Prayer of the Day: O Lord God, who commanded light to shine out of darkness and has shone the light of Your Son into our hearts, drive away the shadows of sin, doubt, and death. Fix our eyes on Jesus Christ, the Light of the world, that we may walk in His truth, rejoice in His forgiveness, and reflect His light in this dark world; through the same Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

But even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, whose minds the god of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them. For we do not preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves your bondservants for Jesus’ sake. For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

Dearly Beloved Fellow Christians,

We are in the early days of winter, the days when darkness has the upper hand. The nights are long, so that many of us go to sleep in darkness and awake in darkness. These hours of darkness are already shortening, day by day; darkness is gradually giving way to the light. But in the fall the process will begin again, with darkness overtaking the light. So the darkness in nature advances and recedes, but it never completely goes away.

This darkness in the natural world is a reminder that there is another kind of darkness in this world: spiritual darkness. This is the darkness that is the absence of spiritual light, the absence of the Savior Jesus Christ. He is the Light of the world. Where He is known and believed there is light and life. Where He is not known or where He is rejected there is nothing but darkness and death. This world, infected by sin and with Satan as its god, is a dark place. The evidence of its darkness we see all around us, and we see it every day.

But into this dark world the Son of God has come. He is the true light who alone can lighten everyone who comes into the world. This is the Gospel, the good news: that the Light has come. This good news is set forth most powerfully in our text for this First Sunday in Epiphany, when we celebrate the manifestation of the child Jesus as the Son of God and the Savior of the world. The Epiphany Gospel is this:

THERE IS LIGHT FOR THIS DARK WORLD

It shines in the face of Jesus Christ.

Yes, there is light for this dark world. But for people to have this light and enjoy its benefits, they need to know where it is. They need to know the source of the light, where to find it. The Holy Scriptures reveal where the light is to be found. It is to be found in Jesus Christ, and it is to be found only in Him. Light is found in Jesus because He is the Son of God incarnate in human flesh. He is the source of all light and life, for God is the only source of light and life. He is the one who commanded light to shine out of darkness when He created the world, when He said on the first day of creation, “Let there be light!” He is the one who gave life to the world; He is the one who filled it with living things: plants, animals, and finally man.

Now sin cut man off from the light of God, and darkness descended on the world. But by the grace of God the light never went out. It shone in the Word of prophecy by which the Christ was revealed. And with the coming of Jesus, light again appeared in the world. That light was veiled in human flesh; the infant Jesus lying in His manger bed was a truly human child. The man Jesus was truly a man. Yet from His humanity the glory of the eternal God shone through. The evangelist John says of Jesus, “We beheld His glory” (John 1:14); you could see it. At His baptism the voice of the Father was heard from heaven saying, “This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.” At the wedding at Cana the glorious light of Christ was seen in His first miracle. It was seen likewise in all the signs and wonders that followed: He made the lame walk, the blind see; He even raised the dead. Also in His mighty words the light was evident. Think of what Jesus said to Nicodemus as it is recorded for us in John 3. Here was a man who was a leader in Israel, a man thoroughly versed in the Old Testament Scriptures. Yet Jesus astonished him when He told him of the need for a new birth by water and the Spirit; when He told him of the love of God that would be shown in the lifting up of His Son on the cross. This too was divine glory shining in the Man Jesus. At the Transfiguration three of His disciples were permitted a glimpse of His divine glory, when “His face shone like the sun, and His clothes became white as the light” (Matthew 17:2). And after His resurrection and ascension into heaven Jesus appeared in glory. When Jesus appeared to Saul on his way to Damascus a light shone around Saul from heaven (Acts 9:3). When Jesus appeared to John in the book of Revelation, “His head and hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and His eyes like a flame of fire … His countenance was like the sun shining in its strength” (Rev. 1:14,16).

Christ still shines with His life-giving light; He pours that light on the world. He shines in the Gospel Word. Our text calls this Gospel “the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” It is the good news of Christ’s glory: He is the Son of God in human form; He is God Himself come to save us from our sins, from death, and from the power of Satan. He alone is able to dispel and banish the darkness from our hearts and lives forever.

God has caused it to shine in our hearts.

We should understand what a great thing we have in the Gospel that is before us daily in our Bibles and Sunday after Sunday in our worship services. In the Gospel we have Christ and in Him we have light. And that light is a light that not only shines on us; Paul here describes it as a light that shines in us, filling us with light and life. He says, “It is God who commanded light to shine out of darkness who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” Through the Gospel God has shined the light of His Son into our hearts. This light has given us knowledge of the glory of God as it shines from the face of Jesus Christ. As we look at the face of Jesus Christ in the Gospel we see the love of God for us sinners. This is light: to know God’s love for us.

We see the greatness of the light that we have in the Gospel of Christ when we realize what it means to be without it. Our text tells us that those who are blinded to the Light are those who are perishing. “If our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing,” Paul says. Satan works to blind people to the Gospel, so that they can’t see Christ, so that they can’t have His life-giving light shining on them and within them. Either they continue in their sins without repentance, loving darkness rather than light (John 3:19), or they imagine that they can make themselves acceptable to God by their own efforts and striving. We see what a serious thing that blinding is. Let us thank God that He has caused the Gospel of Christ to shine into our very hearts, leading us to repent of our sins and to trust in Christ for our righteousness and salvation.

What a dark world it is that we live in. We live among and are part of a race that is sitting in darkness, estranged from God, cut off from His light and life. We live where Satan is at work. But there is Light for this dark world in Christ. Let us turn our hearts daily to Christ’s light in the Gospel and let it shine on us. It is this light that is the cure and remedy for our ills. If we are feeling depressed or lonely, if we have been let down or forsaken by family or friends, if we are worried about our job or our finances, if we are troubled by our sins and even worried that we might lose our salvation—in all these things the remedy is the light of Christ. For in Christ we have the assurance of God’s love. In Christ we have complete remission of all our sins by His atoning death. In Christ we have a constant and unfailing friend and companion in all our trials, so that we may sing of Him:

Amen.

—Rev. John Klatt

Watertown, SD

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