Sayings of Jesus: “The Light of the World”
“I am the light of the world” is one of Jesus’ famous “I am” sayings in John’s Gospel (John 8:12; see also 9:5). But it’s not his only “Light of the world” saying; there’s one in Matthew’s Gospel, too. In this instance, though, he isn’t talking of himself. This time, it’s “You are the light of the world” (Matthew 5:14). So how does that work? He is, but also his followers are . . .?
Light (as “good”) and darkness (as “bad”)—what they represent, metaphorically, and how they are contrasted—is a recurring biblical theme, not least in John. One example is in John chapter 3:19-21, where Jesus says:
“Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.”
The context for that passage (in other words, what’s happening immediately before it) is Jesus’ conversation with a leading Pharisee called Nicodemus (the one to whom Jesus speaks about being “born again”—see https://www.steveburnhope.com/blog/sayings-of-jesus-born-again). Notably, we read that Nicodemus comes to him “at night” (verse 2)—a not-unimportant detail given what comes after. Speaking of which, translators are unsure whether verses 16-21 are to be included as part of what Jesus says to Nicodemus or whether they are John’s words, as commentary—i.e., whether the speech marks close after verse 15 or verse 21. Most translations go with the latter, so we’ll assume that. It also seems to “fit” the narrative better (though nothing much hangs on it either way). Interestingly, that section includes perhaps the most well-known verse in the New Testament, John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” Are these words of Jesus, or words of John? Again, not much hangs on it, since it’s canonical Scripture either way.
Going off-piste for a moment, Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus in John 3 is one of the two longest recorded in the Gospels. The other comes in the very next chapter, John 4, and it’s with a woman: the Samaritan woman at the well. That conversation is worthy of a blog on its own (note to self), not least because it’s one that preachers routinely misread and hence misinterpret (along with the so-called “woman caught in adultery,” in John 8). We see a fascinating juxtaposition of these two conversations that John places almost adjacent to each other: one of them with the “highest of the high” (a male member of the Jewish ruling council that society holds in the highest regard) and then one with the “lowest of the low” (not just a woman, but a Samaritan woman, that society holds in shame and contempt). That a first-century Jewish rabbi would speak alone with a woman (especially a Samaritan woman) was shocking enough, but what does it say that John gives so much space to it (most commentators say this is the longest)?
Anyway—back to our theme. Darkness lends itself to representing negative imagery because it’s often the context for wrongdoing committed “under cover of darkness,” where a person is less likely to be seen and caught. As Ephesians 5:11 puts it, “Have nothing to do with the bad things done in darkness” (or per the NIV, “Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness”). This sense is evident in the John 3:19-21 passage above, but Jesus’ statement about himself as “the light of the world” relates to exposing bad things only tangentially. For its central meaning, we need to look at where it appears—in John 8:12:
When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.”
Here Jesus is using the metaphor of “darkness” in the sense of ignorance—lack of knowledge or awareness. Of what? In what sense? In this context, it’s walking in darkness concerning life. If we add in the context of John’s Gospel more widely, it’s also walking in darkness about God. Jesus “lights up” both our understanding of life—a quality of life he wants us to have in abundance (John 10:10)—and our understanding of God: "Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9).
“Walking” is a metaphor for living; how someone is travelling through life. To follow Jesus is to exchange being “in the dark” about what life is all about (and what God is all about) for being “in the light.”
Jesus’ invitation to exchange darkness for light is not just an individual thing. In Colossians 1:13, Paul says that God has “rescued us from the kingdom of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son” (which in the preceding verse is called “the kingdom of light”). This framing in the kingdom makes it a collective thing: a kingdom is all of the king’s subjects together.
This collective, or “corporate,” sense is reflected in Jesus’ other “light of the world” which we noted at the beginning, in Matthew 5:14, when he said, “You are the light of the world.” This is within a body of Jesus’ teaching that we call the Sermon on the Mount (though neither Jesus nor Matthew called it that). In the preceding verse 13, Jesus calls us to be “salt of the earth”—a phrase people use nowadays to describe someone who’s a really decent, role-model kind of person. Here, though, the “you” is plural, not singular—he’s talking about us as the people of God, flavouring the society and community we live in.
And then, in verses 14 through 16, we see another calling—and again, it’s “you plural”:
“You are the light of the world—like a city on a hill that cannot be hidden. No one lights a lamp and then puts it under a basket. Instead, a lamp is placed on a stand, where it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father.
The metaphor of a city set on a hill is not consistent with an individual lamp on its own (“this little light of mine” doesn’t work here)—no one would see that from far away. It’s an invitation and a challenge to God’s people to be a high-visibility “city set on a hill” light to the world through who we are together and what we do together. A community within our community; one that lives differently, loves people differently, prioritises life differently, and so reflects the light of Jesus as his followers. Quite a responsibility!
It's clear that this is far more than just “telling people” (still less, preaching to people). According to Jesus, giving light (“to everyone in the house”) is “our good deeds shining out for all to see”—not our words shining out for all to hear.
Good deeds is a tricky subject for evangelicals today thanks to the Reformation and its emphatic rejection of any role whatsoever for human works in terms of achieving our salvation. “By God’s grace alone, by faith in Jesus alone,” proclaimed Luther, Calvin, and the Reformers; and they weren’t wrong in that sense. But they were perhaps over-influenced by the corrupt mediaeval Catholic context that they were so strongly coming against and swung the pendulum too far (or at least, some of their successors have). To suggest that what we do or don’t do in life doesn’t matter is to ignore or deny significant parts of the New Testament (see, for example, James 2)—and not least what Jesus says. The Reformers’ revelation of salvation by grace alone, by faith alone was never intended as an excuse to be selfish, self-absorbed Christians disinterested in doing good in the world. Good works are surely not the seeds of salvation, but they are surely the fruit of salvation.
So of course what we do matters. Doing good is every Christian’s calling. Any Christian who truly understands who God is and what he is like knows that we are called and commissioned to do good for the people he loves—as much as we can, as often as we can. And as Jesus said, the outcome of that will be “everyone will praise your heavenly Father.”