Dick Lucas discusses John 8:12, where Jesus declares Himself as the light of the world. Lucas explains how this declaration signifies Jesus as the source of spiritual illumination, guiding humanity out of darkness and into the light of life. He emphasizes the transformative power of Jesus’ light, urging believers to follow Him and reflect His light in their lives.
The following unedited transcript is provided by Beluga AI.
The reading is taken from the Gospel of John, chapter 8, beginning at verse 12, and it’s found on page 1073 in the Church Bibles. That’s John 8:12-18.
12 Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” 13 So the Pharisees said to him, “You are bearing witness about yourself; your testimony is not true.” 14 Jesus answered, “Even if I do bear witness about myself, my testimony is true, for I know where I came from and where I am going, but you do not know where I come from or where I am going. 15 You judge according to the flesh; I judge no one. 16 Yet even if I do judge, my judgment is true, for it is not I alone who judge, but I and the Father who sent me. 17 In your Law it is written that the testimony of two people is true. 18 I am the one who bears witness about myself, and the Father who sent me bears witness about me.” (John 8:12-18, ESV)
Thanks be to God. Well, thank you, Helen. If you turn over your sheet, you’ll see a number of notices. Welcome to us, to our School of Christ. We hope that you will become a regular and bring back some of the truants and make a full house on a Tuesday. you’ll see that lunch is served after the second service. It’s not perhaps quite as grand as the picture suggests, but it’s delicious nonetheless. Then you’ll see that Roy Clements is coming to us on Thursday night, the 29th.
He’s a remarkable speaker, and that will be a great evening. And then, at the bottom, for those of you who are here early, and I know that means many, and for those of you who pray, we pray for the work very early on Tuesday morning at 8 a.m., and would love you even if only for a few minutes. Please keep your hymn sheet near, but we’re going to pray now.
Our Heavenly Father, we pray that you will teach us today as we sit at the feet of Jesus Christ and seek to understand from his lips the nature of his tremendous claims. So give us light and understanding, we pray, for his name’s sake. Amen. Right, then, John 8:12, where we’ve just been reading, is where we are starting today. John 8:12. In the autumn, someone, I think, was rather oppressed by the great no-ones that we studied together; they asked me if we could have some more positive teaching in the new year.
It was intended to be and was taken as a constructive criticism, and so I decided we would be positive in the new year. And we started last Tuesday looking at these tremendous I-ams of John’s gospel, and you can’t be more gloriously positive than those. There are seven of them in all, and if you put them all together, they show you who Jesus is, and what he came into our world to do. They’re clear, they’re positive, and they’re unforgettable. We shan’t have time to do all seven.
I have explained that if we’re to cover the ground in the school of Christ this year, we must limit ourselves, so I’m limiting ourselves to three of the great I-ams, and we come to the first today. There it is in verse 12. I’ll read it again.
12 Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” (John 8:12, ESV)
They really are grand statements, aren’t they? They’re so immense in their scope and significance that they’re literally beyond human imagination.
John, of course, could not have made them up. Sometimes I think the greatness of these sayings can overwhelm the preacher. I guess it can the listener as well, especially when I look at the clock and I see how few minutes I’ve got. So in order to keep me concise and to keep us on track, I’ve put down five questions over the other side of the hymn sheet, and I hope those will help to open this verse to us. I don’t always do this, but I do want to do it today.
And alongside these questions, I put another verse from John, because John as an author, both in his first letter and his gospel, does love this language of light and darkness.
5 This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. (1 John 1:5, ESV)
So if we have time, we’ll look up some of these as well. It’ll be a bit of a paper chase today, but I hope that your fingers are supple and your Bible is open. Right, question number one. What is the meaning of light in the vocabulary of the Bible? Now there’s only one mistake here in our typing.
It is 1 John there, not John’s gospel, John’s epistle, 1 John. And we shall see there what the meaning of light is, 1 John 1:5. But before we read it, let me just cover the Bible, if I can be so bold as to, by saying that light in the Bible refers to two things primarily. It refers to truth, and on the other hand, it refers to holiness and purity of life. The truth that the Bible means by light shining in the world is not self-evident truth.
It’s not obviously scientific truth that we have to find out for ourselves. It’s no kind of truth that we acquire through toil. I was sitting behind young Dan, one of our slaves who helps us to keep everything in order here in the church, and he was writing on the word processor a CV, applying for an engineering job. I was amazed to see his school record. Every subject had an A. It made me feel very small as I look back to my own school days.
And then it showed that he had a first-class engineering degree as well. Now that kind of knowledge does not drop out of the sky, does it? If you gain that kind of knowledge, I take it means many nights of toil at home with a towel around your head and so on. We’re not talking then about truth, human truth, academic truth, truth in that way today. We’re talking about truth that is beyond our reach, truth that we can never discover, divine truth, truth from above, which is God’s revelation of himself.
And one of the claims of Christianity is without that truth shining on all the other things, no other truth makes sense of life. We need this as the basic to understand why we’re here and where we’re going. It is actually intensely practical rather than philosophical. There’s a fine Bible verse that reads, your word is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. And I think that puts very plainly that this light is not something just for a few.
It is for everybody to keep us on the right road and from stumbling and falling. And you may remember those words of Jesus that we had at the carol service. They were very striking words, weren’t they? Spoken to Pilate on that day of judgment. “For this reason, I came into the world to testify to the truth.” That’s why he came, to be the light, to testify to the truth. And then this very devastating comment, “Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”
And that’s maybe why that person you asked today to come to Tuesdays refused, just that they’re not on the side of the truth. They’ve decided to go the other way, but we’ll come to that later. So it means then truth, but it also means holiness and perfect purity. And that’s why I asked for 1 John 1:5. Let me read this remarkable verse in 1 John, the first chapter, verse 5.
5 This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. (1 John 1:5, ESV)
Now that clearly it is referring, isn’t it? Not just to the fact that God is truth, but that he is holiness and that he is perfect holiness and purity. If that means then that Jesus has to be not only perfect truth, but perfect holiness and purity, it is a tremendous claim to make, isn’t it? No other human being has ever made it. If you go to the great saints of the church’s history and ask them if they were perfect light in this sense of holiness and purity, they will disavow it immediately.
One of the marks of the great saints is that they’re always talking about their wretchedness and their sinfulness. It’s sometimes rather embarrassing. It seems that they can’t lift up their eyes, conscious of their own faults. Jesus never liked that.
46 Which one of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? (John 8:46, ESV)
He stands in front of men. He points to himself as a perfect revelation of God, not only in terms of what I think, but how I ought to live. He is light in the sense of truth and holiness.
I suppose in terms of God, because God dwells in light inaccessible, that we can’t look on God anymore. We can look at the sun. It would be impossible. So what is so exciting about this is that in Jesus, this whole thing has become accessible. I can look at Jesus Christ’s flesh and blood in the gospels and looking at him, I can hear the truth and see what perfect goodness is meant to be about. It can give us these standards, this pattern without which I’m in darkness.
So, what is the meaning of light in the vocabulary of the Bible? It’s a wonderful word, really one of the great words of the Bible to do with the truth of God and the holiness of God. And when Jesus says in John 8:12, “I am the light of the world,” he is saying, “I have brought down to you truth and holiness.” I suppose that’s why he’s rather a formidable figure, isn’t it, as well as an attractive one.
Second question, why the light of the world?
Here I want to go straight to my next verse, which is John 1.9. John 1.9. Strange verse in many ways, and slightly difficult fully to understand, and very startling. John 1.9. The true light, he’s talking of course about the Word made flesh, Jesus. The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world. Now it must mean that, must it not, that this salvation, this word from God through Jesus, is not for a restricted group. That was the mark of religion in the first century. The mystery of religions were exclusive clubs.
You belong to yours, I belong to mine, and we kept them closely guarded. Here we’re told that this light is for every man, this light that is coming into the world. It’s interesting that the Bible seems clearly to teach that there is no created being without some witness, some evidence, some consciousness of God, of truth and goodness.
I suppose at this moment in some sixth form in London, there’s great fun going on with a debate on postmodernism, or one of these modern nonsenses, and you know, they’re having a wonderful time deciding with the teacher that there are no absolutes, and no right and wrong. And, well, that’s all good knockabout stuff in the sixth form, isn’t it? But supposing the pupils go out onto the soccer field in the afternoon, I suppose I’m assuming boys, but it could be girls, horrors. Yes, it could be girls going out to play soccer as well, couldn’t it?
And they’re playing in the afternoon, and the referee suddenly blows his whistle, and points at one of these pupils, and says, you, off the field. Immediately the cry goes out, it’s not fair. He didn’t do the right thing. It’s quite wrong to send me off. The ref didn’t see the truth at all. He didn’t see that this guy bit my ear off before I hacked him in the shin.
You see, immediately we get on to the realities of life, we immediately know there’s such a thing as fairness and rightness and wrong and truth, and we cry out that we haven’t been given it. The debate in the sixth form in the morning doesn’t last when you get on to the field of play in the afternoon, because everybody knows that there are these absolutes. God has his witness in the human heart.
But does that mean that everybody turns to the light of Jesus when he comes into the world and when we proclaim him on a Tuesday in the lunch hour? And tragically, no. Look again at John 1:10-11. Immediately after this, because verse 9 is such a hopeful verse, isn’t it, we read some rather tragic news. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. “Rarely” means “would not acknowledge him.”
10 He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. 11 He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. (John 1:10-11, ESV)
It’s a very tragic note, that, isn’t it, the beginning of John’s Gospel. So he is the light of the world, but that certainly doesn’t mean that the world is going to turn to him, and we shall see more of that in a moment. So he’s the light for every man. That means he’s the light for you. And if you won’t turn to him, you won’t find light anywhere else.
Make quite sure of that. Third question: Who benefits from this light? Well, if we turn to our verse right from the beginning, John 8:12, our foundation verse, it’s really very simple, isn’t it?
12 Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” (John 8:12, ESV)
It’s quite explicit there, isn’t it? It’s not whoever is decent, whoever is religious.
I’ve actually got to follow Jesus; there’s no other way, and if I follow Jesus, then I will no longer walk in darkness, in a fog, not knowing where I’m going, not knowing what life is about, but I’ll find this light of life. However, alas, it’s again not quite so simple. Turn to my verse for question three, John 3:19. I’d like you to turn to this one.
I think it’s really one of the most challenging verses in John about this matter of belief, because so many people think that they don’t believe because they’re very clever or because they have a lot of evidence against God and against Christianity and so on, and that’s very seldom the truth. Verse 19 of John 3, this is the verdict, light has come into the world, but men love darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. That is very, very striking, isn’t it?
It says that this matter of believing in the light of the world, coming to Jesus Christ, acknowledging his truth, is moral. Men love darkness rather than light.
19 And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. (John 3:19, ESV)
They prefer to stay in their agnosticism. They prefer to stay in the darkness of their own sinfulness. I find this verse particularly useful in the days when I used to do a lot of speaking to students because you often find very foolish things thrown at you in a student setup when they would tell you that faith is a leap in the dark. I guess you’ve heard that, haven’t you?
And people are saying, this is irrational, I can’t leap in the dark, I need more evidence. Well, you put that statement that faith is a leap in the dark alongside verse 19 of chapter 3, and it just doesn’t fit. The picture here is that I’m in the dark already. I’m ignorant and I’m sinful. And the light shines. And if I am to come to that light, I’ve got to come out from my dark tunnel, my dark hidey-hole, and I’ve got to take a brave, even if a timorous, step into the light.
But that’s too much for me. And like those little worms in the garden, as the stone is lifted, we dart back into our dark hole. Haven’t you seen that on a Tuesday? You brought somebody, they listened to the truth, it hit their conscience, when you asked them to come again, no. I remember somebody actually running away from the darts and helens. I’m sure he wasn’t running for an appointment. He was running away from the light. He couldn’t get away from it quick enough, and never came back.
I know that because I was very concerned for that particular young man, and one or two of the young men at St. Helens had witnessed to him. The light was too bright. Well, I guess that’s true for all of us. It’s an uncomfortable thing to live in the light, isn’t it? To find that everything in your life is being exposed for what it really is. But better to have it exposed now in this life, in the life of the world to come.
Because in the life of the world to come, there’s no chance to put it right. Now you will live in darkness of ignorance and sinfulness forever. And that’s too awful to contemplate. Question four. What is the consequence of refusing the light? Well, the consequence of refusing the light, of course, coming back here to our verse, is that we shall walk in darkness. But I’m not sure, really, that I put that question rightly. Because it isn’t a consequence of refusing the light, it’s already my state, that I am in darkness. I’m there already.
I suppose the consequence of refusing the light when it comes to me, when I’m in the darkness, is that I make that state of darkness permanent. I don’t know if your mother used to say to you, as my mother used to say to me when I was a small boy, you know, I’d make some silly face. And she’d say, if you make a face like that, you’ll get stuck like that. And I’ve always remembered that. I don’t know why one remembers those things, because I don’t make silly faces nowadays. I try not to.
And I hope I haven’t got stuck like that, because some of the faces small boys make are quite gruesome, aren’t they? But you know, I felt this very much when I’ve talked to people about Christian things. There are some people you meet who are so incorrigible, so much in a state of darkness that there really isn’t any hope for them.
You can see that they’ve heard it, refused it, turned away, and they’re in a state of confusion and darkness. And you feel, as you turn away from a conversation with them, “Really, I don’t think there’s much hope for that person.” Well, it may be there isn’t. There is such a thing as the blackness of darkness, not just in the life of the world to come, but a darkness we choose now and become so much a part of our lives that light, even the light of Jesus Christ, can barely get a chink in.
What’s my verse for this one? John 12:35. Do turn to this one too.
35 So Jesus said to them, “The light is among you for a little while longer. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtake you. The one who walks in the darkness does not know where he is going. 36 While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of light.” When Jesus had said these things, he departed and hid himself from them. (John 12:35-36, ESV)
This obviously is a historical statement about his own coming to the people of his own day. “Put your trust in the light while you have it.” Well, that obviously was a local situation. He knows he’s going to die.
He knows the opportunity is a fleeting one, but I can’t help thinking there’s a permanent truth in it, that in one sense today the opportunity is still fleeting. It was for that guy who ran away. When God speaks to us, he is patient, but he will not necessarily go on knocking at the door. If we spurn his voice, if we turn away with some easy excuse, we may find that the opportunity is gone and that we’re permanently in that state where we don’t know where we’re going. Question five: Why the light of life?
Well, I think that’s very interesting that he gives us the light of life, because that’s very typical of John’s gospel, and my verse for that, as you’ll see, is to go right back to the famous prologue, John 1:4.
4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men. (John 1:4, ESV)
Now, this marriage together of life and light, light and life, is to me fascinating. It shows that the Christian life is a whole life. If I want enlightenment, if I want knowledge, I must also have life.
I must have the experience of Christ by his Holy Spirit at work within me. I must be regenerate. I must be transformed. I cannot have the knowledge on its own. Oh, very interesting, that knowledge, but of course it has nothing to do with life. Life and light go together in the New Testament. When a person discovers this new life, when this new life invades us, and some of you can remember with great joy, can’t you, when that life invaded you? Look back to that time. Why, it was a new world, wasn’t it?
Your eyes were opened. You suddenly saw what you’d not seen before. Once you’d been blind, but now you saw. Now you understood who Christ was and why he came. Now you understood why God had given you life. You understood what it was for, where you were going, and where you’d come from. No longer wandering around in circles. It’s tremendously important, isn’t it, incidentally, when crisis comes? We’ve had so many crises in the city, so many people pitched out of their jobs suddenly at a moment’s notice, often very cruelly.
And it’s in times like that, isn’t it, that people ask, what’s life about? What does it all mean? And I think that phrase, we don’t know where we’re going, is a sad one, isn’t it? If you don’t know where you’re going, if you’re not a Christian, then these blows are body blows to all of us. But though they may be body blows, if we have the light of the world, we at least know where we’re going. We know there is an answer. We know that God’s truth and holiness are with us. So come back then to John 12:8. I think it’s one of the very greatest verses in the Bible.
8 For the poor you always have with you, but you do not always have me.” (John 12:8, ESV)
I want to lay it upon your conscience now today. Jesus said, “I am the light of the world.” It makes me think of that very famous picture of Jesus, a copy of which is in St. Paul’s; you probably know it. It’s Victorian, admittedly, but it still tells its story of Jesus with a crown of thorns standing outside a door, which is meant to be the human heart, and knocking on it.
And that great picture comes of course from a verse in the New Testament right at the end of the Bible in the book of Revelation. Well, I don’t know if you read in the book of Revelation, but you’re going to this morning. Will you turn to chapter three? It’s my last verse. So please turn to it. If your next door neighbor is still struggling in the Old Testament, that means he hasn’t been at the school of Christ very long. Just help him, will you? And tell him to come next week and get with it.
Revelation 3:20 says,
20 Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me. (Revelation 3:20, ESV)
Now, that door he’s standing and knocking at is the door of this church of Laodicea, which is materialistic, nominal, formal, dead. It’s quite a difficult sentence to interpret because when Jesus stands at the door in the gospels, it’s the door, it’s the time of judgment. When he comes to the door, the day is over. Judgment is coming.
And at first sight, it looks as though judgment is coming to this church because it is empty, because there is no reality there. I was brought up in a church like that, in Lewis and Sussex, a church very like this really, that was poor and blind and naked, had nothing to offer. And there comes a time when God’s judgment is visited on his church like that. But what is so interesting about this verse in verse 20 is suddenly the whole thing comes into personal terms and individual terms. He stands at the door and knocks.
You feel that judgment is coming to the church, but the same one who knocks is a patient God. And he speaks, “If anyone, it’s singular, if anyone in the church hears my voice and opens the door, presumably the door of their personality, I will come in and I will eat with him.”
You see? The church may be without me, but I will come to him. It’s as though he’s standing, it’s rather a painful picture, isn’t it? He’s standing outside a formal nominal church. Is there one person inside who will listen to me?
If there is, I will come to them. Of course, he could knock down the doors, the judge. He could devastate the church, he could destroy. He’s perfectly capable of doing that and we deserve nothing less. But this is a very, very gracious promise, isn’t it? That rather than bringing destruction, he’s going to bring new life and new light. Well, I wonder if anyone today hears my voice. It may be only just one person who hears the voice.
Maybe you heard that voice long ago and responded, but if you hear that voice today, then let me lay that great promise before you. Open the door, and the promise is, “I will come in and eat with you, and you with me.”
Let’s pray.
“I am the light of the world. He that follows me shall not walk in darkness.” Lord, we cannot imagine what it means to walk in darkness, walk in darkness right through eternity. And we ask, therefore, that you will rescue us from that state of darkness, ignorance, and sin here and now.
We pray that we may be willing to turn to the light. We pray that there may be nobody in church this morning who loves darkness more than light. And if they are like that, as we all are by nature, Heavenly Father, we confess it, then grant them repentance. Grant us repentance and the faith and courage to turn to the light and to have our lives filled with that light. Lord, we know there comes a day when you stand at the door and that’s the day of judgment.
We thank you for the great patience that is willing to wait. We know that you’ve been patient with some people sitting here for a very, very long time. Have mercy upon them. So we pray these things, Lord, for Jesus Christ’s sake. Amen. Amen.
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We need one another. Yet we don’t always know how to develop deep relationships to help us grow in the Christian life. Younger believers benefit from the guidance and wisdom of more mature saints as their faith deepens. But too often, potential mentors lack clarity and training on how to engage in discipling those they can influence.
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