The Long Expected Jesus: "He is the Expected Light"

I love to the facial expressions of people when they experience a moment of understanding. One minute they have this puzzled and inquisitive look, which is then replaced by a relaxed and peaceful look. I think we all enjoy and strive for those moments when something confusing comes into clear view and makes full sense. It is like an inner struggle has ceased and peace has arrived. To a greater degree, the arrival of Jesus was like that for those who believed and followed Him. For them Jesus became the answer to all the questions and expectation they had based upon the promises of God. The life of Jesus, when fully accepted, brings light to an otherwise darkened world. We can summarize this with the phrase, His life is our light.

At the time of Jesus’ birth the expectations for a messiah were based upon passages such as Isaiah 9:1-6. This passage and others like it built an expectation of a light giving Messiah. With these expectations, the people of Jesus day made three common mistakes. They settled for the initial fulfillment at the defeat of Midian. They also neglected the primary promise based on the initial covenant between God      and Abraham (Gen. 12-17). And finally, they ignored the spiritual aspects of God’s kingdom. May our expectations of God be based on the big picture of His promises.

With this expectation, the people should have accepted the teachings of John the Baptist which when observed closely teaches that humans have a natural intuition to reject lies (John 1:4-9) This in fact was one of the reasons Jesus revealed Himself as truth and John describes Jesus as light. We can understand this passage that way because, in this passage the word “life” is the Greek word “Zoe” meaning essential and ethical life. The word “light” here is the Greek word "Phos", meaning physical light emitted by any source and often used metaphorically as Gods truth which is exposed to the view of all. It is also used to speak of public reason and the ability to understand moral and spiritual truth.

This light of Jesus that is our life cast out darkness. Darkness represents ignorance of divine things and human duties. This darkness is accompanied by ungodliness and immorality. The life within every human being provides the capacity to fully comprehend spiritual and moral truth. Again, we see the reality of man’s rejection of those things that are absent of truth. This begs the questions, if by nature lies are rejected, why do so many choose to live in them?

The answer may be in John 3:16-21. In this passage, we learn, that people live in lies because they don’t want their true selves to be known. When Jesus arrives, He seeks to save those this state of condemnation (V.16-18). This state is described with the word evil. Before we this of this word describing the worst of mankind, we should not its true meaning. In this text the word evil means full of labors, annoyances, hardships, in a physical and moral sense. People stay away from Christ because they are entangled by the laborious, hard life brought on by their poor moral and ethical behavior.

With this text in mind, we can receive the challenge to live according to the light of Christ through His word (Psalm 119:103). May we not cover up the aspect of life that can make it laborious and hard. The invitation stands to allow the life of Jesus to be a light of truth within each one of us. If we choose to rise to this challenge our families and church will be a light giving church (1 Peter 2:9).