“I am the light of the world.”

— John 8:12

“You are the light of the world.”

— Matthew 5:14

I write this blog entry after a particularly dark week of news. Days ago, a gunman entered a classroom at Brown University and shot several students, killing two. Hours later, two gunmen attacked a Hanukkah celebration on a beach in Sydney, Australia. Just hours after that, Hollywood icon Rob Reiner and his wife, Michelle, were brutally murdered. Even worse: Their son was arrested and charged with the crime shortly thereafter. Meanwhile, the United States is beating war drums and indicating coming conflict with Venezuela, war rages on between Russia and Ukraine, Christians are targeted in Nigeria, debate rages regarding the Affordable Care Act premiums, and the Epstein files may finally be released.

This does not feel like a slow drip. It seems like a deluge of despair, flooding our hearts and minds with doubts and concerns. It is easy to feel as if we are drowning in bad faith actions, as if the dark waters may overtake us.

Darkness.

The world often feels very dark—perhaps impossibly so. There is a darkness so deep, so thick that we lose our bearings, our sense of where we are and which way we ought to go.

In suffocating darkness, we desperately need a light.

I don’t think it was accidental that Jesus chose to call Himself the light of the world. The citizens of Judea may not have had smartphones in their tunic pockets, but they certainly felt the darkness closing around them. Recent history had seen Jerusalem conquered by one foreign empire after another. Their current occupier, Rome, was harsh, if anything. Their brief time of political freedom—the Maccabean period—was quashed quickly and violently. Their daily lives were marked by hard labor and short lifespans.

Jesus’s words and actions demonstrated a new path forward amid darkness. His audacious claim—I am the light of the world—points to His divinity, but it also gives hope to those who choose to make Jesus their Lord. His light, He explains, is so that those who follow Him will never walk in darkness. This certainly refers to a life in eternity with Christ, but it also (perhaps more so) speaks to our embodied earthly lives. 

The Christian life is marked by choosing a way of living in the world that embraces the radical way of Jesus, each step of which is illuminated by the Light of the world. As counterintuitive as it may seem, those of us who choose the way of peacemaking, reconciliation, forgiveness, generosity, sexual purity, and radical love find ourselves walking with much greater clarity than we would ever find on our own. When we walk in step with Jesus, we discover that we are, in fact, designed to live in this way. Jesus is the True Human (as Barth famously said), and when we embrace Jesus, we, too, may finally shed all false versions of ourselves and embrace the true vision of humanity given at creation.

When we live in this way, we have, as Jesus says, “the light of life” (John 8:12).

I think it is here, once we have the light of life, that we can make sense of Jesus’s statement in Matthew 5: “You are the light of the world.” Once we have chosen faith in Christ and decided to live our lives in the way He designed, that light begins to shine.

Many years ago, my wife, Joy, had a candle holder that surprised me. It had small mirrors around it, and when she lit a candle inside of it, it gave off a surprising amount of light in our home. When the light of Christ enters our

lives, we become a mirror of sorts, reflecting his light into all sorts of spaces—boardrooms, classrooms, and living rooms.

I once heard a Bible teacher say, “People don’t care about what you believe until they see how you behave.” I think most Christian spaces these days operate with the opposite mentality. They care a great deal (perhaps too much?) about doctrinal precision, but they never get around to crafting a precision of love. As a result, a great deal of theological pontificating takes place on social media and YouTube without the corresponding compassion that might invite others into the Kingdom. 

I can already hear some complaints forming. “Are you saying doctrine doesn’t matter?” 

Of course not.

I just don’t think it’s what brings most people into the Kingdom, at least not initially.

I know few who have come to faith because of doctrine. I know many who have come to faith because of a demonstration of love.

Dare I say that Jesus agrees?

When Jesus tells His followers that they are the light of the world, He does not say, “Let your doctrine shine before men.” Rather, he says, “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in Heaven.” 

Our faith should lead us to live differently, and that different way of life should be so stunning, so gracious, so generous, and so extravagant that others cannot help but be drawn to it. It ought to be like light in darkness, like a colony of life in a culture of death. Like the candle holder, a congregation choosing to embody this radical way of Jesus becomes like countless mirrors reflecting the light of the world from Jesus through the lens of our lives, making a way for others to see how to proceed.

The world is incredibly dark.

But with Jesus in us, others might see.

If only we will be willing to live out the sort of lives that he designed.

Additional Resources for Living Out Your Faith:

James Bible Study		Revelation		Jesus Is Better | Hebrews Bible Study		Good Christian Girl
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