"LET there be light, and there was light;” such are the first recorded words of Him who, from everlasting to everlasting, is God; and at whose divine command the darkness fled away, and created light came immediately into being, as the precious outcome of His divine will and pleasure. "He spake, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast." By the word of His mouth, who brought both heaven and earth into existence, created light at once revealed the wide waste of waters, covering the buried world, which, on the third day, came forth from its tomb to become the dwelling place for man, but, alas! proved afterward to be the scene of its Creator's rejection, crucifixion, and murder.
All was very good at the start; and man, into whose nostrils God had breathed the breath of life, whereby he became a living soul, was placed in dominion over all the works of God's hand.
But, alas! the serpent's hiss was soon heard in Eden's fair garden; and our first parents, through disobedience, fell an easy prey to the subtle craft of the enemy. All was gone, as regards man, and moral darkness quickly settled down upon a scene where the devil's lie had usurped the place of God's word in those hearts where it should have reigned without a rival.
Spite of all God's manifold ways of grace, both to Jew and Gentile, which followed His holy judgment on a deluge-swept earth, yet man's heart was set on sin; and, notwithstanding the warning voices of prophets, priests, and kings, the moral darkness ever deepened, until it reached its awful climax with the advent of the One who is Himself the Light of the world. The entrance of God's Holy One into such a scene only served to intensify that darkness, and brought out, in all the stronger contrast, the awful fact that men's hearts were still unchanged, and that they "loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved; but he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.”
Divine, and not created, light first shone in this dark world in the holy person of the lowly babe of Bethlehem, shedding its everlasting brightness far and wide, till, at the close of three and thirty years of ceaseless grace, boundless love, and divine compassion, the sinless victim went, as the sin-bearer, into a darkness infinitely deeper than that in which the world was found when time's stillness was first broken by the voice that spake those wondrous words, "Let there be light.”
What was even Egypt's darkness (a darkness which might be felt), compared with that into which the man Christ Jesus entered when, during those three solemn hours at Calvary, He was "smitten of God and afflicted," and His holy soul was made an offering for sin? Reproach, too, was breaking that heart of infinite love, as those unfathomable words fell from His lips, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" But God was holy, sin must be judged (root and branch), and justice must be satisfied; and hence that will-less man must needs go into darkness beyond all telling.
Never again will this be repeated, for Calvary is passed and gone; and the mighty Conqueror over sin, death, Satan, and all the powers of darkness, now sits triumphant on His Father's throne. Thus, through the shedding of His precious blood, is every true believer "brought out of darkness into marvelous light," and is called to share the rest of God in all that His Christ has done. Yea, "the darkness is passing, and the true light now shineth;" and the blood-bought ones are privileged to say, "God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." Redemption's light now sheds her holy rays on every saint of God, and in its ceaseless luster, as cleansed by that precious blood, the redeemed ones can joyfully exclaim," What hast thou done?”
“One with the risen Christ they stand,
In righteousness and life;
A justified and heavenly band,
With blessings rife.”
No longer of the night, nor of darkness, they are children of the light, and children of day. Standing in the light of God, without a cloud between them, they find, as sons of glory, their everlasting joy and rest in God Himself, for "God is light," but "the wicked shall be silent in darkness." The same Spirit of God who brooded over the dark waters at the beginning now indwells the blood-bought ones, and sheds abroad in their hearts the wondrous love of God. Rejoicing in hope of the glory of God, they are privileged, with the eye of faith, to look onward to that bright and coming day when “there shall be no more curse; but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it, and his servants shall serve him. And they shall see his face; and his name shall be in their foreheads. And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light and they shall reign for and ever an ever." "And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it; for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.”
In robes of white, o'er streets of gold,
Beneath a cloudless sky,
They walk in the light of their Father's smile,
But will you be there, and I?
S. T.