18.1 The Light of the World
© 2017 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
You are the light of the cosmos. Light is what makes everything clearly seen as it really is. Light makes things known. Light is God becoming known. For Jesus to say that we are the light of the world means that we are God becoming known.
You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven (Matthew 5:14-16). “Glorify your Father in heaven” means an invisible Spirit God taking shape and becoming known through us.
The Lampstand. You shall also make a lampstand of pure gold; the lampstand shall be of hammered work. Its shaft, its branches, its bowls, its ornamental knobs, and flowers shall be of one piece. – …all of it shall be one hammered piece of pure gold. You shall make seven lamps for it, and they shall arrange its lamps so that they give light in front of it (Exodus 25:31 & 36).
The order in which God gave the pattern of the Tabernacle is telling. The Ark comes first, with the Mercy Seat upon it, followed closely by the Table of Showbread and the Gold Lampstand. Only then does God proceed to the tent itself. Everything else comes later.
The Church. God is most clear regarding what this lampstand represents. Then I turned to see the voice that spoke with me. And having turned I saw seven golden lampstands, and in the midst of the seven lampstands One like the Son of Man… - The mystery of… the seven golden lampstands: The… seven lampstands which you saw are the seven churches. (Revelation 1:13 & 20).
In seeing the lampstand and the voice speaking to Him out from that lampstand, John saw Christ IN His Church. And God put all things under Jesus’ feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Christ Jesus who fills all in all (Ephesians 1:22).
The Direct Result of God. And yet, consider this progression. The lampstand itself is of one piece of pure gold beaten fine, representing Father making Himself available to be known. The oil represents the Holy Spirit, and the fire, the Energeia of God, is Christ Jesus. Yet you and I together are the light coming out from this progression. You and I together are the direct result of God.
God is; therefore we are. But we ARE something very specific; we are the light of the cosmos. We are the shape and appearance of Father becoming known. We are real human beings.
Us Together. It is also clear that the lampstand in its totality represents us together as the Church. More than that, we are free to apply this same perspective to the Table of Showbread and the Altar of Incense as well. In fact, there are New Testament verses confirming such an interpretation.
When I think about the Ark of the Covenant and the Mercy Seat upon it, I see that each one of us individually must know the fulfillment of those things. When we act as the Mercy Seat together, we find ourselves as the aroma of incense towards creation. And our personal manna, even inside of Community, becomes bread together for others.
A Perfect Balance. God balances perfectly between His glory in each one of us individually and His glory through all of us together. It’s never 50/50, but always all and all. No word of life together as the Church can remove from us the glory and reality of Christ living as us even through years of isolation. And no word of Christ as us can remove from us the joy and glory of the gathering together unto Christ and the richness of the family of God. Even in our present isolation, we are utterly together as one body. And in such time as God puts us together in Church life with others, each one of us knows God in fullness in and by ourselves.
Defining Light. What is light? No one actually knows what light is. We can measure it, but only in part. And in measuring light, sometimes those measurements indicate particles and sometimes they indicate waves. And sometimes those measurements reveal some really bizarre things not found in the arena of matter and energy.
We do know very well what light does, however. Let’s understand this. God has set the contrast for us between day and night, a contrast that is constantly and dramatically reoccurring every twenty-four hours. It’s as if God wants the knowledge of the difference between light and no-light to be an essential part of our consciousness.
Total Darkness. Pitch black darkness is a rare condition however, but we have known it.
I once participated in a guided tour of an unlit cave near Carlsbad Caverns. We were in a deep and very large underground hall when the guides instructed us to sit down. After we were secure, we all turned off our lights. There was no light. All form ceased. I did not even know my body. The only thing that existed was my own consciousness unrelated to anything else. Then, one of the guides who had stopped over a hundred feet away lit a match. Instantly we all leaped back into existence; one match far away gave us the outline of the entire cavern.
No Form without Light. There is no form without light. It doesn’t mean the form isn’t there or isn’t real. It’s that the form cannot be known. And in not being known, no consciousness can conceive of its existence. I know that you exist ONLY because I am aware of your form. If I did not know that you were like me, a living and personal consciousness inhabiting a form, then I could not know you.
In that cave, if we had succeeded in extinguishing sound as well as light, then all others would have ceased to exist for each one of us in our knowing. It’s easy to disregard each other when we know only ourselves. In order to highly regard one another, we must show our real selves and we must SEE each other.
The Five Senses. How about that! These five pieces of furniture relate directly to the five senses. The lampstand is sight; the altar is smell; the table is taste. The Mercy Seat is hearing (and there I will speak with you), leaving touch to the Ark of the Covenant (since the others fit perfectly, we will assume touch for the Ark). These are the five ways that anything is known. Remove all five from our body and their correspondents from our spirit, and yes, each once of us continues in our consciousness, in the story going on in our souls. Yet we would be UTTERLY alone. Nothing else would exist to us, not even our spirit/body form.
The Ark Is Touch. For the first time in my writing career, I can understand God-not-known and God-becoming-known and I can write about it in a meaningful way.
And yes, the Ark is touch, for the clearest expression of that Ark is this scene – and He took little children into His arms and blessed them. And John, in introducing to us his knowledge of the gospel showed us his hands and said, “Here, look at these hands; these hands have touched God.”
All five senses are critical to our knowing of things and people outside of our own consciousness, but of the five, light and seeing is by far the most important. The question has been asked ten trillion times – if God is real, why doesn’t He show Himself (by light so we can see)?
The Progression of Light. God does show Himself, but since His visible appearance, the Church, does not believe she is the revelation of God, no one else does either. The church, which is His body (His form made visible), the fullness of Christ Jesus who fills all in all.
Let’s consider the progression of light. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it (John 1:4-5). – And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. (John 3:19).
Light Shows What IS. But all things that are exposed are made manifest by the light, for whatever makes manifest is light (Ephesians 5:13). – For the word of God is …a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart (Hebrews 4:12). Light shows all the contours of everything as it actually IS.
Now here is the incredible thing. Light shows what IS, not what ain’t. Sustaining all things by the word of His power. Christ is; I-not-Christ ain’t. Light does not show I-not-Christ, but only Christ. And as I see Christ alone, everything not-Christ vanishes from my knowing.
Christian Darkness. The Christian who says, “I am seeking God’s will all the time so that I might do His will and not my own,” who says, “I listen carefully to God through my spirit and through the Word so that I can do everything God tells me to do,” is living in outer darkness. The simple fact of reality is that they are NOT doing any such thing. No, dear reader, you’re not. God says that NO ONE seeks His will and NO ONE does what is right. We do fit that category. And so the first thing light does is that it causes us to stop pretending that we are good Christians, what, “be silent” and “hold your peace” actually mean.
Christ cannot be known until the lying stops.
A Bright Shining Light. I have shared about my time of greatest hopelessness in the dark and lonely months of January – February 1998. The days were very short and the nights were very long and it was cold. I had begun to write, using a word processor, but I had no 110-volt power and could write only when I used the generator, even though I was told that was not allowed. I was filled with pain and confusion, and I had no hope.
Now, as I think of that time, I can hardly see the outline of my reality, for the LIGHT shining upon me then is too bright. I thought it was darkness, because I had not known light. Yet, for the first time in my life, the lights were blazing brightly upon me. The result – I could never again imagine that I would ever “please” God.
Christ Alone. In Him you were also circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the sins of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ (Colossians 2:11). For 21 years I had been taught and believed that this meant ME putting a complete stop to MY sinful thoughts, words, and actions, and ME replacing them entirely with right thoughts, words, and actions – belonging to Christ, someone in me, but entirely separate from me.
It means the very OPPOSITE! For 21 years I had lived in the grossest of darkness, yet still drawing near to God in the Altar of Incense. The circumcision of Christ means never ever again being capable of looking for right performance coming from myself.
A Transitory Light. Yes, LIGHT must shine upon the darkness for the sole purpose of getting all the things in the darkness to shut up about themselves, for the first time in their sorry lives. But this function of light is transitory only. This is not the real function of God-Light.
Here is what I mean by “transitory.” Giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light. He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love (Colossians 1:12-13). This first work of light takes us out from darkness and places us entirely into the light. There are no shades of grey in which to live, contrary to all Christian unbelief and pious pretending.
The Permanent Light. But here’s the thing. We say, with Jesus, “Whoever sees me is seeing Father.” But we know that, although Covenant and Mercy pertains to each of us as individuals, Father revealed as He IS comes only through Church.
Church is God made visible, clearly seen and known by all creation, heaven as much as earth, now for the first time. Christ—from whom the whole body (God’s whole visible form), joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love (Ephesians 4:16).
The Body is the permanent Light – God made visible, showing Himself to all as He IS.