Jesus is The Light of The World

"Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world; he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life." John 8:12

 

Ephesians 5:6-13

(6) Let no man deceive you with vain words: for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience.

(7) Be not ye therefore partakers with them.

(8) For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of the light:

(9) (For the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth;)

(10) Proving what is acceptable unto the Lord.

(11) And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.

(12) For it is a shame to even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret.

(13) But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light: for whatsoever doth make manifest is light.

 

Moral decay, has led the corruptible away, for a steady decline into the dark, devastating "crimes" against society. The insanity in sin, confounds the perpetrator into believing sin's destructive forces won't hurt them. Lucifer On the Loose, to kill, steal, and destroy, the very people he uses to carry out his fatal blows of mass destruction. Warning to all who believes Satan's ruse of sin's "fun and fame" line. Satan lies!

 

"And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil." John 3:19

"The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light." Romans 13:12

It takes a great desire, and motivation within society, to turn away from the "darkness and destructiveness" of sin.

 

The Fruit of the Light, the moral product of a true faith in the gospel, is in all goodness, righteousness and truth.

 

Let no vain words deceive you into supposing that you may keep your new inheritance, and yet return to your old sins. Show your selves worthy of your calling. "Walk as children of the light, and you will possess the eternal kingdom."

 

Each person carries with him into his next state of existence, the restraints of living within his own limitations of his past. The weight of past problems complicates his current life, unless resolved in a way that can clean the slate.

 

That heritage depends upon his own choice; yet not upon his individual will working by itself, but on the grace and will of God working with him, as that grace is accepted or rejected. He must walk in righteousness; and he will reach the realm of the children of light.

 

The character of the children of light is shown in the moral teaching of the fruit of the Spirit. ("For the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness, and righteousness and truth.")

 

The children of the light, walk in all goodness, righteousness and truth, proving what is acceptable to the Lord. Walk in these ways; let your life bear this fruit; and you will be true children of the light of God. So living you will find out what it is that pleases God, and how joyful a thing it is to please Him. Your life will then be free from all complicity with the works of darkness.

 

Your life will shine with brightness clear and penetrating, that will put to shame the works of darkness and transform the darkness itself. It will speak with a voice that all must hear, bidding them awake from the sleep of sin, to see in Christ their light of life.

 

While these scriptures affirms what Christian virtue is, it also signifies where it comes from, how it is generated and maintained. It asserts the connection that exists between Christian Character and Christian Faith.

 

The fruit can't be grown without the tree, any more than the tree can grow soundly without yielding its proper fruit. Right is the fruit of light.

 

The true light of righteousness, reaches far out into the by ways of life, outside the visible course. All goodness has one source; for that true light, said Jesus, "there is none good but one, that is God."

 

Unbelief in God lays the axe to at the root of human society. With darkness of sin, decaying their morals, and felling the weakened trees, in every nation. No one can survive the overpowering devastation of sin unto death.

 

The moral fruit of a good Christian life--the life of individuals, of families and nations--is rooted in the unseen and hid with Christ in God. Walking in the "light" draws its vitality and virtue, through those spiritual principles in which we are united to Jesus Christ and have hope for eternal life.

 

Moral effects do not follow upon their causes as rapidly as physical effects: they follow as certainly. We live largely upon the accumulated ethical capital of our forefathers. When that is spent, we are left to our inner poverty of soul, to our faithlessness and weakness.

 

The skepticism of one generation bears fruit in the immorality of the next, or the next after that; the unbelief and cynicism of the teacher in the vice of his disciple. Such fruit blasting and decay of faith never failed to bear.

 

The truth is there is no real religion without virtue. If the godly man is not a good man, if he is not a sincere and pure-hearted man, "that man's religion is vain': (vain as in, empty, meaningless, useless) no matter what his professions or his emotions, no matter what his services to the Church. There is a flaw in him somewhere a rift within the musical run that spoils the music of faith's perfect sound. "A good tree cannot bring forth corrupt fruit."

 

In the sunshine of Jesus Christ's love, and under the refreshing breath of the Holy Spirit He sends forth the ripening sweetness of the spiritual fruit, in those who are walking in his light. Spiritual fruit grows in the fallow ground of goodness, righteous and truth.

 

Goodness stands first, as the most visible and obvious form of Christian excellence--that which everyone looks for in a religious man, and which every one admires when it is seen.

 

Christian goodness is the sanctification of the heart and its affections, renewed and governed by the love of God in Christ. Goodness is love embodied. Now love as the Christian knows it, is of God. "We love, because he first loved us...He loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins." this is the faith that makes good men--the best the world has ever known.

 

Vanity, selfishness, evil temper and desire are shamed and burnt out of the soul by the  holy fire of the love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord. In the warm, tender light of the cross the heart is softened and cleansed, and expanded to the widest charity. It becomes the home of all generous instincts and pure affections. So "the fruit of the light is in all goodness."

 

The principle of righteousness, fully understood, includes everything in moral worth, and is often used to denote in one word the entire fruit of God's grace in man. For righteousness is the sanctification of the conscience. It is loyalty to God's holy and perfect law of love.

 

It is no mere outward keeping of formal rules, such as the legal righteousness of ordinances, no submission to necessity or estimation of advantages: it is love of the law in a man's inmost spirit; it is the quality of a heart one with the law, reconciled to it as it is reconciled to God himself in Jesus Christ.

 

Righteousness and goodness are one, each is the counter face and complement of the other. Righteousness is to goodness as the strong backbone of principle, the firm hand and the vigorous grasp of duty, the steadfast foot that plants itself on the eternal ground of the right and true and stands against a world's assault.

 

Goodness without righteousness is a weak and fitful sentiment; righteousness without goodness is a dead formality (that's to be found in self-righteousness). He can't love God or his neighbor truly, who does not love God's law; and he knows nothing aright of that law, who does not know that it is the law of love.

 

The fruit of the light, the moral product of a true faith in the gospel, is in all goodness and righteousness.

 

High principles, scrupulous honor, and fervent fidelity to the righteous commandments given to us by Jesus Christ, and affirmed and expounded upon by the Holy Spirit's illumination of the word of God, produces the high moral standards, Jesus wants us to live by.

 

Spiritual honor and integrity, is no less essential to the image of Christ in the should than are warm feelings and zealous devotion to his service.

 

Jesus Christ the righteous, as His apostles loved to call Him, is the pattern of a manly faith, up to which we must grow in all things.

 

Jesus is the propitiation for our sins. Never was there an act of such unswerving integrity and absolute loyalty to the law of right as the sacrifice of Calvary. God forbid that we should magnify love at the expense of moral law, or make good feeling a substitute for duty.

 

Truth signifies the inward reality and depth of goodness and righteousness.

 

Truth does not mean veracity alone, the mere truth of the lips. Even people who are unregenerate can go as far as this. Men and women of the world expect as much from each other, and brand the liar with their contempt. Truth of words requires a reality behind itself.

 

Beyond all of this is the truth of the man or woman that God requires in speech, action, thought, all consistent, harmonious, and transparent, with the light of God's truth shining through them.

 

Truth is the harmony of the inward and the outward, the correspondence of what man is in himself with that which he appears and wishes to appear to be.

 

It is only the children of the light, only Christians thoroughly good and upright, who can, in this strict sense, be believers of truth.

 

So long as any malice or iniquity is left in our nature, we have something to conceal. We can't afford to be sincere. We are compelled to pay, by very shame, the degrading tribute which vice renders to virtue, the homage of hypocrisy. But find a man whose intellect, whose heart, and will, tried at whatever point, ring sound and true, in whom there is no affectation, no make-believe, no pretense or exaggeration, no discrepancy, no discord in the music of his life and thought, "an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no guile", there is a saint for you, and a man of God.

 

Truth is the hall-mark of entire sanctification; it is the highest and rarest attainment of the Christian life. It is equally the charm of an innocent, unspoiled childhood, and of a ripe and purified old age.

 

The apostle John, "the disciple who Jesus loved," is the most perfect embodiment, after his Master, of this consummating grace. In him righteousness and love were blended in the translucence of an utter simplicity and truth.

 

The divine quality of truth is the unity of the outward and inward, of heart, and act, and word in the individual, it is at the same time the agreement of the individual with the reality of things as they exist in God. The truth of God makes in all our human expressions, and in agreement with the scriptures, through living according to that truth that we know and understand in the word.

 

We magnify our own sincerity to self-centered ideology, until it becomes vitiated (perverted; morally corrupt) and pretentious. In our eagerness to realize and express our own convictions, we give too little pains to form them upon a sound basis; we make a great virtue of speaking out what is in our hearts, but take small heed of what comes into the heart, and speak out of a loose self-confidence and blind admiration of our own opinions.

 

People who make-up their own "truth" and believe their own lies and speaks careless slander and rumors, that propagates his own lies, works his deceit on the unlearned. He speaks what is in his own evil imagination, he is compelled to speak only what he thought as truth. They utter their own crude unrealities, to bring forth his delusions, mistakes, half-formed thoughts, hasty judgments, and falsehoods: their individual truth would be each man's own lie. The vast multitudes of deceivers, that echo a babel of various individual opinions, and call it truth, scatter, disseminate. fracture the people who seriously search for the truth.

 

Let us seek goodness, righteousness, and truth, in all we endeavor to think, and do. When we have "ears to hear and eyes to see" and still can't distinguish the truth from a lie, we know we are not "complete" or "perfected" enough to produce our best for the Lord.

 

We see in both ourselves and other people "moral" malformations, and malfunctions, that affects society as a whole. They believe a lie and are damned.

 

"Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon." Isaiah 55:7

 

There is a want of balance and of finish about a multitude of Christian lives, even of those who have long and steady pursued the way of faith.

 

We have sweetness without strength, and strength without gentleness, and truth spoken without love, and words of passionate zeal, without accuracy and heedfulness. All this is infinitely sad, and infinitely damaging to the cause of Christianity.

 

Let us judge ourselves, that we be not judged by the Lord. Let us count no wrong a trifle. Let us never imagine that our defects in one thing, will be atoned for by excellence in another.

We will examine the effects upon surrounding darkness with the light of God in Christian lives.

 

Ephesians 5:1:14

(11) And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness; but rather reprove them.

(12) For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret.

(13) But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light: for whatsoever doth make manifest is light.

(14) Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.

 

The "things secretly done" by others, "of which it is a shame even to speak," of them, as they are open and manifest forms of evil, in which they invite their Christian neighbors to join. Instead of complying with sin, and "having fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness," they must rather "reprove them." Silence, absence, or abstinence is not enough. Where sin is open to rebuke, it should at all risk be rebuked.

 

A rebuke for wrong actions, should be expressed in caring concern for the person who has stepped across the line of safety into harms way, to follow evil. A caring rebuke is showing Christian love, by trying to help someone see that to continue in the path of sin leads them deeper and deeper into the misery of evil.

 

On the other hand, Apostle Paul does not warrant Christians to pry into the hidden sins of the world around them to play the moral detective. "It is a shame" a disgrace to our common nature, and a grievous peril to the young and innocent; To fill the public prints with the nauseous details of crime and to taint the psychological air with its putridness.

 

"But all things," the Apostle says--whether it be those open works of darkness, profitless of good, which expose themselves to direct conviction, or the depths of Satan that hide their shame from the light of day, where "all things being reproved by the light, are made manifest."

 

The fruit of the light convicts the unfruitful works of darkness. The daily life of a Christian amongst people of the world is a perpetual reproof, that tells against secret sins of which no word is spoken. It's the shining light of a life living "holy and righteous" that reveals the striking contrast between that light, and the darkness of one living with open sin and shameful vices.

 

"This is the condemnation," said Jesus, "that light is come into the world." And this condemnation every one who walks in Christ's steps, and breathes His Spirit amid the corruptions of the world, is carrying on, more frequently in silence than by spoken argument. Our unconscious and spontaneous influence is the most effective part of our Christian witness. Life is the light of men; words are only the index of life from which they spring. Just as our lives touch the conscience of others and reveal the difference between darkness and light, so do we hold forth the word of life and carry on the Holy Spirit's work of convincing the world of sin, "Let your light so shine."

 

This manifestation leads to transformation: "For every thing that is made manifest is light." Apostle Paul says, "You are light in the Lord." you who were "once darkness," once wandering in the lust and pleasures of the sinful world around you, without hope and without God.

 

The light of the gospel was disclosed, and then dispelled the darkness of that former time; so may be with your witness to your still sinful kindred, through the light you bring to them. So it will be with the night of sin that is spread around the world, when Christians life and voice witness about the Lord's goodness. The light that shines upon sin-laden and sorrowful hearts shines on them to change them into Christ's own nature of love.

 

The manifested is light: in other words, if man can be made to see the true nature of sin, those that accept the "truth" will forsake sin. If the light of the gospel of Jesus Christ, can penetrate their conscience it will save them, through their sincere acceptance of Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.

 

The major contrasts between "right and wrong", "good and evil" and "light and dark" dramatically shows in Christian lives who sincerely lives according to the principles of "goodness, righteousness, and truth."

 

"The sincere prayer of a righteous man availeth much."

 

Excerpt from: An Exposition of the Bible--Published in 1903 by a very long list of scholars, some who were good, some who were not.                             

 

   ~ With additional comments in bold type  by Joan Jessalyn Cox

Scriptures from the King James Version of the Holy Bible

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                                    Copyright Joan Jessalyn Cox © 2013

 

 




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