What is Light?
Did you know that one of the most mysterious things in all the world is light? Something virtually every one of us experiences on a daily basis is one of the least understood elements of the physical world. Scientists have spent centuries trying to discover the fundamental nature of light only to be stymied time after time. In some circumstances light acts like an energy wave and in others like a physical particle. Just when you think you know how it will act, you find it operating in unexpected ways and displaying unforeseen qualities. Every time physicists solve a previously unknown mystery about light, several more crowd in to take its place. So it leaves us scratching our heads a bit when John uses light as a metaphor to describe Jesus: “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men” (John 1:4).
Jesus, the Life and Light
There are certain similarities between life and light. As we have noted previously,1 life is notoriously difficult to define. And contrary to the continued hopes of committed naturalists everywhere, life has never been seen to arise from non-life, nor are there any known mechanisms to make that happen. Life needs a source. In these ways, life and light are very similar. Both are difficult to define and understand, and both require a source. Light does not exist independently; it must be emitted by something. In our experience, light comes from chemical, physical, or biological processes. This does not explain the origin of light itself any more than our observation that life comes from living things explains from where the first instance of life came.
Interestingly enough, the Bible tells us that light was created by God: “Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light” (Genesis 1:3). Light and life both find their origin in God. It should not surprise us, then, that John ties both light and life back to Jesus, the Word who is himself eternal God. He is the creator of all things, after all.2 But what does it mean to say that Jesus is the light of all mankind? John has in mind the fact that light exposes things, revealing them for what they truly are. Christ is light in that he is the One who brings reality into focus. It is his nature to reveal the truth about our humanity and God’s divinity. He reveals our true nature and condition as fallen, sinful creatures, and God’s nature as holy and morally perfect. He shows where we stand in relationship to God. Like Hans Christian Andersen’s folk tale The Emperor’s New Clothes, where a child speaks the truth everyone else is afraid to say: the emperor’s clothes aren’t real; he is in public wearing nothing at all! It should not surprise us that exposure is not welcome. “And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend [or overcome] it” (John 1:5).
When the Bible speaks of our spiritual blindness, it does not mean our inability to tell right from wrong but our unwillingness to accept God’s standard.
Light in the Darkness
But this brings up an important question: where did the darkness come from? If the eternal Word from John 1:1 is the creator of all things (v.3), the source of all life (v.4a), and the light of all men (v.4b), how did we come to be in darkness at all? Why would there be any opposition to the Light shining into the world he created? To understand this we must see that John is not really referring to the absence of physical light but to the moral darkness that has come into the world as a consequence of man’s sin. In the garden of Eden, the serpent told Eve that if she ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, she would become wise like God. Instead of opening her eyes, however, sin made her blind. We all descended from that first couple and have inherited the same spiritual blindness.
One important point to be understood here is that God has created us with the ability to see. This is true, not just in the physical realm but also in the realm of morality and ethics. Imagine a person who is completely blind. Of what benefit is light to him?3 None at all. He can’t see, whether he is in light or in darkness. In fact, if a man were born blind, he might conclude that light does not really exist at all, since he cannot perceive it. When the Bible speaks of man’s spiritual blindness, however, it does not mean our inability to tell right from wrong but our unwillingness to accept God’s standard. The spiritually blind person may conclude that there is no such thing as truth or objective morality, but try as he might, he cannot do away with them altogether. He denies the existence of objective truth because he does not want to accept God’s authority to define it. It is in response to this spiritual blindness that John says the light shines in the darkness.
A few years ago scientists demonstrated that a single candle could be seen at night by the naked human eye at a distance of about 1.6 miles. This was assuming certain rather ideal conditions, so the practical distance is probably less, but it is still interesting to think about how our eyes can pick out even a weak light source when it shines in darkness. Of course, the same candle would be invisible in the daylight from any real distance. This is why John uses the metaphor of light shining in darkness. We were created to be able to see, but we have become blind, because we have turned our eyes away from the light of truth. Jesus, the light of men, shines into the darkness so that any who are willing may be able to see.
1 Who is Jesus? The Source of Life/
2 Who is Jesus? The Creator of All Things
3 Of course, I know that light serves many other purposes in our world, so that we could say that he benefits greatly from light in many indirect ways, but I am speaking here about any direct benefits.
