Monday, September 15, 2014
409 - Blinded by the Light
Spirituality Column #409
September 16, 2014
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville
“… though the eye of sinful man, Thy glory may not see.” – from the hymn Holy, Holy, Holy.
Among my favorite Bible head-scratchers is God’s dual creation of light.
On Creation’s first day, God creates the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1:1), there is “darkness over the deep and the Spirit of God over the waters” (verse 2), and God says, “Let there be light” (verse 3).
“Light” is the first thing that God says is “good,” and it divided the darkness. But it is not the light of the sun, the moon, the stars, the heavens, a campfire, or a light bulb. That kind of light, the light of physical illumination that allows physical sight, isn’t created until Day 4 (verse 7). Why does God create light twice?
Well, He doesn’t. The Bible’s “first” light is God’s light of truth, love, power, goodness and relationship. It is the “information” component of Creation. As opposed to all the physical things that can “be” – such as matter or energy, or even “animal, vegetable or mineral” – God’s “light” is what installs a purpose and moral order to His physical Creation. Without God’s light, Darwinian evolution may as well be true because no moral information would be needed. The faithful in Christ believe in and fight for the light of Creation because that light is God’s truth.
Momentarily and mistakenly, we might think the “light” created in Genesis 1:3 actually is Jesus Christ, but it can’t be – Jesus Christ isn’t a created being. He is an eternal, uncreated part of the Trinity and the exact reflection of the glory of God (see Hebrews 1:2-3). Like the Spirit “hovering over the waters,” Christ the Son was already here at the beginning, not created after it. It was God’s placement of His Son, the “heir of all things” (Hebrews 1:2) with “authority over all things” (Matthew 28:18), that brought the light of God’s truth into the world – “His life was the light of all men” (John 1:4). That Jesus is the “light of the world” (John 8:12) speaks to the incarnation of God on earth.
That first-day darkness must have been an unholy emptiness, a void then dramatically filled by the animating, loving, relational, creative, light of God. But ever since man was created on the sixth day, just as man’s eyes adjust to physical darkness, so man’s soul adjusts to spiritual darkness.
Satan – a created being and fallen angel – is alive and busy wherever a soul’s darkness persists with festering blindness to God’s light.
In Jesus Christ – the eternal shepherd of God’s light – man overcomes his blindness to the glory of God.
Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) notes the Earth was once all water – Genesis 1:2,9. Hmmm.
September 16, 2014
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville
Blinded by the Light
By Bob Walters“… though the eye of sinful man, Thy glory may not see.” – from the hymn Holy, Holy, Holy.
Among my favorite Bible head-scratchers is God’s dual creation of light.
On Creation’s first day, God creates the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1:1), there is “darkness over the deep and the Spirit of God over the waters” (verse 2), and God says, “Let there be light” (verse 3).
“Light” is the first thing that God says is “good,” and it divided the darkness. But it is not the light of the sun, the moon, the stars, the heavens, a campfire, or a light bulb. That kind of light, the light of physical illumination that allows physical sight, isn’t created until Day 4 (verse 7). Why does God create light twice?
Well, He doesn’t. The Bible’s “first” light is God’s light of truth, love, power, goodness and relationship. It is the “information” component of Creation. As opposed to all the physical things that can “be” – such as matter or energy, or even “animal, vegetable or mineral” – God’s “light” is what installs a purpose and moral order to His physical Creation. Without God’s light, Darwinian evolution may as well be true because no moral information would be needed. The faithful in Christ believe in and fight for the light of Creation because that light is God’s truth.
Momentarily and mistakenly, we might think the “light” created in Genesis 1:3 actually is Jesus Christ, but it can’t be – Jesus Christ isn’t a created being. He is an eternal, uncreated part of the Trinity and the exact reflection of the glory of God (see Hebrews 1:2-3). Like the Spirit “hovering over the waters,” Christ the Son was already here at the beginning, not created after it. It was God’s placement of His Son, the “heir of all things” (Hebrews 1:2) with “authority over all things” (Matthew 28:18), that brought the light of God’s truth into the world – “His life was the light of all men” (John 1:4). That Jesus is the “light of the world” (John 8:12) speaks to the incarnation of God on earth.
That first-day darkness must have been an unholy emptiness, a void then dramatically filled by the animating, loving, relational, creative, light of God. But ever since man was created on the sixth day, just as man’s eyes adjust to physical darkness, so man’s soul adjusts to spiritual darkness.
Satan – a created being and fallen angel – is alive and busy wherever a soul’s darkness persists with festering blindness to God’s light.
In Jesus Christ – the eternal shepherd of God’s light – man overcomes his blindness to the glory of God.
Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) notes the Earth was once all water – Genesis 1:2,9. Hmmm.
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