Mensa Otabil - No Room for Darkness (11/07/2025)
John 1 verse 5. This is the message which we have heard from him and declared to you that God is light and in him is no darkness at all. In the introduction of first John, the apostle John said talked about their encounter with Christ. And he says that which we have heard, that which we have seen, that which we have examined, and that which we have touched or handled.
So he’s talking about the firsthand encounter with the Lord Jesus Christ. Now he tells us that Jesus taught them a message and that message was that God is light and in him is no darkness at all. And that was a very important message that John wanted the Christians of his time and today to understand. We also have to understand God is light. Why was that important? Why was this important? Because at the time John is writing this, Christianity has spread beyond the Jewish community. It is now in the Greek community. It’s in the Roman society. And the idea of the Roman gods and the Greek gods was very different from what the Bible taught.
The Greek gods were imperfect and had all kinds of mischievous uh activities. uh if you read uh about them. And so John is drawing a distinction from what the Greeks understood God to be and what Jesus presented God to be. So he says God is light. Three implications of this statement. First is that God is pure and he has no imperfections. He’s not like the Greek gods who have imperfections and and throw tantrums and are very very uh tempestuous in their activities. This is a God who does not have imperfections. He is pure in all his ways. His love is pure. His grace is pure. His power is pure. Everything about God is perfection. We cannot project our imperfections on God because he is a perfect God. God is light.
Secondly, God is light means he is the source of life because light is life and and God is life and he has no decay in him. What does that mean? It means God does not deteriorate. He does not uh lose his energy. He does not lose his power. He does not become less of who he is. Time does not change the nature of God. God does not deteriorate and he is life that is constant. He is perfect at all times and he’s life at all times. And that is the God we believe in. He’s perfect. Uh he’s pure. He is life. And that God is light means he is truth. Because in the world at that time, light was was the symbol of knowledge and darkness was the symbol of ignorance. And God is knowledge, pure truth. And and uh there is no error in God.
There is nothing about God that says, «Oh, we we believe, oh, God made a mistake last year. God made a mistake in the Old Testament. God made a mistake at this time». God doesn’t make mistakes. He’s light. He’s pure. He’s life. He doesn’t decay. And he is truth. There is no error in him. And that is the God that we believe in. The God of our Lord Jesus Christ. If you a Christian and you want to know God in truth, in spirit, and worship him, these are the fundamentals that we establish about God. God is light and there’s no darkness. There’s no error. There’s no deficiency whatsoever in God.
Let us pray. Say with me, heavenly father, you are pure without imperfection. You are truth without error. Let me know you in your fullness in Jesus name. Amen. And amen.