5 This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. 6 If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.
1 John 1:5-7, ESV
Throughout scripture, John is consistently comparing light and darkness. When John speaks of light, he means holiness, right living, sinlessness, moral purity, and obedience. When John speaks of darkness, he means sin, unrighteousness, disobedience, uncleanliness, rebellion, and wickedness. So, when John says, “God is light,” he describes God’s Holiness.
The Holiness of God is often unexamined by believers, but it should hold significant weight in our belief system. Let us consider that the Bible never says, “God is love, love, love” or “God is merciful, merciful, merciful,” or “God is Grace, Grace, Grace.” It says, “God is Holy, Holy, Holy.” Repetition is an essential marker of importance when reading the Bible. Through God’s Holiness, we discover love, mercy, and grace. Not outside of it.
God’s Holiness should also play a pivotal role in presenting the gospel. When witnessing to someone, we should not start with how much God loves them. The gospel message should first and always start with telling them how Holy God is. In describing God’s Holiness, we position the listener to consider how anyone might be saved. Our response: “To be saved, you must be perfectly righteous and perfectly Holy like God. Those we are witnessing to then might say, “Well, that’s impossible.” Our answer should be, “Yes, you can’t be Holy like God on your own.” The listener is left with the question, “What can I do?”. It is here that we are open to sharing JESUS with them. Jesus, their only hope for true salvation.
When John says, God is light; it does not merely mean that God is Holy. On the day John wrote this epistle, there were false teachers of Gnosticism who were saying God was dark or esoteric. They were casting God as a God of darkness and mystery rather than a God of light. They taught this because everyone wants a God, but responsibility follows once you start defining Him. They did not want to be responsible for walking in the light of what was revealed by a Holy God.
If I were to go to a university and preach, “I am a seeker of the truth.” Everyone would applaud. If I go on and say, “and I have found the truth,” and I begin defining that truth according to the Word of God, I would inevitably be booed off the platform. The moment anyone acknowledges the truth, they are responsible for submitting to it. People today do not want that type of responsibility, and neither did the Gnostics of John’s day.
For these two purposes, John says, “God is light.” He has shown His will and revealed His will through the light of Jesus Christ.