Hywel George
When Jesus said, “I am the light of the world,” he drew on centuries of loaded meaning. Before he made this great claim, Moses and Joshua and the psalmists and Ezra and Isaiah, and countless others had been teaching about the light of the Lord which comes to the world. That which had been revealed to those ancient saints was referenced, repurposed, and re-told by Jesus in John 8:12.
But what does the title really mean?
Moses
In the beginning, God speaks light into existence (Gen 1:3). The light shining in the darkness is among the earliest events of Trinitarian creation and provides a pattern for all of history.1 The movement from evening to morning—the dawning of light into darkness—is the movement of creation’s story, as God’s light progressively breaks into a shrouded world until the brightness of day arrives in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.2 As time passes and the Lord reveals more, he shows us more about his world-illuminating light.
Recall the story of the exodus, from the beginning in Egypt to the end at Sinai, light beams everywhere. In the brightly burning bush of Midian, Christ is present (Exod 3:2).3 When Egypt endures thick darkness, light continues with God’s people in Goshen (Exod 10:21–23). Liberated at Passover, Jesus leads them with a bright pillar of shining cloud and fire (Exod 13:21; Jude 1:5). Reaching Sinai to worship, they find the mountain blazing in flames (Exod 19:18). Having spoken with our Lord on the mountain, Moses returns with his face shining (Exod 34:29). All this before we read of the lampstand in the Lord’s presence and the tabernacle’s Holy Place (Exod 27:20). Light conspicuously stalks our fathers throughout Exodus and, in each case, this light signifies the nearness and favour of the Lord to his people.
Since Genesis 1, and especially since the exodus, light is associated with the Lord’s presence and gracious goodwill. Unsurprisingly, this becomes deeply ingrained in Israelite culture. Christians are used to hearing a benediction such as 2 Cor 13:14 in church services, but our fathers were used to hearing a different benediction in the wilderness. The priests regularly evoked the brightly shining face of the Lord to bless his people (Num 6:22–27). The theological significance of light is immortalised in the mind and culture of Israel: where the Lord is present, there is light and blessing.
The Psalmists
After the “children of Israel” become the “nation of Israel,”4 the light which had featured so prominently in their history begins featuring in their literary poetry and songs with more glorious expressions and symbolism.
In the Psalms we find continuations of what has already been observed: light signifies the Lord’s presence and favour, and the shining face of God brings blessing (see Pss 4; 18; 43; 44). But new elements feature. Upon reflection, the psalmists see a concurrence not just between light and the presence of God but also between light and the discrete benefits of his presence. The psalmists began to speak of the light of the Lord as symbolic not only of nearness and blessing but of salvation and life (Pss 27; 36; 56).5
Isaiah
Christ is truly prefigured as the Lord’s light in the exodus: fire, lamps, plagues, shining clouds, etc. This theology takes a more poetic shape in the Psalms, but by the time of the prophets there is an explosion in its soteriological expression.
Building on Exodus and the Psalms, one of Isaiah’s themes is that the Lord’s Servant (the Christ in chapters 42 & 49) will be the bright presence and salvation of God not just to Israel, but to the nations! We could put it another way: the Christ will be the light of the world.
The theological significance of light was never obscured, but Isaiah offers a pronounced Christological clarity. Light is no longer merely a poetic term describing the life, salvation, presence, and favour of the Lord for Israel (Pss 4:6; 27:1; 44:3). Light is personified and shines like “a light shining in the darkness” of the world as one who “overcomes the world” (see Isa 42:6; 49:6 cf. John 1:4–5; 16:33).
Isaiah’s light is the Christ.6 Isaiah anticipates that Jesus will come from the Father to be light, life, salvation, and goodwill to all men—rescue and God-present-with-us to the world.
The Word of Light which birthed the cosmos in Gen 1, which Moses saw on Sinai, will flash again—and this time, in the flesh.
The Apostles
As the Son’s rise finally occurs, the loaded meaning of the Lord’s light as preserved down the centuries is sung around his birth. In Luke’s gospel, Zacharias and Simeon speak of the light of the Lord in ways reminiscent of Moses, the psalmists, and Isaiah (Luke 1:67–79; 2:29–32). Zacharias prophesies concerning the unborn Jesus that he would “give light” to the world (v. 79). God is light, gives light, and sends Jesus who is light, and Jesus himself will give light, too.
This is vividly, if only partially, fulfilled in John 9 where Jesus heals blindness for the first time in human history (John 9:32).7 Only “the LORD opens the eyes of the blind” (Ps 146:8), so this light-giving miracle is reserved for the Light of the World, Jesus—who is God, who is light, and who gives light to those in darkness.8
The timeless saying itself, “I am the light of the world,” is spoken by Jesus at the end of the Feast of Tabernacles, among the highest days of the year (John 7:1–8:12). During this feast, Jews re-enacted the wilderness wanderings, living in tents dotted around the temple precincts. To illuminate the temple courtyards during the feast, they lit enormous menorahs so numerous and bright that, though it was night in Jerusalem, it was said to be daytime in the temple!9
The light pouring from the Temple into their tents reminded our fathers of that light which pursued and pursues them: the presence and favour of the Lord in the pillar of light, the salvation of Christ in his rescue, the life of God when he saved them from the death of Egypt and the desert. It was all so vivid before their eyes! On the final day of the feast, the Jews ceremonially extinguished those menorahs, anticipating that Isaiah’s Christ, the light of the world, would soon appear.
With all the loaded meaning which had gone before him, Jesus stood in the Temple, surrounded by smoking menorahs, and boldly proclaimed, “I am the Light of the World”—the presence of the Lord, the favour of the Lord, the Lord’s salvation, Isaiah’s Christ, salvation to the nations, life to the dead!
A Surprising Tangent
There is more to this title of Jesus’ than the millennia of steeped anticipation. No sooner than Jesus makes this staggering statement, the whole concept of light seems to disappear for the rest of the discourse. For the remainder, Jesus speaks about something else (John 8:12–59). More than anything else, the title “light of the world” has to do with Jesus’ relationship with the Father.10 When Jesus’ opponents challenge his claim to be the light of the world (John 8:13), his reply is not from Moses, the psalmists, or prophets—Jesus says that he is the light because he is from the Father.
This concept is not novel in John’s gospel; the Apostle began by mimicking Moses’ opening in Genesis, saying that just as God spoke light and life in the beginning, so he opens his mouth today and the Word, the light of the world, still pours out. The sent-ness of Jesus by the Father is one of John’s primary themes.11 Jesus Christ is the expression of the Father and, upon reaching the New Testament, we are well prepared to see the Father’s light, presence, favour, and salvation as identical with Jesus. Jesus is the Father’s Light of the World. It was in Christ that the Father spoke his light in the beginning; in Christ he created and sustains all things; in Christ he speaks salvation to the ends of the earth; in Christ we know his presence.12
Unless the Father shines in Jesus, we remain in the dark and cannot see him; he must choose to reveal himself to us (Luke 10:22).13 Even when he does seem to show himself in Scripture, he is also concealed. In shining clouds he hid himself in the wilderness, tabernacle, and temple. He dwells in unapproachable light (1 Tim 6:16) and covers himself with light (Ps 104:2). Just as the sun is too bright to look at, our God is too wonderful, too fantastic and glorious to lay eyes on.
However, John tells us that, though no one has ever seen God, Jesus has made him known (John 1:18). The Father is unknowable and invisible, and he is yet pleased to be seen and known in Jesus Christ (Col 1:15, 19; 2:9; Heb 1:3). Therefore, Jesus is able to say that he is the Light of the World—there is no other in whom the Father is pleased to reveal himself as present and full of goodwill to all humankind.
Christ is the image of the Father (Heb 1:3), and when the Lord speaks the light of his gospel into our hearts, he gives us the knowledge of the Father in Jesus Christ. Consider 2 Cor 4:6 carefully:
For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
God shines into our hearts to give us light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Paul is clear and echoes Jesus’s words in John 6 and 8: unless we know Jesus, the light of the world, God remains shrouded in darkness. Even when the Father reveals himself, it is only through Jesus and by his Spirit (Matt 11:27). Therefore, Jesus says, a few moments after claiming to be the light of the world, “If you knew me you would know my Father” (John 8:19).
Light Shines Brightest Where It Is Darkest
In Exodus 10, the Lord’s thick and felt darkness came on the land of his enemies while his people continued in light. At Calvary, this striking scene was reversed (Matt 27:45). The light of the world was extinguished by the Father and his whole land plunged into the darkness of his judgement so that the rest of the world might bask in light.
It is because Jesus, the light of the world who came from the Father to bring us to the Father, “walked in darkness and had no light” (Isa 50:10) that the Church can now “walk in the light, as children of the light” (Eph 5:8). It is because the Light was entombed in night that the Church is freed from the grave to have overflowing life (John 10:10). It is because the Light could not ultimately be eclipsed by darkness but burst through that we are now his own special people, that we may proclaim the praises of him who called us out of darkness into his marvelous light (1 Pet 2:9).
A pastor once put it well: “Light is not a conclusion to be reached, but it is to be seen and basked in.”14 Just so, the Lord Jesus is not a notion to be studied in history and read about in psalms but a person to know and be known by, to love and be loved by.
“The light is among you for a little while longer. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtake you. The one who walks in the darkness does not know where he is going. While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of light.” (John 12:35-36)
Hywel George is a pastor in Maesycwmmer, Wales, United Kingdom and a graduate from Union School of Theology. You can follow him on Twitter @_HywelGeorge.
Image: Gustave Dore, The Creation of Light
- Gen 1:2–3; cf. John 1:5. Robert Letham, Systematic Theology (Wheaton: Crossway, 2019), 271–80.[↩]
- James Bejon helpfully observes that “typology is a feature of history before it is a feature of the Biblical narrative.” See James Bejon, “Biblical Repetition and the God of History.”[↩]
- John Calvin, John Calvin’s Bible Commentaries On The Harmony Of The Law 1 (Loschberg: Jazzybee Verlag Jürgen Beck, 1852), 38–39; John Owen, Exercitations on the Epistle to the Hebrews, Also Concerning the Messiah (London: Robert White, 1668), 119; Jonathan Edwards, A History of the Work of Redemption (Edinburgh: M. Gray, 1788), 70. Calvin, Owen and Edwards do not hesitate to call him who appeared to Moses in the burning bush “Christ,” “the Son of God,” and “Jesus,” respectively.[↩]
- Apart from a few anticipatory examples, the first reference to the children of Israel as a nation comes upon crossing the Jordan into their promised land in Josh 3:17.[↩]
- This concurrence continues to be celebrated in today’s hymns too. See the fourth stanza of Charles Wesley, “And Can it be That I Should Gain,” in Christian Hymns (ed. The Evangelical Movement of Wales and Christian Hymns Committee; Bridgend: The Evangelical Movement of Wales, 2004), 524.[↩]
- In Luke 2:32, Simeon speaks under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and apparently quotes from Isa 42:6 and 49:6 to identify the baby Jesus with the Servant of Isaiah’s prophecies.[↩]
- There are references to imperceptibility being removed (2 Kgs 6), but never an incident of literal, physical blindness being healed.[↩]
- This goes some way to explain how Jesus can heal enormous crowds without comment from the Apostles but, on healing one blind man, the miracle gets a whole chapter to itself (Matt 8:16; cf. John 9:1–41).[↩]
- Jewish texts describe aspects of the Feast of Booths and say that “there was not a courtyard in Jerusalem that was not illuminated by the light [from the temple].” m. Sukkah 5.[↩]
- While references to light fade away immediately, the Father is mentioned at least twenty-one times.[↩]
- In the ESV, the word “sent” appears in John’s gospel 53 times, but only 23 times on average across in the synoptic Gospels. Approximately a quarter of Bartel Elshout’s forty-three aspects to “the unique relationship between the Father and the Son in John’s gospel” relate to the sent-ness of Jesus. Bartel Elshout, “The Unique Relationship Between the Father and the Son in the Gospel of John,” PRJ 3, no. 1 (2011): 41–55.[↩]
- John 1:3–4; Col 1:16–17 cf. Khaled Anatolios, Athanasius: The Coherence of His Thought (New York: Routledge, 2004), 66. Athanasius, On the Incarnation 1, 3, 12, 14, in Jacques-Paul Migne et al., eds., Patrologiae cursus completes: Series Graeca, 162 vols. (Paris, 1857–1866), 25:97–102, 115–22. Letham, Theology, 277. Michael Reeves, Introducing Major Theologians: From the Apostolic Fathers to the Twentieth Century (Leicester: Inter-Varsity, 2015), 68.[↩]
- “Spiritual life can only be known by revelation.” Vos, Biblical Theology, 3. Cf. Herman Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith (Michigan: Eerdmans, 1956), 24–31.[↩]
- John Piper, “I Am the Light of the World,” Desiring God (March 12, 2011), https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/i-am-the-light-of-the-world.[↩]