The power of darkness is fear.  There is fear in the darkness, fear of the dark.  Children want the nightlight.  I’m liking the flashlight on my cell phone.  There is darkness in fear; fear makes it hard to be brave; fear makes it difficult to see.  Be thou my vision, we sing in the dusk.  What’s in the dark?  We don’t know—that’s just it!  Nothing, something, everything, anything that could happen in this too often sad, hard world.  Fear begets fear.  Darkness begets darkness.

          Jesus is “the light of all mankind” (Jn 1:4), “the light of the world” who gives “the light of life” (Jn 8:12), light shining in the darkness, whom the darkness cannot overcome (Jn 1:5).  For darkness to wield its full power over you and in you, there must be no light.  If darkness conjures thoughts of death, conjures fear and the fear of death, light is for life, for living, for seeing and being seen, knowing and being known.  Jesus says, “I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness” (Jn 12:46).  Lost, cold, alone, afraid.  In his night-time conversation with Nicodemus, Jesus says, “Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light” (Jn 3:19).  Who says they love darkness?  I take Jesus to mean they loved their own light, their own way, craved, preferred their own way, but their own way is darkness, the darkness of death.  God gives the light, true light, the light of truth; He lights the way to life, because He is light and He is life.  Away and astray from Jesus is no way: no way to life.  Yet people seek their reward here, seek the approval of others.

          People love darkness.  They don’t want to hear about Jesus; they want to stop you talking about him.  They don’t want to know about Jesus, and they want you to forget about him, too.  “[E]ven if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing” (2 Cor 4:3).  The Gospel is not hidden away, expressed in some foreign language, arcane symbols of some enigma code only cryptographers could hope to begin to crack.  There is a spiritual barrier, a veil preventing those who are perishing from perceiving and receiving the Good News.  That veil is sin; it is willfulness, stubbornness, self-righteousness, our veiling over those parts of God’s Word that get in the way of our self-styled virtuous vision, our righteous reinterpretation of the faith.

          Apart from Christ, we can do nothing, nothing for our own salvation, nothing for the salvation of others, as though anyone had the way apart from Christ.  Those who are perishing have no interest in Jesus, God’s Word, God’s way, church, prayer: all a terrible bore to them, a joke, the heights of stupidity.  They do not hear the call.  Or, they feel a sense of call only to reject it, suppress it, mock it, fear it.  They may want change, but not that change, not that way, not on those terms.  You and I know such people; perhaps you were that person.  Our hearts go out to them: we don’t want them to perish; we want them to live, to have the light of life, the light shining in the face of Jesus, transfigured, brilliant, pure, heavenly, holy, our Polaris.

          Paul speaks of the god of this age putting that veil over the minds, the hearts, the wills of those who are perishing.  The god of this age is the idol of every age: darkness, ignorance of God, willed, chosen, preferred ignorance.  Scripture is a long tale of the rejection of God.  God proposes to do something about that.  We’re serving God or we’re serving sin; no one can serve two masters.  People fashion gods to suit themselves, reflecting, magnifying their own hearts.  Rummage around and you’ll come across parts and pieces of that shattered idol, that fallen heart in you, still.  It hasn’t gone away; it doesn’t.  It hides away from the light; it does not want the light: the light of life exposes the true, full ugliness of the fallen heart, and vanity can never bear to see its full ugliness.  Vanity and ugliness insist they cannot be judged, yet repentance comes.

          The minds of unbelievers are blinded.  “Don’t talk to me of your good God when there is all this badness in the world!”  That’s a typical dodge.  That’s supposed to end the conversation: the victory is your silence.  “I can’t believe in this God you Christian people talk about, because how could a good and loving God allow all this hurt and suffering and misery to continue, and do nothing about it?”  You and I, though, know He has done something about it, something amazing, miraculous, powerful, effective.  The answer we have is not the answer the unbeliever wants to hear.  The “god” of this age is stronger than me, stronger than you, but not stronger than Jesus.  You and I should know why this world is such a terrible mess, but the unbeliever will not accept God’s answer.  The answer God gives is not the answer the unbeliever wants; I’m afraid that, increasingly, God’s answer is not the answer believers want, either.

          “[T]hey cannot see the light of the gospel” (4:4) for that lethal combination of darkness and fear.  They don’t want the fear, but that comes with darkness.  They want the darkness so that there be no light to call them to account for their lives, their choices: no judgment!  Judgment bad.  Beloved, judgment can be for correction, also.  In this age, it seems, correction is even less tolerable than punishment.  Correction and punishment are elements of a much larger complex for growth and flourishing called discipline.  Jesus called disciples; disciples accept the discipline of Christ.  There are many powers seeking to disciple you.

          Darkness and fear—this lethal combination is the veil that keeps out the light.  If people live as if there were no God . . . Part of the deep mystery of God’s ways is that only He can tear through the veil; God chooses to remove it from some—here we are—God chooses to leave it over the eyes of others.  God has removed the veil from our eyes not for anything we have done, or anything He knew before we ever existed that we would do.  His choice is for His reasons.  All through this life, we wonder why me but not her, not him, not them, not yet?

          God caused us to want light, His light, to want life, His life.  Light is a fact that cannot be denied.  When the bright light shines in our eyes, we cannot deny it.  We try to shield our eyes from it: it’s too bright, almost painful, blinding, in that we can see nothing else, as though, besides the light, there was really, truly nothing else to see.  There on the mountain, in the presence of Moses and Elijah, Jesus shines like a star from heaven, “in him there is no darkness at all” (1 Jn 1:5).  He is the light that dwells with the Father (Dan 2:22), brilliant with creation light, glory light, God-light, the light of life.  Peter, John, and James were left stunned, terrified, wondering with profoundest awe.  They wanted to see but could barely see.  They shielded their eyes not to keep the light out, but the better to see in the light.  Their fallen eyes, accustomed to dimness and darkness, weren’t used to such light!  Neither are ours.  Christ is light that cannot not be seen.  How people set themselves not to see—how much work they put into it: willpower, determination, labor!  Everyone serves something in this life; truly, there are many gods.

          The Gospel “displays the glory of Christ” (4:4): presence, power, undeniability, love, grace.  What has Christ come to do?  Shine.  These days, places are being sanitized with light.  Light is used for cleansing, for killing infection.  Think about that.  UVC sanitizers are good for flat, smooth surfaces, but crevices, deeper recesses, are hard for that light to reach.  Beloved, the deeper infection requires a stronger light.  Think about that.  God’s glory doesn’t just reflect, it reaches, penetrates, seeks.  Jesus is God’s flashlight, His floodlight, seeking, finding us, lifting and holding us, bringing us home out of the darkness, out of the cold, the mud and mire in which we had gotten lost, isolated, left hopeless, left for dead.  Am I being dramatic?  What shall I say: life is good, you’re okay; just be happy?  Spiritual candy?  Why does God go to such great lengths to seek us, why incur such a cost, if life is good and we’re okay?  No, He comes to us to be with us in this present darkness, and to guide us by His light to light.

          Why?  If we haven’t done anything to deserve it, if there isn’t anything we ever have done and nothing we ever can do to deserve this hand of rescue, this light back to life, then why is Jesus bothering with me, of all people, you, of all people?  To show us God, God’s way, God’s will, grace, the unstoppable love of God.  Jesus is “the image of God” (4:4).  “The Son is the image of the invisible God” (Col 1:15).  God with us.  God wants to be known among us, wants us to know Him.  Not because we deserve Him but because He deserves us—all that we have, all that we are, all that we can be, with Him, for Him.  This God is well worth knowing.

          Often in Scripture, light and glory are ways of speaking of salvation.[1]  Christ alight there on the mountain in the darkness, alight with God’s glory, creation light, the light of life, is radiant with salvation, is the beacon of salvation, summoning us, the door of salvation, through whom we enter, who ushers us through.

          Yet many do not believe, and there are some who never will.  Heartbreaking!  No one wants anything to do with God, until they do.  How does that happen?  God causes it.  “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made His light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ” (4:6).  Light is for knowing.  By the light God gives—that God alone can give, and does, when and as He chooses—we know His glory because we know Christ.  To know Christ—God’s light and God’s glory—is to have salvation, promise, hope, blessed assurance.

          Then Jesus goes down the mountain, into the dark valley, to go to another mountain, to climb it, shouldering a burden we cannot imagine, though we feel our part of it, our part in it.

          Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!

               [1] I am grateful to Brevard Childs’ commentary on Isaiah for calling my attention to this.