In John 8 we have a record of an important dialogue of Jesus. He clearly introduced himself as the light of the world, sent by the Father. This sets him apart as the Christ, the one anointed by the Father as this light for all. He can set free those who believe in him as the light of the world and who therefore hold to his teachings of light, of true enlightenment from the Father. Those who reject him and reject his light will continue in darkness and die in their sins.
After dying for our sins and rising by God’s power, Jesus later sent Paul as his light to the Gentiles. This would provide light even to those outside the influence of Jewish circles. Paul had been a Pharisee. The Pharisees had largely rejected Jesus and it is they who we find Jesus telling, as recorded in John 8, that they would die in their sins. Yet Paul was persuaded on seeing the risen Jesus. Paul literally saw the light and then became light for us all. We all read what Paul subsequently wrote for the building up of churches.
A century later, the Pharisees were still pulling the strings among the Jews, running things from Jerusalem after most Jews had been scattered through the Roman Empire. These Pharisees wanted to hinder the faith in Jesus. They did not want people believing he is the Christ. They retranslated scriptures and selected a list of scriptures for a Hebrew Bible which excluded certain books. According to some church fathers, including Justin Martyr, they also excluded some passages or changed them to suppress the prophecies fulfilled in Jesus. They had no faith in this light of the world sent by God, yet centuries later they were influencing Christian church leaders Jerome and Augustine. Their closed Hebrew Bible became Jerome and Augustine’s closed Old Testament. Their translation, the Masoretic, was preferred by Jerome and Augustine over the previous translation the Septuagint. Their stricter monotheism was the framework within which the Trinity and Modalism theologies were developed. So today, when people think they follow the light, they actually also follow these Pharisees in darkness.
Jesus lives. He lives forever, so this is not going to cease to be true. He still converts, persuades, and sends. The Holy Spirit reveals Jesus’ teachings from heaven, drip feeding us. His teachings reach out in the world as light. The scriptures speaking of him are largely extremely reliable still. Light reveals some scriptures suppressed by Pharisees and church leaders, bringing them out of the shadows. Time is short, but light still shines in the darkness today. Tomorrow Jesus will still be the light of the world.
