Recently, I began blogging on our Sunday sermons to help myself review; today, I’m continuing that by covering our March 19 service, based on John 8:12. We’re currently in a series on Jesus’ “I am” statements in the book of John. These are key statements he uses to reveal his person, work, and relationship to God and they form a core part of the gospel of John.

Here, the relevant statement is:

I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.

(John 8:12, NASB)

Here, Jesus’ proclamation that he is light ultimately is a declaration he is the Messiah, the savior. We focused on three key aspects of what this light represents, and how it contrasts with darkness:

  1. Darkness represents ignorance as light represents knowledge. Jesus came to open their eyes to the truth. He came to fundamentally change people; when we become Christians, we are changed; our eyes are opened to what we were blind to before.
  2. Darkness represents sinfulness as light represents righteousness. Jesus came to set us free from sin, and to cleanse us from sin. He didn’t come primarily to feed the hungry, to change the economy, or any other such thing, but to rescue us from sin and set us free from its power. Some at times seeminly turn away from Christ, but it’s often a moral problem, not a problem of knowledge – that is, some preferred their sin, so started to find problems with Christ – and we see that even in this passage, where some were offended by Jesus’ remarks and left. They preferred their sin.
  3. Darkness represents lostness as light represents direction. Jesus called them to follow him, and calls us to follow him. But following is a contrast to leading; you cannot follow Christ if you are trying to lead. Are we trying to get God to do our will? Maybe we ask him to help us do X, or to get a certain job, or to get married, etc. But following Christ is not getting him to do our will. Another contrast to “following” is “coming later” – coming at your own time, when you are ready (Ed. - this reminds me of Augustine’s famous “Lord, give me chastity, but not yet.”). Pastor Peter noted that most disobedience is actually what we think of as delaying – we think, “later” or “soon”, or “if you…” rather than “no”, but it amounts to the same thing. But if we recognize him as the light of the world we begin to follow. He is what we’ve been looking for.

P Peter also emphasized how this period of quarantine is a great opportunity for us to assess. The whole world is, in a way, flipped upside down. Is what we consider “normal” worth going back to, or is it part of going astray from Christ? We ought to ask, “What is normal? Has the light been turned on for me? Have I seen the glory of God in the face of Christ? Do I see sin in the world the way God sees it? Am I following Christ?” (This has some overlap with my recent post on assessing our culture in the time of COVID-19).

For me, this sermon further reinforced what I’ve already been thinking about from the series on the “I am” statements and from my own recent study of Ephesians 3:14-21 (which looked at Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians): What I really need and long for is more of Christ himself. Too often, much of my prayer is about physical desires in this world, but what I really need – and what those around me need most – is more of Christ. And my prayer needs to be more about following Christ, less about what I want. We see this same idea in the Ephesians passage I just cited; Paul’s great desire for them is to know the love of Christ more (and by extension, follow him more). That’s what I really need – to know the love of Christ more and pursue him more. Doing so changes everything.