God’s first act, after he had imagined the heavens and the earth, was to create light.
And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness.
Genesis 1:3-4
This “picture”, the contrast of light and darkness, is a key theme throughout the Bible. Light is always associated with goodness, but darkness with evil, misery, and ignorance. You could view the entire Bible as a story of the eternal struggle between good and evil; it’s the story of how God will confront the problem of evil and restore light to his creation.
This picture of light versus darkness is repeated in the first 5 verses in John’s gospel.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
John 1:1-5
The Messiah that God would send was foretold in terms of darkness and light.
The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned.
Isaiah 9:2
And in the New Testament, Jesus is revealed as the light of the world who will rescue his people from darkness.
This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.
John 3:19-21 NIV
Jesus spoke to the people once more and said, “I am the light of the world. If you follow me, you won’t have to walk in darkness, because you will have the light that leads to life.”
John 8:12 NLT
Sidebar: Light
Scientists know a lot about light, but they can’t tell us exactly what light is. It behaves like a wave, but also like a particle. It has no mass, but it can transfer momentum and its path is altered by gravity. Einstein shook up all the scientific paradigms one hundred years ago, when he showed that mass and energy were equivalent, and related by only the speed of light, which he proposed might be the only constant in the universe.
Light isn’t the only fundamental entity that science can describe but can’t explain. Nobody can tell us what gravity or energy or magnetism are either. The world God created is more complex and more amazing than we can imagine or comprehend.