Overview
Every major movement of the biblical text includes metaphors for how we’re to understand God better. 1 John may be the best example of this rule. In just a few short chapters, this Johannine Community (who are the same people the Gospel of John was written) . . . this community overloads us with metaphors for how we’re to connect with God. The three most obvious metaphors for God are light, love, and life.
God is light. We are called children of the light. We’re the light to the nations. We’re the light that shines on a hill. There are children of darkness that roam this world but they’re to look at our light to find their way through. The light we carry is a fraction of God’s but it connects those who see it back to the source of all light.
God is also love. 1 John 3 says, “Whoever does not abide in love abides in death.” We know love by this, “He laid down his life for us.” God’s actions demonstrate love. God’s message is one of love. The way we even understand love is to understand it through the lens of who God is. God is the ultimate expression of love and the ground of love itself. In short, God is love.
God is is also life. In 1 John 5, we see our lives are given to us by God and sustained through Christ. Our lives are in Christ. Our lives are by Christ. This connection is what gives us air to breathe and purpose to pursue. The trajectory of our lives fall under the ultimate banner of God who is the ultimate source of life.
These three metaphors are not the only ones that describe God . . . but seeing them in this way in 1 John helps us understand who the Divine is. The Creator of all things is our light, love, and life. And because of God, we have light, love, and life to share.
April 11 | 1 John 1:1-2:2 | God is Light
We must be followers of the light. God is our light. God is that which we follow and how we see. There’s no darkness in him either. And if we’re going to follow it . . . we must live in a way that makes us able to absorb and reflect that light . . . which means there can’t be darkness in us either. And yet sin is darkness.
April 18 | 1 John 3:1-7 | We are Light
People don’t really believe they’re made from God’s light. When it comes to their own private relationship with God . . . they carry this myth that they’re made from the darkness. That they’re evil. But that’s a lie. You are a reflection of God’s light . . . it’s inside of us . . . and Jesus died on the cross so we could see it and feel it and claim it and shine it!
April 25 | 1 John 3:16-24 | God is Love
The God of the Universe, in all God’s great mystery and unknowing, that God receives us out of (and comes to us in) love.
May 2 | 1 John 4:7-21 | We are Love
God is love. For those who abide in love, remain in love, and invest in love, and inject love into their being . . . abide in God. And God abides in them. We invite God in, God’s abiding love takes on new life in us. We could say, “Every time we love, or feel love, or share love, or every time we engage in loving acts . . . we become that which comes from God. We reflect God. Because we are what we eat. And since God is love, we are love.
May 9 | 1 John 5:1-6 | Eternal Love
The beginning and end of everything is love. Another way to say this is, “Everything begins and ends out of love.” Love is at the beginning of everything . . . and love is what’s left after everything is gone. Love is before it all and through it all and after it all. Love is eternal.
May 16 | 1 John 5:9-13 | Eternal Life
"Everything is moving towards eternity. All of our actions and hopes and theology and practices and all of our faith is moving us towards the ultimate end that we know as eternal life. And one of the things that 1 John reminds us is that when we engage with this God in the created order by following Jesus . . . we are given eternal life."