ALL YOU FANS of Peter Jackson’s film adaptation of The Lord of the Rings trilogy out there, raise your hands. I see you. Geek out with me for a moment. Remember the Battle of Helm’s Deep in The Two Towers? The battle has been raging all night, with heavy losses on both sides. But things look grim for our heroes. They’re overwhelmingly outnumbered by the hordes who serve the Dark Lord, and their defeat seems imminent. Can anything or anybody save them?

Suddenly, dawn begins to break. Everyone on the battlefield pauses to look toward the light. And there at the crest of the hill, Gandalf sits astride his magnificent steed Shadowfax, with his wizard’s staff in hand. The Middle-Earth equivalent of the cavalry is behind him. At his command, wave upon wave of the mounted warriors of Rohan cascade down the hillside, and soon the battle is won.

But we already knew this would be the outcome, as soon as we saw Gandalf silhouetted against the morning sun. It’s a visual metaphor for salvation, an almost messianic image.

Director Peter Jackson attempted to convey the narrative feel of Tolkien’s epic story of good and evil through the cinematic use of light and darkness. And the apostle John, as we’ve seen, does something similar in his gospel. Right from the opening he portrays Jesus as the true light, or the light of truth, coming into the world (John 1:9), a world in which people do evil and therefore prefer to keep to the shadows (3:19-20).

Later in the gospel, during the last week of Jesus’ earthly life, Jesus enters the city of Jerusalem. There, presumably in the temple courts, he cryptically predicts his coming death. The crowd is confused and demands an explanation. In response, he doesn’t answer their question directly. Instead, as he prepares to withdraw from the public to face the final hours of his life, Jesus makes a final appeal for them to believe, once more using the language of light and darkness:

You are going to have the light just a little while longer. Walk while you have the light, before darkness overtakes you. Whoever walks in the dark does not know where they are going. Believe in the light while you have the light, so that you may become children of light. (John 12:35-36)

John portrays the people as unknowingly walking in darkness. The light has come, but they don’t realize that either. Jesus invites the people to believe in the light, walk in the light, and become children of light.

I imagine John remembering this scene as he writes to believers who may be tempted or deceived in ways that edge them toward the shadows.

AS WE’VE SEEN, one of the most important declarations of 1 John comes right up front: “God is light; in him there is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5, NIV). I can hardly read this without thinking immediately of Jesus’ own declaration to be “the light of the world” (John 8:12).

But before we move on to explore the implications of John’s words, I want to remind us of another declaration of Jesus, this time from the gospel of Matthew:

You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven. (Matt 5:14-16)

Let’s pause to take inventory. In his letter, John says that God is light. In his gospel, he describes Jesus as the “light of all mankind” who came into the world (John 1:4, 9-10). Similarly, it’s only in John’s gospel that Jesus himself claims to be the light of the world. And in Matthew, near the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says that we are the light of the world, and we are to let that light shine in a way that other people will see past us and glorify God the Father.

So: God is light, Jesus is light, and we are to be light in a way that points the world to God.

Yeah. No pressure.

But that’s the nature of discipleship. Again, Jesus says both “I am the light of the world,” and “You are the light of the world.” For John to say that “God is light” carries a moral implication: those who follow God must live by that light, must live in a way that reflects the character of God.

I fear sometimes that we embody our faith in ways that others experience as angry or oppositional. We have the truth; they believe in lies. What’s wrong with them? We have the light; they live in darkness. We obey the rules; they are disobedient and break them. And to be fair, John does write in a way that seems dualistic: light versus dark, good versus evil.

I would simply ask, however, that we remember that John not only declares that God is light, but that God is love, as he will say later in the letter. And while we’re at it, let’s not forget what Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount. Yes, we are the light of the world. But are we living out that light in a way that leads anyone to praise our heavenly Father?