“There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light.” John 1:6–8
If you know that the auditors are due in, you make sure you’re on top of your accounts. If you work in a school and get a message that the inspectors are coming tomorrow, you cancel your plans for the evening and make sure everything is as it should be. If you received a tip-off that the King was going to visit, you would be cleaning, polishing, and scrubbing everything and everyone you could.
Important people herald their arrival. They want things in order, and they want to allow you to treat them with the respect their office or person demands.
Not God.
True, God has a herald—but the reason is completely different. John was sent by God. And his job was to prepare people to meet Christ. But not to get themselves smartened up. John came to people in darkness as a herald of the Light.
The problem with darkness is that you cannot get rid of it. If you walk into a dark room, a cellar, or a cave, you can throw out as many handfuls of darkness as you like; you can shovel the gloom or set up the most powerful fan to dispel its murky depths. But you cannot shift the darkness itself. The only way to get rid of darkness is to bring in light. Flick the switch, light a candle, pull back the curtains, and the light will obliterate the darkness.
There is no contest. Darkness cannot resist the light. Darkness is simply a lack of light. So when John came to people in darkness to bear witness to Jesus as the Light of the world, he was not telling them to clean up their act. John knew, they knew, and our Lord knows that neither they nor we can scrub away the darkness.
We cannot even prepare our hearts to encounter the light. We are darkness. We love the darkness of sin (see John 3:19), and we are lost in the darkness of suffering. To send warning before we are rightly exposed by the light, then, seems to serve no good purpose. Unless the Light came not to condemn us for our darkness but to save us from it (John 3:17). Unless the Light came to blaze with a love that is full of forgiveness and a life that we can live in his righteousness rather than our own. Unless the Light came not to shine for his own glory but to be put out in the darkness for our salvation.
If the Light that came into the world did indeed come in love to save us, then sending John first was a great blessing. Jesus wanted none of the people of his day to miss out on his offer of love and life. He wanted to carry all their sins down to death so they could rise with him. And today, he has not changed. He still has his heralds. And they still witness with the same aim: that all might believe through him.
Part 1: The Brilliance of the Light
Part 2: The Witness to the Light
Part 3: The People of the Light
Part 4: The Glory of the Light
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