WEDNESDAY November 20th
John 8:12 ‘Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”’
We have come to the second of the ‘I am’ statements that Jesus made, and the context of this one falls immediately after the account which has been recorded of the woman who had been caught in adultery, but, as I commented recently while speaking on a Friday evening, most newer translations have this to say about John 8:1-11 that some manuscripts do not include these verses, and when they do, they have footnotes that say that some manuscripts place them after John 7:36 or after John 21:25. This would mean that the I am statement either follows on from John 7:32-36 which is the short account where the Pharisees sent officers to arrest Jesus and he makes this statement ‘Jesus then said, “I will be with you a little longer, and then I am going to him who sent me. You will seek me and you will not find me. Where I am you cannot come.”’ (v33)
Or it follows on from verses 37-39 where Jesus has made this statement ‘On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’ ” Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.’
What we see is that Jesus has made claims which the people are finding difficult to understand, in verse 36 it says that they said, ‘What does he mean by saying. . .?’
Remember in the first ‘I am’ statement Jesus had said that if anyone came to him they would not hunger and that they would not thirst, in 7:37 he says that ‘If anyone thirst let him come to me and drink’, he then follows this with the promise of the Holy Spirit, and it is from here we jump to our verse for today where Jesus now makes another claim. ‘I am the light of the world’ he then continues with this ‘whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life’.
You can imagine those who were listening thinking to themselves, ‘Well last week, he said he was the bread of life, now he is claiming to be the light of the world, and what is more he reckons that whoever believes in him or whoever accepts him will never hunger, never thirst and will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life. Who on earth is he to make such incredible claims?’
Well, the answer is found in the conversations that are built around the statements, and in the very claim that Jesus is making when he uses those two important words ‘I am’.
When it was all about the bread, Jesus made the claim that the bread of God is he who comes DOWN from heaven and gives life to the world, and prior to revealing himself as the light of the world, he has said ‘I will be with you a little longer and then I am GOING TO HIM who sent me’.
The answer to the claims are first that He, that is Jesus had come down from heaven, and he would return to heaven, yes he came and he will return as the eternal Son of God, but secondly and of equal importance he came and he will return as God, seen in the words ‘I am’. We remind ourselves at this point of the words in John 1:1 ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.’
From God, Jesus the Son came into this world as the bread and as the light, but we also say that as God, as the I am, Jesus came into this world as the bread and as the light.
Those wonderful words we will hear repeated many times during the run up to Christmas ‘Emmanuel’ God with us, the one who is both the bread of life and the light of the world. We will continue this theme in the next devotion.