12 Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” 13 So the Pharisees said to Him, “You are bearing witness about yourself; your testimony is not true.” 14 Jesus answered, “Even if I do bear witness about myself, my testimony is true, for I know where I came from and where I am going, but you do not know where I come from or where I am going. 15 You judge according to the flesh; I judge no one. 16 Yet even if I do judge, my judgment is true, for it is not I alone who judge, but I and the Father who sent me. 17 In your Law it is written that the testimony of two people is true. 18 I am the one who bears witness about myself, and the Father who sent me bears witness about me.” 19 They said to Him therefore, “Where is your Father?” Jesus answered, “You know neither me nor my Father. If you knew me, you would know my Father also.” 20 These words He spoke in the treasury, as He taught in the temple; but no one arrested Him, because His hour had not yet come.
Light is one of the great Biblical images of salvation. Just two examples are Isaiah 9:2, “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shined,” and Psalm 27:1. “The Lord is my light and my salvation.”
In John 8:12, Jesus makes the second of His I AM statements in John’s Gospel, which He repeats in 9:5: “I am the light of the world.” He came into a world cloaked in darkness, and John uses the imagery of light to describe Jesus 16 times in his Gospel. His point is very clear: Jesus is the only solution to darkness in the world, because it is only through faith in Him that we can be saved out of darkness and be brought into the light of salvation.
Darkness was an excellent analogy for a sinful world in the 1st century, and it remains the same today. In order for us to understand just how profound this statement of Jesus is, it would help to try and grasp just how dark this world really is.
In the Bible, darkness represents ignorance and foolishness. Psalm 82:5 says of the wicked, “They have neither knowledge nor understanding, they walk about in darkness; all the foundations of the earth are shaken.” Isn’t this exactly where the world is today? The world is dark because it is lost in ignorance, superstition and sheer foolishness. There are some highly educated and highly intelligent people in this world who make decisions which impact millions with their insanity.
Gender identity is a hot topic in our day. I did a Google search, asking the simple question, ‘how many genders are there.’ Depending on which demonic, twisted website you choose to click on, there are anything between 4 and 72 genders according to these highly enlightened people who are nothing more than agents of Satan.
A 3 year old child can tell you the difference between a boy and a girl, yet the world is being led astray by these wicked people. Proverbs 2:12-15 warns us to stay away from these “men of perverted speech, who forsake the paths of uprightness to walk in the ways of darkness, who rejoice in doing evil and delight in the perverseness of evil, men whose paths are crooked, and who are devious in their ways.”
Jesus said in John 3:19, “This is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.” Reject God and His truth, and all you have is darkness. The world into which Jesus came was and is darkened by evil.
And those who stumble around in this darkness are living under God’s judgment and wrath. Zephaniah 1:14-15 speaks about this judgment. “The great day of the Lord is near, near and hastening fast; the sound of the day of the Lord is bitter; the mighty man cries aloud there. A day of wrath is that day, a day of distress and anguish, a day of ruin and devastation, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness.”
This is what awaits those who reject Jesus Christ and the salvation He offers, but the problem is that for the vast majority of people, they don’t realise just how darkened their minds have become. Walk outside at night, and your eyes very quickly adjust to the changing light, but as someone once said, spiritually speaking, we have become nocturnal creatures. We’ve reached the point where we’re so used to the darkness, that we longer recognise how evil and dark this world is.
This is why we need the light of Christ. The world was not created dark - it was made dark by sin. Because of sin, mankind is now under the judgment of God. The world that God made good, and the human race He created in glory as His image-bearer, fell into darkness because of sin, and there is nothing we can do to fix it.
As a result of human rebellion and sin, the world has been fooled into believing that God is not real, and that by our ingenuity and intelligence, we can fix the wrongs of the world all by ourselves. Really? History has proven the insanity of this idea. Instead of making the world a better place, it is getting darker with each passing day.
So what does God do? “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him.” (John 3:16-17)
In His great mercy God promised to send a Saviour to free us from ignorance, evil, death and judgment, and this is what Jesus has done through His atoning death on the cross. For those condemned in judgment for their sins, Jesus shed His own blood, so that when they turn to Him in repentance and faith, they will find forgiveness and salvation. Into a spiritually dark and dying world, Christ shines the light of eternal life.
You’ll remember when we looked at the first of Jesus’ I AM statements in chapter 6, where He proclaimed that He is the Bread of Life, the Greek text translates it as ego eimi. There is a double emphasis here, so the literal translation of Jesus’ words are, “I, I am the light of the world.”
He is the great “I am,” the divine light that shines into our darkness for salvation. Jesus did not identify Himself merely as a light, but as the light. This means that He alone is the true light shining in the world. John wrote in the opening chapter, “The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.” (John 1:9)
Again, context is important. This wasn’t just an arbitrary statement that Jesus made out of the blue (as important as it is). The setting of chapters 7 and 8 is the Feast of Tabernacles. During this feast, four enormous candelabras or lamps were filled with oil and set alight. Tradition has it that the light was so bright that even the streets of Jerusalem were lit, and it was here, just after this festival ended and the lamps were extinguished, that Jesus stood up and proclaimed Himself as the light of the world – the true light.
These huge oil lamps reminded the Jews of the pillar of fire that guided Israel in their wilderness journey. And now Jesus stands next to these massive temple lamps which are now dark, and claims to be the pillar of cloud and fire which guided and guarded Israel to the Promised Land: “I am the Light of the world. I am the God who is. I am the glory cloud who leads you to eternal life.”
The only true light, and the only true Saviour of the world is Jesus Christ. It is no coincidence that Jesus made His invitation in 7:37, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink,” during the water-pouring ceremony at the Feast of Tabernacles, because there is a direct connection to God’s provision of water from the rock during the Exodus. And we see the same thing with the festival of lights and Jesus’ claim to be the light of the world. The Jews were reminded of the pillar of fire that had guided and protected their ancestors during the Exodus. “The Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead them along the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, that they might travel by day and by night.” (Exodus 13:21)
After Jesus declares Himself to be the light of the world, He continues by saying, “Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” The reference to Exodus 13 is unmistakable. The Israelites had to follow the pillar of fire, or they would get lost in the dark wilderness. Sinners are lost in the dark wilderness, but Jesus, the Light of the World has come to lead us out of our spiritual darkness.
However, this salvation from darkness is dependent on believing Him and following Him. We are to follow Jesus as the Israelites followed the pillar of fire. As we follow Him, He leads us away from the foolish things of the world as He teaches us by His Word, and of course, as He clothes us in His own righteousness, He delivers us from the wrath and judgment of God that we deserve.
As the pillar of fire led the Israelites through the barren desert into the Promised Land, so Jesus leads us on our pilgrimage through this evil world into Heaven.
But what does it actually mean to follow Jesus? It’s a term we’re familiar with, but do we really understand what it means? Simply put, it means to trust in Him and what He achieved on the cross for us, and then to live our lives as His faithful disciples. When the fire and cloud moved, the Israelites moved. When they stopped, the Israelites stopped, and in a similar way, we follow Jesus to the cross, where we die to our sin. He said in Luke 9:23, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.”
It’s all about obedience to God and His Word. The commentator William Hendriksen wrote, “The Christian must follow where the light leads. He is not permitted to map out his own course through the desert of this life.” Now, some might think this is a bit radical, a bit over the top, but is there really any other kind of Christian discipleship? The word disciple has its root in the word discipline. That in itself, should teach us something about what it really means to follow Christ.
To have Jesus as Saviour is to follow Him as Lord. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, “You are not your own, for you were bought with a price.” This is something which we often fail to understand properly. Yes, the salvation that Jesus offers us is free, and we receive it simply by faith. However, following Jesus faithfully comes at a cost. James Montgomery Boice explains it like this: “The path that Jesus walked is the path to crucifixion. It leads to glory, but before that it leads to the cross. Such a path can be walked only by the one who has died to self and who has deliberately taken up the cross of Christ to follow Him.”
Having said this though, we must be clear that is not our discipleship or our following Christ that brings salvation. We are not saved by our works. We are only saved by Him. When He said, “I am the light of the world,” He followed that up by saying, “whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” He first calls us to believe in Him as we receive the light of His free gift of salvation. And then we begin to follow Him as He reveals His word to us. This is what it means to grow in grace.
Not only that, but as He leads us out of darkness into light, He says in Matthew 5:14, “You are the light of the world.” What this means is that as the light of Christ shines in our hearts, empowering us to follow Him in faith and obedience, so His light shines through us to light up this dark world with His truth and His love. This is the task of the Church - to bear witness to the lost that there is hope, there is a Saviour, and there is a way to eternal life.
Just in case you haven’t noticed though, the message of hope we have for the world isn’t always well received. It was rejected in Jesus’ day, and that pattern continues today. The Pharisees’ reaction to Jesus’ statement was, “You are bearing witness about yourself; your testimony is not true.” (John 8:13)
When it comes to unbelief, the Pharisees give us a picture of sinful human beings’ opposition to Jesus and His Gospel. To them a true Messiah would be one who agreed with their beliefs, rather than someone who stood opposed to them. Isn’t this how the world sees God? “I will believe in God if He does this, that, or the other, and I refuse to believe in a God who tells me that this, that or the other in my life is wrong.”
Jesus revealed Himself as the long-awaited Messiah, but those who were given the task and the privilege of being the spiritual guides of the people, accused and rejected Him. And true to form, they twisted the Word of God by taking it completely out of its context to suit their own agenda. When they said, “You are bearing witness about yourself; your testimony is not true,” they were referring to the Old Testament law in Deuteronomy 19:15. “A single witness shall not suffice against a person for any crime or for any wrong in connection with any offence that he has committed. Only on the evidence of two witnesses or of three witnesses shall a charge be established.”
This particular law required at least two witnesses against the accused in a crime which carried the death penalty, a law the Pharisees were quite happy to apply when they trapped the woman in adultery that we looked at last week, but this was not a court case. Jesus proclaimed that He was the Light of the World, and they tried to shout Him down with a law which was completely irrelevant to His claim.
This is why Jesus answered them by saying in verse 15, “You judge according to the flesh.” This was a stinging rebuke. In the Bible, the flesh often refers to our sinful nature, and Jesus’ implication was that sin was at the root of the Pharisees’ unbelief. They would not have missed what Jesus was saying here. They were the super-spiritual, the holier than thou custodians of Judaism. How dare this man accuse them of being sinners?
Truth and life was staring them in the face, but they refused to accept Him.
And the world continues to judge according to the flesh. Look at how in the last century or so there has been a methodical and systematic deconstruction of the Christian faith. Science has “proven” that evolution is true. Supernatural miracles recorded in the Bible are dismissed as the stuff of fantasy and fairy tales. “You don’t really believe that, do you?” Heard that a few times before?
High profile atheists like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Hawking, all highly intelligent men, claim that unbelief in God is an intellectual matter, but this is not true. Unbelief in God and rejection of Jesus Christ as the only Saviour of the world has always been a matter of the heart.
Paul writes in Ephesians 4:17-19, “This I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.”
This is why we need the light of Christ in our world, because it is only He who can save the spiritually darkened and bring them into His glorious light.
There is a wonderful story of Isaac Newton, who was a committed Christian, having a discussion with a colleague who just could not bring himself to believe the Gospel message. Newton said to him, “Sometimes I come into my study and in my absent-mindedness I attempt to light my candle when the extinguisher is over it, and I fumble about trying to light it and cannot, but when I remove the extinguisher then I am able to light the candle. I am afraid the extinguisher in your case is the love of your sins. It is deliberate unbelief that is in you. Turn to God in repentance, be prepared to let the Spirit of God reveal His truth to you, and it will be His joy to show the glory of the grace of God shining in the face of Jesus Christ.”
This was the problem with the Pharisees then, and it remains the same today. There is a refusal to stand in the light of Christ, because it is only there where the lost can repent of their sin, and find salvation in Christ, but they don’t want to. And the reason is that they love their sins. As Jesus said to Nicodemus in John 3:19-21, “This is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.”
Jesus Christ is Lord, and there is no other. We’re jumping ahead by a few verses, but look at His warning in verse 24, something we will look at more closely next time: “I told you that you would die in your sins, for unless you believe that I am He you will die in your sins.”
Are you still stumbling around in spiritual darkness? Is your heart so darkened that you cannot bring yourself to step into the light of Christ and be saved? There is still time. There is still hope, but you need to know this: This window of opportunity will close one day. No-one knows when but we do know that day is coming. Turn to Christ while you still can and be saved.
“I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”
Homegroup Study Notes
Read John 8:12 and 3:19-21
We often see the contrast between light and darkness being used in the Bible.
How does darkness depict the spiritual state of the world today?
The Pharisees, just like so many today, refuse to recognise Jesus for who He really is.
Discuss His sharp rebuke to them in the first part of verse 15. What does it mean to “judge according to the flesh?”
The “intelligentsia” in the modern world would have us believe that the Christian faith and the Bible are outdated and no longer relevant in our enlightened society.
What (if any) evidence do we have that they are right?
Read Ephesians 4:18-19
Discuss how these verses address the illusion that all is well with the world, and that the mere concept of a transcendent God is completely irrelevant in our day.
How would you answer someone who scoffs at your faith by saying, “you don’t seriously believe that, do you?”
(Or something similar)
Close by praying for those nearest and dearest to you who are still in spiritual darkness.