light shall shine! [Is He] who has shone in our hearts, in proportion
to the radiance of the glorious knowledge of God, in the face of Christ.
Howbeit we have this treasure in earthen vessels that the surpassing greatness
of the power may be of God and not
from ourselves" (
He
who is our light not only lights up the way we take in following Him, but
lights us up as we follow Him in that way.
"It is much to be guided by light; it is greater to be glorified by light. It is much to see the way
by the light that shines from Him; it is
greater when the light kindles in our own eyes until they, too, shine with the
light that is in His. He who follows the light of the world becomes a light of the world. The pillar
of light that lights up the way for the follower lights up also the follower in the way. What is likeness to Christ?
It is when the light from the moving pillar falls on the life, following close
behind it, until the follower of life becomes also in its way a moving pillar
of light.
To
keep in the presence of the risen Lord; to follow Him as the moving pillar; to
lay aside every weight and sin which does so easily beset us, 'looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher
of our faith,' that is the restoration of the attribute of light. The glory of pureness, the glory of
patience, the glory of grand endeavor, the glory of fellowship with God, are
the light that is in Him -- which, if we follow, will fall on us, and as He is,
so shall we be in this world.
J. J. Blackburn
“The light Jesus brings is the light which
puts chaos to flight. In the creation story,
God moved upon the dark, formless chaos, which was before the world began and
said, “Let there be light” (Gen.
1:3). The newly-created light of God
routed the empty chaos into which it came.
So Jesus is the light that shines in the darkness. He is the one person who can save life from
becoming a chaos. Left to ourselves, we
are at the mercy of our passions and our fears.
The light that Jesus brings is a
revealing light. It is the condemnation of men that they loved the darkness
rather than the light, and did so because their deeds were evil; they hated the
light lest their deeds should be exposed.
The light that Jesus brings is something which shows things as
they are. It strips away the disguises
and concealments; it shows things in all their nakedness; it shows them in
their true character and their true values.
We never see ourselves until we see
through the eyes of Jesus. We never see
what our lives are like until we see them in the light of Jesus. Jesus often drives us to God by revealing us
to ourselves.
The light that Jesus brings is a
guiding light. If a man does not possess
that light, he walks in darkness and does not know where he is
going. When a man receives that light
and believes in it, he walks no more in darkness. The path becomes light; the
decision that was wrapped in a night of uncertainty is illumined. Without Jesus, we are like men groping on an
unknown road in a blackout. With Him,
the way is clear.
William Barclay