Reflections
God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son – so that we might live and not perish. (see John 3:16)
Everything that God does is motivated by love – unto His eternal purposes in Christ. Indeed, Paul said, “If God be for us, who can be against us?” (Rom. 8:31) There is nothing negative about God. He desires that all men be saved and come into the knowledge of the Truth. (I Tim. 2:4) In short, God is a redemptive God. That is His nature. He is the God of ALL GRACE.
This is the GOOD NEWS. This is the Truth. So why would anyone reject it? Paul told the Galatians the Truth about their false gospel of legalism. He was trying to deliver them from a terrible path they had chosen of legalism, and yet he wondered if they had become his enemy because he told them the Truth. What is the core issue here?
John the apostle told us why people will not accept the good news. He wrote, “This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that does evil hates the light, neither comes to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.” (John 3:19-20) The reason why people will not accept the Truth is because they refuse to accept what the Truth reveals about themselves. When God brings a person light – even if it is the elementary light of the good news – He must tell the Truth about us. Jesus Christ IS the Light, and there is simply no other way to come to Him for salvation, or for freedom from error, unless I embrace what His light exposes. And for man in Adam, the Truth about us is that we are all dead sinners. For the Galatians, the Truth was that they had embraced another gospel – under which Christ was of no effect for them. We have to agree with God about ourselves if we are to enter into a relationship with God through Jesus Christ. “If we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship….” (I Jn. 1:7)
Is that a bad thing? It is redemption. It is freedom. But, as John says, if I will not allow my sin to be exposed AS sin, then I am choosing darkness. I am choosing to continue with my facade – only now no longer in ignorance — and some of the greatest facades are religious facades.
We therefore see in this passage that when God brings light, we have reached a crossroads. We cannot go back. This is of GOD. And it is the pivot point that will determine which direction our lives will take. I must either love the light of Jesus Christ and all that He exposes, or I will choose to love the darkness that will keep me living in the delusion of my own righteousness. God wants only freedom for us, but at some point, we must confess our bondage in order to be free.
Do we want the Truth? We cannot want it more than God wants it for us. But the Truth – which is found only in Jesus – will expose all UNTRUTH. But not only the untruth that we believe – it will expose all of the untruth that is in our hearts. Loving the light will make us true to God. Loving darkness will simply make us all the more untrue to God.
Thankfully, God is a redemptive God. What that means is that if we have loved darkness rather than light, we can still turn back and choose light rather than darkness. It is never too late to come into the light and confess the Truth to God. He is evermore open to us. The sin is when we will not do so and choose to remain hidden from Him.