PHOS (Light)
What is the Word?
The Bible has much to say about the contrast between two polar opposites: darkness and light. In the very beginning of the Bible, God calls out light from the shapeless void, an abyss of darkness and chaos. God called this illumination good. The New Testament draws upon this goodness of a light that shines in the darkness. The word that is most commonly used is phós.
How does the Bible use this word?
A noun, this Koine Greek term has a broad and narrow definition in the way that the Bible uses the term. Broadly speaking, it denotes the idea of light proper, or illumination. One might think of a torch that emanates light so that one may see where they are going. However, there is also a more nuanced way that the Bible uses the term – especially in John’s Gospel where he loves to pit light against darkness as a metaphor for the goodness of God as opposed to the fallen creation. Here, the term imports a sense of divine brilliance, a holy illumination, incorporeal and dazzling.
Where in the Bible?
John’s Gospel is the premier place to turn if we want to find examples of how the Bible thinks of the concept of light. In the first chapter, we get an extended commentary on the incarnation of the divine Jesus, the word of God made flesh:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light (φῶς) of men. The light (φῶς) shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
John 1:4-5
Here we see parallels with God’s first order of creation in Genesis 1. The same God who called light forth from the darkness is the one who emanates light in his coming into the world. Indeed, the incarnation of Jesus is a new creation, in whom there is life eternal.
In John’s pastoral letters we also see many instances of this word used relationally for how we are to live in a fallen world:
If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light (φωτὶ), as he is in the light (φωτὶ), we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.
1 John 1:6-8
Light of the World
At times, life can be very dark. Everywhere we turn, we see the blind leading the blind. People are groping and searching for some kind of meaning, some kind of purpose, and some kind of truth. As Christians, God has called us to be the light in the darkness of a fallen existence -not only in the Gospel we proclaim, but in the way we love one another. “You are the light of the world” our Lord says to us (Matt 5:14). Thus we are sent out to proclaim this message of Jesus, crucified and resurrected to illuminate all things.