Jesus described our condition apart from God as walking in “darkness.” In John 8:12, Jesus says, “I am the light of the world. Anyone who follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” In the darkness we search for a lot of things.
(1) We search for knowledge. Everyone is a PHILOSOPHER. We are incurably curious about everything from the macro to the miniscule. . . from universes (and multi-verses) to the virtually undetectable quantum particles of which matter is comprised. How did time, space and matter begin? Who/what set the universe into orderly motion? Who/What sustains it? How did a dead universe give us life? How did a mechanical, law-abiding, universe give us moral freedom, moral response-ability? How did an impersonal universe give us a capacity to think, feel, love, create, relate, and enjoy so many good things? Why do we have consciousness--self-awareness, other-awareness, God awareness, this profound ability to communicate, human language? The more we search for knowledge, the less we realize we know, the less plausible all “this” seems to be some cosmic accident.
(2) We search for love. Everyone is a ROMANTIC. We all want to love and be loved. We want to be known, noticed, included, accepted, thought well about, valued esteemed, touched, hugged, cared for. Our search for love is filled with great irony. The more we search for love, the less loved we often feel. Our music. Our novels. Our poems. Our art. Our films. Our magazines/blogs. Our day-to-day conversations. Our therapy sessions. It’s all filled with this incurable longing for true connection, for a satisfying intimacy no one seems quite able or willing to satisfy.
(3) We search for freedom. Everyone is a STRUGGLER. We’re all haunted by a sense of sin, failure, and shame. We’re kind of like ships sailing the high seas. The longer we sail, the more barnacles and crud that collects on our hull, until one day our boat capsizes and we sink into the miry depths. We so badly want our sins to be scrapped off our hull and given a fresh coat of paint, but how?
We’re haunted by a sense of inadequacy. We look around and we notice we fall short of what holy, righteous, and good. We have these beautiful convictions, these internal principles and standards… this moral compass… these divine aspirations… but we keep crashing into this invisible glass ceiling. We’ve become about as good as we can become on our own, and it isn’t good enough.
We’re haunted by a sense accountability. It’s like we expect bad things to happen to us, and around us. We’re waiting for the world to rear its ugly head and dish up the comeuppance we’ve deserved all along for all our selfishness, pride, violence, evil.
(4) We search for life. Everyone is a mere MORTAL. God’s warning to Adam, is that because of sin, “Dying we would die.” In sin, we’d experience an ever-diminishing measure of life/health/joy/peace before the flickering flame of our life/soul would pass.
One last thing we search for is control. We want to be masters of our destiny and fate. We want to control, and change the inevitable, that unfolds all around us (and in our lives) each/every day. But again, we realize we are powerless. So maybe there is a number five… (5) We search for control. But everyone is POWERLESS!
But along comes this man Jesus, and that’s all that people thought Jesus was (at first). And Jesus says, John 14:27, “Peace I leave with you. My peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Your heart must not be troubled or fearful.” John 16:33, “I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace. You will have suffering in this world. Be courageous! I’ve overcome the world.” John 8:12, “I am the light of the world. Anyone who follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”
There are several reasons WHY Jesus can offer us a peace beyond anything anyone in this world could possibly give us. You might want to write these down!
#1) The “Light of the World,” Jesus, leads us to True Knowledge. The world doesn’t know God, nor seen God, nor can it figure out who God is. God is always just beyond the reach of religion, philosophy, science, and psychology. But it’s not as though the world hasn’t tried to know God. There are two ways we can know something for sure. We can know things deductively—we can reason down to things. Or we can know things inductively—we can reason “up” to things. We can gather-up, study, analyze, categorize, all the particulars of time, space, matter… and try to make sense of it all… and form a worldview big enough to encompass all we know. The history of religion is people trying to reason their way up to God.
But Jesus claims to be the “light of the world.” He claims to be the “Truth,” with a capital T. He claims to have been before all things, the Creator of all things, the Sustainer of all things, and the culmination of all things. As the light of the world Jesus offers us a set of glasses through which we can see/understand what we’d never be able to see/understand otherwise. It’s called divine revelation! Apart from divine revelation the best we’ll ever be able to do is speculate about all things reality. But in Christ Jesus we can know, understand the most ultimate reality which is the Living God! John 1:18, “No one has ever seen God except the One is at the Father’s side—He has revealed Him.” There is no other way to know God except by His revelation of Himself to us.
#2) The “Son of God”, Jesus, leads us to True Love. One of the most profound things Jesus ever said about “himself” is found in John 3:35, 5:20, 10:17, 17:24 is “The Father loves the Son.” And Jesus would also say this in reverse, “The Son loves the Father.” For example, John 14:31, “I do exactly what the Father has commanded Me, so that the world may know that I love the Father…” You can’t get any closer to knowing the love of a Father, than being a Son. Or loving the Son than being the Father. No more intimate bond exists than that of a Father/Son. So you can see why it was so profound for Jesus to say, “The Father loves the Son” and “The Son loves the Father.”
Now, the most profound thing Jesus ever said about “us” is John 16:27, “For the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me and have believed that I came from God.” The Father/Son freely love us! We can be adopted, and gain the right to be children of God, and become God’s very own sons/daughters. This is the exact love the Apostle Paul so eloquently prays in Ephesians 3:14-19 for us to grasp:
He writes, “For this reason I kneel before the Father from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named. I pray that he may grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with power in your inner being through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. I pray that you, being rooted and firmly established in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the length and width, height and depth of God’s love, and to know Christ’s love that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”
How much peace would you have if instead of love being a question mark, it was changed to an exclamation mark! The Father loves the Son; The Son loves the Father; Because you love Jesus, and believe he came from God, the Father loves you.
#3) The “Sinless Jesus” leads us to True Freedom. Jesus declared himself to be “the way, the truth, and the life.” In John 8:35-36 he said, “if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” He said you will no longer be a slave, but a son. You will become a permanent member of God’s family! We have this promise that is powerfully expressed in 1 John 1:9, “If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just, and forgive us our sin, and cleans us of all unrighteouness.” Who better to scrape our hull clean than Jesus? He was tempted in every way yet was without sin. Who better to help you shatter that glass ceiling of limited righteousness, and clothe you with the righteousness, and sanctify all the mess that’s long threatened to capsize your life. So, Jesus is our savior who was without sin, and who is competent to forgive and set free.
#4) The Death-free Jesus leads us to True Life. Jesus repeatedly predicted that he would suffer, die, be buried, and after three days, raise from the grave. His resurrection would be a demonstration that the power of death could indeed be broken. More than this, His resurrection would be a preview of what God would do for us… that “though dying yet shall we live!” In baptism we declare this hope. We die to sin, we’re buried in the water grave, and were raised to new life. Baptism is a reenactment of Jesus’ Death, Burial, and Resurrection. It’s a visible declaration, testimony, and preview of our own future Death, Burial, Resurrection! What greater peace can we having this hope?
If “darkness” describes our relationship without God, what one word might describe a right relationship with God? One of the most frequently repeated commands of Jesus is “Believe.” John 6:29 says, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent."
This is the most tangible, practical, actionable thing we can do to. Believe. What we cannot do for ourselves, in the darkness, we’re inviting Jesus to do for us. Belief is saying….
Jesus Light of the World, give us philosophers true knowledge!
Jesus Son of God give us hopeless romantics true love.
Sinless Savior, grant us strugglers true forgiveness and freedom.
Risen Lord, lead us mere mortals, to life everlasting.
Decision Day is May 6th. If I were exploring the peace of Christ for the first time, I would sit down with a Bible and make a list of everything Jesus said about knowing God, knowing love, knowing forgiveness, knowing eternal life. In Jesus there is peace for the philosopher, peace for the romantic, peace for those struggling, peace for mere mortals. Are you willing to believe/trust Jesus with the big stuff in your life?
If so the Bible asks us to simply confess our faith to God. If you believe, repeat this simple confession: “I believe… that Jesus is the Christ… the Son of the Living God… and I trust him as Lord and Savior…” That’s the essence of confession!
Repentance is offering ourselves back to God. A great way to understand repentance is to think of surrender. You’ve spent your whole life trusting your own instincts, mapping your own path through the darkness, but now Jesus invites us all, “come, follow me…” “Anyone who follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” This is the essence of repentance.
Jesus also commanded us to baptize/teach. He said, “Go, therefore, and make disciples of[e] all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
If you understand the peace God offers in Christ… If you understand these steps… you are ready to be a part of a decision. We want to talk to you.