Evening, August 31
Go To Morning Reading
“If we walk in the light, as he is in the light.”
1 John 1:7
As he is in the light! Can we ever attain to this? Shall we ever be
able to walk as clearly in the light as he is whom we call “Our Father,” of whom it is written, “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all?” Certainly, this is the model which is set before us, for the Saviour
himself said, “Be ye perfect, even as your Father who is in heaven is perfect;” and although we may feel that we can never rival the perfection of
God, yet we are to seek after it, and never to be satisfied until
we attain to it. The youthful artist, as he grasps his early pencil,
can hardly hope to equal Raphael or Michael Angelo, but still, if
he did not have a noble beau ideal before his mind, he would only attain to something very mean and
ordinary. But what is meant by the expression that the Christian is
to walk in light as God is in the light? We conceive it to import
likeness , but not degree . We are as truly in the light, we are as heartily in the light, we
are as sincerely in the light, as honestly in the light, though we
cannot be there in the same measure. I cannot dwell in the sun, it
is too bright a place for my residence, but I can walk in the light of the sun; and so, though I cannot attain to that perfection
of purity and truth which belongs to the Lord of hosts by nature as
the infinitely good, yet I can set the Lord always before me, and
strive, by the help of the indwelling Spirit, after conformity to
his image. That famous old commentator, John Trapp, says, “We may be in the light as God is in the light for quality , but not for equality .” We are to have the same light, and are as truly to have it and walk
in it as God does, though, as for equality with God in his holiness
and purity, that must be left until we cross the Jordan and enter
into the perfection of the Most High. Mark that the blessings of sacred
fellowship and perfect cleansing are bound up with walking in the
light.