“…he will…purify us from all unrighteousness.”

What is the brightest light you have ever seen?  The sun?  For most of us the sun is probably the brightest light we’ve seen.  Of course, doctors strongly recommend that you don’t stare into the sun for any length of time because of the damage it will do to your eyes.

I remember once seeing a brilliant flash of light in our back yard from an electrical transformer that a power company repairman was connecting one night.  It was so dark out because the old transformer had failed in a lightning storm.  All the power had gone out, so the repairman was connecting the new one.  He told me not to look because there would be a bright flash and a loud noise.  I wanted to see it, so I locked my knees, crossed my arms, braced myself and began staring up at the pole.  Using a long pole while standing on the ground and looking away, he snapped the connection in place.  After he made the connection I was flat on my back in the dirt and unable to see!  The extreme flash of light, not to mention the loud noise, knocked me to the ground and blinded me … temporarily.  “Well, he did warn me,” I said to myself, brushing my pants off and groping my way back into our house.  My sight returned shortly.

1 John 1:5a says, “God is light.”  Ever stop to consider how brilliant that light is?  It is brighter than all of the available light in the entire universe.  It should be no wonder, then, that the first thing He created with His voice was light—“Let there be light,” Genesis 1:3 says, and “the light was good” (v. 4).  As good as it was, it could never match God’s own personal, moral brilliance.

To insure that we don’t misunderstand his words, John also covers the inverse of light: “in him there is no darkness at all” (v. 1:5b).  No darkness…nothing to impede or darken the glory that is his.  Absolute purity, the kind that bleaches out everything negative, false, impure, immoral, defiling and evil.

That is the link between God being light (v. 5) and his being the purifier.  Verse 7 gives the condition of us “walk[ing] in the light.”  That light is his light — “as He is in the light” — that brilliant, blinding, bleaching light that has no darkness at all.  If we walk in that light, “we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin” (v. 7).  Of course!  Being in that light would eliminate everything that shouldn’t be there, such as when “we lie and do not live by the truth” (v. 6).  But it is our choice first to want to live in that light, and then to walk honestly before him.  When we do that, he is free to have his Son’s blood purify us from all sin without violating his holy nature and standard.  Likewise, when “we confess our sins” (v. 9), he will “purify us from all unrighteousness.”  In verse 7 he purifies us from sin — everything immoral about us.  In verse 9 he purifies us from all unrighteousness — every transgression of God’s law and every injustice we commit.

Such light that radiates from God does two things.  First, already mentioned, it washes away all that is bad.  The word, purify, doesn’t quite capture the idea.  Purify sounds like filtering.  Dirty water in, cleaner water out.  We must see the idea in connection to God’s light.  His light is so brilliant, so omnipresent, that it makes no shadows.  If you lifted your foot just one inch off the ground in the presence of God’s light, you would see no shadow.  If you opened your mouth and someone looked in, there would be the same intensity of brilliant, blinding, bleaching light all the way down your throat!  No shadows, no darkness.  That is the light of God’s glory.  Remember Moses’ face (Ex. 34:30) after being with God?  We are purged of all that is corrupt.  It is literally driven out and banished!  The blood of Jesus acts in this way.

Second, God’s light reveals what we really are in our hearts and minds spiritually and morally.  That is never comfortable or easy.  Being exposed never is.  It highlights all of our imperfections, flaws and weaknesses.  However, they are not new to him; he sees them already.  But sometimes they are news to us!  On our better days, the depth of our depravity shocks us.  Yet the best thing about it is that despite who and what we are, he still loves us, still accepts us, still uses us, and still purifies us because he wants us!

Are you walking in His light…being exposed…being loved…being purged…by the Purifier?