Let Light Shine Out of Darkness

For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

-2 Cor 4:6

“Familiarity breeds contempt.” The hardest part about growing up in a stable, theologically rich household and church appears through, not always contempt, but assumed familiarity. I knew all the right answers to Bible questions and might have been able to recite complex doctrines, but my soul did not yet thirst for the living God (Ps 42:2).

Only by God’s mercy and grace, the light of Christ was shone in my heart from a young age through the blessing and means of a vibrant church and ordinary, faithful parents. Yet like many brought out of darkness and into God’s marvelous light, the window of sanctification was only partly cracked. There was still much maturing and darkness needing exposure by the shining of the light of the knowledge of God’s glory in Christ. God, in his kind providence, used further faithful teaching and teachers, long-suffering endurance, illness, disappointments, and successes to continue opening the window of sanctification wider and wider, exposing and killing sin and growing me: a still needy pilgrim.

I love this verse for how it unites both affection and thought under the face of Jesus Christ. The God who created earth and sky and light itself changes affections by shining in our hearts in order to give knowledge real charged meaning; knowledge about God’s glory especially visible through Christ. My testimony is evidence of head knowledge’s inability to produce warmed heart affection. Only through God opening the shut window of my soul to shine life and ignite dead affections did head knowledge produce any fruit. And even after an initial conversion and baptism years ago, that same light continued to grow brighter in steady sanctification and by God’s grace continues to grow brighter still.

For now, I get the privilege to worship and participate with you, Redemption City Church, in our eager expectation of not walking by faith in the light of Christ alone, but also seeing one day in paradise by the true light of creator God who outshines the sun. We await a time when the familiar will lose all shroud of familiarity and God will be astonishingly and gloriously new in his unchangingness. We wait for when we will see with perfect affection and knowledge by God’s eternal sunrise with no shred of darkness forever with him.

Blessings,

Johnny Knight