[(2) JESUS IS TRUTH, LIGHT, AND LOVE (cont).
(b)
Jesus is Light (John 8:12 to John 9:41).
(α)
He declares Himself to be the Light, and appeals to the witness of the Father and of Himself (John 8:12-20).]
(12) Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world. — Omitting the inserted section, this verse immediately follows John 7:52, but the words mark an interval, after which the discourse is resumed. Jesus had ceased to speak, but now speaks “again”; and St. John remembers that the words were suggested by some incident which occurred. It was “then,” or therefore, that He found occasion to utter this truth, because the outer form in which He may clothe it was present to their minds. Once again we shall find this mould, in which the truth shapes itself, in the ritual of the Feast of Tabernacles. On the eve of the Lesser Festival (see Note on John 7:14), and on each of the five nights which followed, there was an illumination in the court of the Temple to celebrate the “Rejoicing of the Water-Drawing.” Four large golden candelabra shed their light through the whole city. Then there was dancing and singing, and the music of instruments, which was continued through the night, until at daybreak the procession to the Pool of Siloam was formed. Once again, too, the ritual of the Feast of Tabernacles is a memorial of the wilderness life. As the water-drawing was bound up with thoughts of the water given in abundance to those dying of thirst, so this illumination was bound up with thoughts of the pillar of fire which was the guide of those who walked in darkness. And in this case, as in that, it is probably the absence of the incident on the last day of the feast which gives special force to our Lord’s words. Since the teaching of the last chapter, there had been an interval of, it may be, several hours. We may naturally think that the shades of evening were now drawing on. He is standing in the Treasury near to the court of the women (Note on John 8:20), where for the six nights last past there had been a great light, reminding those who could read its meaning of the greater light which illumined the footsteps of their fathers. On this night the light is not to shine; but the true Light, which was ever in the world, is now in His own Temple, speaking the words of light and life to His own people. There is a Light there whose rays are to illumine, not only the Temple, or Jerusalem, or Judæa, or the Dispersion, but the world.
He that followeth me shall not walk in darkness. — Strong and full of hope as these words are in the English rendering, the Greek is more emphatic still. The negative is in its strongest form, expressing “shall by no means,” “shall in no wise,” “walk in darkness.” The possibility is excluded from the thought. “God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.” If a man makes a false step in life, it is because he seeks other guides in his own thoughts or in subjection to the thoughts of other men. He that seeks to follow the true Light — to follow, not precede it; to follow always, not only when it coincides with his own will; to follow patiently and trustfully, step by step, wherever it may lead — cannot walk in darkness, for he is never without the presence of the Light. Here, as so often, stress is laid on the certainty and universality of the divine love on the one side, and the action of the human will on the other. There can be no doubt, “shall by no means walk in darkness”; there can be no limit, “he that followeth”; there can be no halting, “he that followeth.” The light ever points the way; it is he who day by day follows it who cannot miss the way. Perception of truth attends its practice. The true journey of this life is here presented as a constant activity; in John 7:37, the source of this action is found in a constant receptivity.
But shall have the light of life. — For the thought of “light” and “life” in contrast to “darkness” and “death,” comp. Note on John 1:5. The sense of the present passage is that he who follows Christ, not only has a light which guides his feet, but that through participation in the Messianic life he actually possesses that light in himself. He is no more dead, but has eternal life. (Comp. John 3:15.) He no more abides in darkness (John 12:46), but the Light which lighteneth every man abideth in him.
This verse is one of the many instances in which our familiar knowledge of the words of Jesus, in some degree, takes from the impression they would leave on us if we heard them for the first time. There is in them the calm assertion of conscious divinity, which in its very simplicity carries its own proof. It needed no formal proof, for He Himself knows it to be true; it needed no formal proof, for those who heard Him felt His words to be divine — “Never man spake like this Man.” “He taught them as One having authority, and not as the scribes.” (Comp. John 8:28.) The witness to the existence of natural light is the eye formed to receive its rays; the witness to the existence of the Light of the world is the eye of the spirit conscious of a night of darkness, which has passed into the brightness of the presence of the Sun of Righteousness.