‘For everyone who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved'.
While we are behaving like ‘nice Christians' and doing good, men will praise us and say nice things about us, but let us once speak and behave in such a way that it condemns their own selfish and evil living, and they will immediately change and begin to show their anger and condemn us. For men hate the light.
So it was even more supremely with Jesus. While He preached in parables which could be generalised He was popular. But once His preaching began to reach the heart many left Him (John 6:66), and when He exposed the hypocrisy of much Jewish teaching He was condemned out of hand. But by their desertion, and by their condemnation, these people revealed that they were evil. They did not want to face up to the truth or let the truth come out, and so they hid from the light. They ceased listening to Him because it was too disturbing.
The truth is that men naturally ‘hate the light'. They do not want to be exposed as what they are. They do not want to know the truth about themselves and will do anything to hide from it. Nor do they want to be ‘reproved' or condemned. So they hide in the darkness where they are satisfied that their sins cannot be seen. But in Jesus light had come, and it was shining through His life and teaching and they must therefore now respond one way or the other. What they must never forget is that one day a light will shine on their lives from which they cannot hide. And then judgment will be passed and they will ‘perish'.