The First Epistle Of John

In this Epistle, promises and the stipulated condition of their fulfilment, that which is to be performed on the part of those to whom the promises are addressed, are presented in constant interchange. With religious truth there is always connected a practical application to the moral conduct and course of life; and nothing is said in reference to the latter which is not deducible from the former. As in his opening words, where he speaks as an eye-witness of the appearing of Christ, John plainly has reference to that erroneous sublimation of the Idea of Christ; so here when he is speaking of the practical, we cannot fail to perceive an implied reprehension of that secularized Christianity of custom and habit. "This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you: That God is light, and in him is no darkness at all."

First of all, he represents God under an image which they had doubtless often heard from his own m1outh, as he too had received it from the lips of Christ: "God is light, and in him is no darkness." His nature is light; from Him all darkness is excluded. He is the opposite of all darkness. Light, in the Holy Scriptures, and especially in the writings of John, is often used as the image of the Divine; darkness, on the other hand as the image of the Undivine. Truth, holiness, bliss, all these may be designated as light, since they all belong to the nature of the Divine; as falsehood, wickedness, and misery form the characteristics of the Undivine. What is particularly represented by the image of light in this passage, will appear from the exhortation which is founded on it. It enjoins a course of life contrary to all that is unholy, and the ground-thought must therefore be, that the nature of God is holiness; all that is unholy is alien to him.