Walking in the Light of Christ
1 John 1:5-9 gives us a beautiful picture of what choosing the Light looks like. He writes, “God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all.”
Walking in the Light
We’ve been looking at what happens when the Light of Christ shines into our lives. Sometimes it’s comforting and sometimes it’s very disturbing. But it’s always revealing. Once the Light shows us what’s really there, we have a choice: we can step back into the shadows, or we can stay in the Light.
1 John 1:5-9 gives us a beautiful picture of what choosing the Light looks like. He writes, “God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all.” Then he adds: “But if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.”
I love that phrase—“Walk in the Light.”
John never claims we won’t stumble or that walking in the Light means we’ll never sin. In fact, just a few verses later he warns that if we say we have no sin, we’re only deceiving ourselves. So what does it actually mean?
It means we stop hiding. Walking in the Light means letting God’s Light hold us to His standard and allowing ourselves to be exposed and corrected. When we do that, we no longer hide our sin and when God reveals something that needs to change, we don’t make excuses or rationalize. We bring it into the Light.
That’s good news. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
The same Light that exposes our sin is the Light that leads us into forgiveness. God shows us our darkness because He loves us too much to leave us there.
Maybe you’ve spent a long time keeping something in the shadows. Some of us become pretty good at hiding things from others—or even from ourselves.
Here’s the thing—You don’t have to hide anything from God. He already knows. He doesn’t expose darkness so He can abandon us in it. He brings it into the Light so He can cleanse us from it.
So walk in the Light—not because you’ve got everything figured out or because you’ve become perfect, but because you’ve learned that there’s nothing safer than being honest with the God who already knows everything about you and loves you anyway.
