The Armour of Light

Paul contrasts the gospel and evil metaphorically as light and darkness in Rom 13.12. He calls his readers to "cast off the works of darkness"—obviously speaking of evil and wickedness, indeed in the next verse he helpfully categorizes some (but not all) of what he means: rioting, drunkenness, chambering, wantonness, strife, envying—and to put on the armour of light (KJV). I find that reference interesting. Light (acting righteously) acts as our armor.

Armor is meant for protection so in some way acting righteously protects us. Obviously Paul does not mean that acting righteously saves us for that would contradict what he has already written. He must mean that acting righteously inoculates us from the grip of evil which lurks in every dark corner waiting to devour us, even in corners that appear benign. This is the nature of evil.

How Great the Darkness

Reading in Matt 6.23 this morning, "But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness...how great is that darkness."

The eye is such a crucial organ, we walk by it, we depend on it in 100's of ways that we don't even realize (think of peripheral vision and how it is passive until we sense a threat, then the brain takes it active instantaneously with really no effort on our own part). If the eye is giving us bad information then we will act on bad information. If the eye is evil then we will act and live on evil. This causes, as Christ points out, great darkness in a moral sense. Christ is not speaking of the physical eye here, he is using the eye as a metaphorical representative of our moral life.

John Calvin: "The light is said to be turned into darkness, not only when men permit the wicked lusts of the flesh to overwhelm the judgment of their reason, but also when they give up their minds to wicked thoughts, and thus degenerate into beasts."

And It was Night

John slips in this comment at the end of John 13.30 so that we almost miss it. He is certainly not just making a reference to the time of day here. There is something going on far deeper than that. Darkness is a time of evil because evil hates the light and Christ is the light of the world. When else to betray Christ except at night?

Adam Clarke puts it most succinctly and well: Under the conduct of the prince of darkness, and in the time of darkness, he did this work of darkness.

Darkness is my Closest Friend

Never accuse the psalmists of having a too optimistic view of people, neither of other men, nor of himself. I love the honesty in Ps. 88.18 - You have taken away my companions and loved ones; Darkness is my closest friend. A true experience of life, and one that neither the psalmist nor we should be afraid to express. Sometimes darkness is out closest friend and that is the way God, in his providence, has arranged things. Why does he do this? To teach us dependence for sure, but the fact of the matter is that he often does not tell us why he does these things. This is the nature of faith.

3 Day of Darkness

Thus Moses records the plague of darkness with which God struck the Egyptians in Exod 10.22,23. One can imagine the intensity of the darkness since it was brought by God and his destroying angels (Ps 78.49). It must have been a darkness with which the Egyptians were not familiar, able to stymy what light the Egyptians could produce. This was emphatically not an eclipse or any sort of darkness that can be explained naturally. It was the hand of God, and therefore, one assumes, a supernatural darkness; one that brought fear to the Egyptians throughout the land. The Israelites were protected.

Adam Clarke has some interesting comments: So deep was the obscurity, and probably such was its nature, that no artificial light could be procured; as the thick clammy vapors would prevent lamps, &c., from burning, or if they even could be ignited, the light through the palpable obscurity, could diffuse itself to no distance from the burning body. The author of the book of Wisdom, chap. xvii. 2–19, gives a fearful description of this plague. He says, “The Egyptians were shut up in their houses, the prisoners of darkness: and were fettered with the bonds of a long night. They were scattered under a dark veil of forgetfulness, being horribly astonished and troubled with strange apparitions; for neither might the corner that held them keep them from fear; but noises as of waters falling down sounded about them; and sad visions appeared unto them with heavy countenances.