The Pulpit Commentary — John — Volume 1 — Section 128

the me1rns whereby e.ll moral agency in the universe is competent to know both himself and all things. The gospel is concerned with men, with the moral universe of men and wirh the fearful possibility and fact that the moral nature of man has been alienated from the life or God, and that, though the life streams forth as light upon the universe, yet the free-will of man has resisted and opposed itself to the lifo of God, and "dark- ness" has failed to comprehend the unsullied beam. Salvation for man includes o. piercing of this darkness; the sphere of death is conspicuous in that department of man's nature by which he comes to know (-yiv~<T,mv) God. His very faculties were tbemselYes arrested. His eyes were blinded. 'l'he irradiation of all things with which man bas t~ do_ by the life of God failed to produce its legitimate effect upon him, by the pn1longed mddference, the mental incapacity, the moral blindness, the judicial blind- folding, that hn<l befallen him through sin. Moral death is mental blindness. This is the inrnrsion of the Platonic thesis which charges all moral obliquity upon intellec- tual deficiency. So, though the Logos is in the world as life and light, yet the world knows it not. God is not in men's thoughts. In the Logos is Life and Light. There is an eternal effulgence of the glory of God in the coeternal bea.m of the Divine Word. He is the Brightness of the glory of God, the express Image of his substance. St. John's teaching is that the Logos, when made flesh and when tabernacling with us, inhabiting the temple of the body prepared for him, was Light. The glory of the Only Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth, shone thence upon all human life. This illumination, this forth-streaming of the omnific Word in a perfect life, is calculated to turn the darkness, the intellectual per- versions and moral corruption of men, into light. The salvation which the Logos incarnate ministers to men is illumination. On more than one occasion Jesus declares himself to be "the Light of the world" (eh. viii. 12; ix. 5; xii. 35, 36, 46). Coming to him is called a coming to the Light (eh. iii. 19-21). Apart from the light that the Lord has cast upon the way which a man should take, he will not see the path, but,- by keeping in his light, he becomes " a child of the light.'' The entire world is illu- mined Jor him, the darkness of death and the grave are pierced, the realities of the otherwise unknown, invisible world are revealed. The co1Tesponding term to "Light" is "Truth," the adequate expression of reality, the veritable utterance of the thought of the Father. Weiss, 'Biblical Theology,' ii..354, "'Al1.'fJ8t1a is not knowledge, but the object of knowledge; not therefore identical with life; but the revelation of the truth is the presupposition of it,"-Christ as Logos-made-flesh, full of grace and truth (eh. i.14). "I am," said he," the Truth, as well as the Way and the Life" (eh. xiv. 6). He is the 'l'ruth about God's essential nature, adequately revealing it; he is the Truth about man's ideal nature, as God conceivrd it and produced it; and he is the Truth about the relation between God and man, showing a unity of consciousness and will with the Father, which issues in the confession that he does always those things that plea.so God, and knows that the Father hears him always. His meat is to do the will of God, and to finish his work (eh. iv. 34). The conditions of adequate knowledge of God and duty and deliverance are provided in the simple fact of his being. He has come to bear wi~ness to truth, as well as to be Truth (eh. xviii 37; viii 40); i.e. the Person of the Saviour is not only a revelation of. reality in itself, but it illumines other realities aB well. All who are of the truth do hear his voice (eh. :x.viii. 37). So great a light as his life is not only 11,lorious and refuluent in itself, but it brings before the open and susceptible eye a world of reality not ;therwise known. The light behind him is an opening of heaven; the light before him reproves all evil by revealing it in its true proportions. The effect of "walking in the light" is moral purity and conformation of character to the Light of God, so that those who accept this Light have none occasion of stumbling in them. So St. John speaks of believers as "being of the truth," as denying all that is false (1 John 1ii. 19; ii 4); and, moreover, as "walking in the truth,'' and "doing the truth" (3 John 4). But truth, objective revelation, the shining of the Sun of Righteousness, is not tlrn only condition of salvation by light, seeing that the "darkness" of man is not a bald negation, but an u~susce:i,tibility to light._ Power is therefore _wield~d by the Logos incarnate to open blind eyes. The synopt1Sts fre~uent~y- rec?gmz~ this as a feat~ro of the Christ's work, and represent the Lord as restormg v1s1ou 10 various ways to bhuded  THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. JOilN. cxliii