-If my goal is joy, soul-satisfying thirst-quenching infinite-abyss-filling joy, if the goal is deep soul sharing with the God of light - in Whom there is no darkness whatsoever - and with His people, then you will not find me walking in the darkness. Because there is certainly no darkness in God, or anywhere near Him, for that matter. Nor will there be any pattern of darkness in those ones who are truly His. Whether by deliberate choice or by sloppy habit, walking in the darkness - hiding, concealing truth and lying, and all the lifestyle choices which flourish in the darkness - these things will not be found in our lives, at least not on a consistent basis. John is not saying that we are perfect. Only that a consistent presence of darkness is inconsistent with a life which is caught up in the light. If anything, darkness is being eradicated. Being on a close and deep soul-sharing basis with the God of light, i.e. walking with Him, will definitely tend to root out any areas of darkness in our lives. Because walking in the light and walking in the darkness by their very nature are two completely divergent paths.
-For this reason, John says that if we are walking in the darkness and yet are professing to have connected with the God of light, that we are mistaken. In fact, he says we are lying. Literally, we are not doing the truth (John 3.21). This is the Greek verb, poieo, which means to do or make something, and to eventually bring something to fruition. It is not focused as much on the outcome per se (i.e. the finished work) as it is with the process. There will be outcomes of course - doing the truth as a course of habit will result in all kinds of good things. But saying one thing and not doing it - that brings us into the dark realm of the hypocrite, those pretenders, those actors who can be very entertaining on the big screen but who are rather off-putting and nauseating when it comes to real life. Nobody likes a hypocrite - least of all Jesus, Who reserved His most scathing commentary (there’s an entire chapter in fact - cf Matthew 23.1-3ff) for those who lived this kind of a life of pretense, who went to great lengths to maintain a veneer of religiosity but whose lives on the inside were full of all kinds of darkness.
-You can know the truth. Hear it, listen to it. Tell the truth, speak the truth. Witness to the truth. Stand in the truth. Rejoice with the truth. Manifest the truth. Love the truth, obey the truth. Question the truth, suppress the truth, exchange the truth, disobey the truth. But Jesus IS the truth. We have the Spirit of truth. God’s Word is truth. Truth is the very essence of Who God is and what He is like. All that He is, all that He does corresponds to truth, everything He says is true. And so we are never more like Him than when we are doing the truth. Conversely we are never more like the devil than when we are lying. He is the father of lies, that one - a liar from the very beginning. The first couple listened to his lies and thus led the human race into darkness. Hiding. Hurling and hurting. Brokenness. Death. All because of a choice to not do the truth. And that simple, fatal choice led them away and separated them forever from the One Who is truth and light. Forever trapped in a world of corruption and lying, of hypocrisy and deceit and subterfuge. Forever in that dark realm of darkness - absent a miracle, an intervention, an unblemished atoning sacrifice. Which ultimately God gladly provided. Himself. Truth bursting onto the scene and into our hearts like a morning ray of sunlight, obliterating the darkness. But John’s point is that a life which continues to walk in darkness, obfuscating the truth - lying, deceiving, pretending, not fully listening to God or obeying His truth, doing things of which He is and we should be ashamed - shows that we are likely lying about even coming to know Him in the first place. We may merely be sadly mistaken, but either way it is time for a truth check.
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