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God is Light
By John Gavazzoni
Scripture says: "God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all." Yet, He who is light, blinds those whom....at any given time, and for whatever is the Divine reason pertaining to that given time....He so chooses. Jesus, Himself, stated plainly that He deliberately spoke in parables so that some [at that moment in time] would not understand and be converted. It evidently is the prerogative of Divine Sovereignty to deny Its Light to some, while having in view ultimately that granting of sight by which one sees and enters the kingdom of God. Darkness, then, is to be understood as a catalyst in the service of light.
If, in the Book of Acts narrative of the conversion of Saul of Tarsus, we have a living, acted-out, representative parable of the dynamic at work in all conversions to Christ, then the Light that causes us to see what it is that is True, first, in a burst of brightness, blinds our soulish sight. In that living parable, Paul's physical eyes represent soulish sight which must be destroyed for purposes of the Light's consequent and deepest-possible penetration of that same soul. This is the work of Him, of whom it is said, "....He has torn, but He will heal us; He has stricken, but He will bind us up."
It would seem that there must first be what theologians call prevenient grace for the reception of light, and where that grace is not, an exposure to the light blinds rather than enlightens. The seeing capacity of the soul left to itself has no place in the kingdom of God: "Except a man is born from above, he cannot see the kingdom of God." I recall clearly how, in my early fundamentalist mentoring, after the Lord had called me to Himself, I was taught things which were dark in content, and when the Lord shined His light on those things, the contrast between my darkness and His light, served the deep penetration of the Light.
Then there's the matter of Paul finding an allegorical content re: spiritual enlightenment in the Genesis account of God's speaking natural light into existence. According to Jonathan Mitchell's very careful translation of 2 Cor. 4:6, the light that shines in our hearts came very specifically "from out of the midst of darkness." To make an application beyond initial conversion, when we're subjected to seasons of darkness, as in, "The Dark Night of the Soul," where is the God of Light? Wonderfully, right there in the midst of our darkness.
There are Old Testament statements about the Lord abiding in darkness and hiding Himself in darkness. So, it behooves us to consider when we're confronted by people who, so to speak, reek of darkness, what God is up to in the long run in that person. It's easy to see that in the case of Saul of Tarsus, but also with Abraham. He lived in an area known for its sculpting of pagan gods. A land of darkness. It was out of that land that God chose the man through whose loins, in a direct lineage, would come the Messiah. In the theology of the apostle Paul, Abraham is featured prominently as the archetype of those within whom the faith of Christ is operative..... and, of course, as it could not be otherwise...THAT faith is reckoned as righteousness.....from out of the midst of darkness.
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