This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.
Ver. 5. That God is light] He is αυτοφως, light essential, and they that walk with him must be as so many crystal glasses with a light in the midst; for can two walk together, and they not be agreed? Amos 3:3. That was a devilish sarcasm of the Manichees, that God (till he had created light) dwelt in darkness, as if God were not eternal light, and dwelt in light unapproachable,1 Timothy 6:16. But what madmen were the Carpocratian heretics, who taught (even in St John's days, as Epiphanius testifieth) that men must sin, and do the will of the devils; otherwise they could not enter into heaven! These might well be some of those Antichrists he complaineth of1 John 4:3; 1 John 4:6, and of those libertines and liars he here argueth against.