“God’s Light, Our Lives”
“God’s Light, Our Lives” (1 John 2:3-11)
Series: Identity Revealed
by Pastor Nate Walther
Third Sunday of Epiphany – Jan. 25th, 2026
These days I’m not so much missing the cold winters we used to experience when living out in the Dakotas, but if there’s one thing I do miss it’s the night skies. There’s nothing like being out on the wide-open, high-northern plains without any light pollution so you can truly experience the milky way or the northern lights streaming overhead in their full glory. And one thing you would immediately notice out there? Those points of light, sometimes 20 or 30 miles away on the horizon, yet somehow you could still see them clearly in a sea of darkness, where even something as small as a tiny family homestead with its one yard light could not be missed.
It’s kind of daunting when we consider that God tells us to be such light in a world of darkness, doing what is right and letting our faith shine for all to see. But that is what God tells us today. Go back to our sermon text again… Verse 3, do we keep God’s commandments as he wants us to – like how we should use our money, our bodies, or our speech – or are we liars that only pretend that what God wants is important to us?… Verse 5, do we appreciate what God says is true inhis Word – like how he must choose us to come to faith to him (we can’t choose that), or how all sexual acts outside of marriage are wrong (not just those of the homosexual or transexual variety), or how he wants us to help the poor & less fortunate (yes, even if they’ve made some bad decisions along the way) – or are we bothered when God disagrees with our sensibilities?… Verse 6, do we remain in the Lord – by regularly gathering with God’s people, or readily reading our Bibles, or routinely taking our concerns to God in prayer – or does our walk look quite a bit different than Jesus’ walk, who always delighted in doing all these things? Skipping ahead a few verses to verse 9, do we love it when God places others into our lives to serve – a needy next door neighbor, a hurting co-worker, even our own children – or do we actually hate this, and we see them more as burdens that get in the way of what we want to do ourselves?
Do I need to go on? As I think of my own sin, I don’t want to go on! Yet in words such as these, God shows the damning difference between light & darkness – between doing right & wrong –
which leads to a warning for us in that last example: “The one who hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes…” Do I live with that pressing reality? Or am I blind to the fact that darkness is so close to me and it could truly overcome me! After all, John is warning Christians here just like me, his audience is not some hopelessly lost heathens!
So also dear fellow sinner, see the darkness in your heart that I see in mine this morning, repent of this sin before it overcomes you… then see the light of the Gospel which shines even more brilliantly for it! (The darker the night on those Dakota prairies, the more those lights stood out, especially the few cities out there that you would come across.)
Because notice that right here in the middle of our text – in the middle of all this darkness – God places a light which cannot be missed. “(All this is) true in Jesus… and (therefore) in you, because the darkness is passing away, and the true light is already shining.” In no uncertain terms, this is God telling us that Jesus can produce the light we cannot produce. It’s the same thing we heard in our Old Testament reading earlier (Isaiah 9), which Jesus repeated in our Gospel reading (Matthew 4). “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light. For those living in the land of the shadow of death, the light has dawned.”
Fellow redeemed, whenever you feel lost in darkness without any way out, God tells us today that we don’t have to pull ourselves out of this hopeless gloom of sin on our own. Anybody can have light dawn on them, and it has dawned on us too. Christ was born into this world. Christ already walked in that perfection; yes, for you too. Christ shines a bright light into this world that cannot be unseen. It’s light that even managed to pierce through all the darkness and gloominess of hell. Even after the sun ceased to shine over a cross on Good Friday, when all hope seemed lost and our Savior died, still it rose again over an empty tomb on Easter Sunday, and all hope returned when our Savior rose.
That’s finally what explains our theme. In the light of Christ, listen again to the end of our sermon text when God talks about us living in this light, “The one who says he is in the light and yet hates his brother is still in the darkness. The one who loves his brother remains in the light… and nothing causes him to stumble.” Again, Jesus already came to be the light, we don’t have to produce it. But now to change OUR LIVES, God stresses the importance of being in HIS LIGHT.
To put it all in another way, God is telling you and me to be the moon. The full moon is 10,000 times brighter than the next brightest star, you can even navigate outside in the dark just by its light. Yet think of how passive the moon really is – just a dead hunk of rock, incapable of producing any light of its own! So how do we see it? It’s all about the sun, which shine s400,000 times brighter than the moon. If the sun is not shining on it, the moon reflects no light and its surface remains at a frigid -200 degrees F. But if the sun is shining on it, the moon reflects that light and its surface skyrockets to above 200 degrees F, above boiling! In other words, the moon is really just a big mirror, it is impossible for it to produce light on its own.
That’s you and me also. By ourselves we are cold, dead bodies who can produce no light on our own. God’s Word tells us that: Ephesians 2 says we are born dead in sin, and Hebrews 11that without faith it is impossible to please God. It mirrors the language of 1 John 2: in the darkness of this world we cannot see and we cannot produce any light on our own… but then came the one about whom the prophet Malachi once said “he is the sun that rises with healing in his rays.” And when that bright light 400,000 times brighter than us (really, more than that) shines on us? Well, just the slightest ray from the sun extending past the curvature of the earth will reflect itself on the moon as the thinnest, yet most unmistakable crescent. So also, if there is any light of Christ on us, we will reflect it. We go from cold and dead to alive and warm, but not because of anything that is in us. Rather, the warmth we feel in our hearts and the good we produce with our lives is all a reflection of Jesus’ warmth & goodness. We shine nowhere near as brightly, but neither are we shining like those stars, cold & distant human traditions and beliefs where you must produce the light on your own and at best can flicker feebly and ultimately uselessly. The light produced doesn’t help anyone see. But the more fully we reflect Jesus light, the more we become like a full moon that can make a difference in the night of this world. We do not light things up entirely, only Jesus can do that. But we can still make a difference and show a better way, all as we borrow his light.
It’s why the pressure’s off! You don’t have to worry about doing enough good things or producing more light, that’s not what our faith is about. But if we do see that we are lacking that light, the answer is to get back into that light. To put it simply, today God is telling us to be in Church more, to be studying our Bibles more, to be in prayer more. Because this is where we find Christ’s light, and the more we have it the more we will reflect it, just like the moon can’t help but reflect the light of the sun… So what does that look like in a church of 500-600 such as ours? Well, how can we have about 300 more people in worship every week? And how can we have about 400-500 more people in Bible Study every week? And how can we have all 500-600 of us be praying more or reading our Bibles every day? If that sounds crazy, I’m not kidding. What else am I supposed to tell you if that’s where GOD says the light is found?… And how can we make that happen? Let’s start having those conversations among church leadership, among each other, and among our family & friends. If you’re already doing this personally, great – do it even more! Because only in the Gospel message of Jesus we find eternal life itself and walk in the light of God’s presence. And as we see differently, that’s what will also change our lives on earth too.
Dear Christian, from miles away in this dark world God wants people to see you… but not you. He wants them to see HIS LIGHT reflected in OUR LIVES. And if people aren’t seeing that when they look at us, the first and last question we ask should not be “what must I do?” or “how can I produce this light?”, but “how can I get back into God’s light?” Fortunately, it’s easy to find again. We just need to lift our eyes where we see it shining brightly on the horizon; in fact, it’s already dawned on us, brighter and more brilliant than anything else we’ve ever seen. It’s right there in Word and Sacrament. It’s right there in the cross and empty tomb. It’s right there in Jesus… Dear Christian, do you want to be a better person?… Be in Christ more. It’s all about Jesus and what he does. Amen.
