Notice:
I. That the Jews, to whom our text was originally applied, hated the light, and would not come to it because their deeds were evil. Their national rejection of our Lord was the result of their national depravity. We gather enough from the incidental notices of the inspired historians to assure us that when Christ came upon earth Judæa was overrun with almost universal profligacy. No man of common feeling can read our Lord's denunciations of the Pharisees without a consciousness that a fierce, unblushing depravity must have reigned among these teachers and rulers of the people, ere the lowly and compassionate Jesus could have poured forth such a torrent of reproach. Analyse the matter as nicely as you will, you cannot avoid allowing that it was just because the darkness of the false system favoured and fostered their evil deeds, while the light of the true system poured upon their shame and required their banishment, that with a tenacity which excites our surprise, and a fierceness which moves our indignation, the Jews scorned the Saviour when He stood amongst them and displayed the credentials of a marvellous and manifold miracle.
II. The same explanation may be given of infidelity, open or concealed, among ourselves. Viciousness of practice produces this strange preference of darkness to light. Men will not come to the light; they love darkness lest their deeds should be reproved. Conversion, in place of being desired, is literally and actually dreaded. It would be the most ill-omened message if you told the money-maker in the midst of his accumulations, or the pleasure-hunter in his revelries, or the child of ambition as he toils up the steep of preferment, that a day would soon dawn, bringing with it such a change in his feelings and character that wealth would be looked upon as dross, and voluptuousness spurned as an enemy, and distinctions fled from as dangerous and destructive, while he would count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Jesus Christ his Lord. Infidelity is a thing of man's own choice, and the choice results from men's own conduct. And thus the decision of our text, harsh as it may sound, and bigoted and illiberal, is, in every case, substantiated. The Jew and Gentile, the Deist, who openly denounces revelation as a forgery, and the worldling who gives it the homage of formal respect and then the contempt of a God-denying life to all and each of these may the text be unreservedly applied: "Every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved."
H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit,No. 2,585.
Reference: John 3:20; John 3:21. Homiletic Quarterly,vol. ii., p. 497.