Radiating Christ

If you are filled with light, with no dark corners, then your whole life will be radiant, as though a floodlight were filling you with light.

Luke 11:36

Jesus promises us that if we are filled with his light, our lives will be radiant. They will reflect his light and bring light to the darkness. We can be so filled with light that we emit light.

Using the metaphor of light, Jesus is referring to a powerful scriptural theme that we can trace from God’s first words in the act of Creation: “Let there be light.” Light had to come first; then the rest of Creation followed. Why the need for light? Because there was darkness. Darkness covered the formless earth, and the only counterbalance to darkness is light. Is there any other way to dispel the darkness? Our first glimpse of the Creator in Scripture is as the one whose word lit the world. That is how he introduces himself—as the Light Giver. Darkness gave way to light in the beginning and does so every time light comes on the scene.

Jesus is “the one who is the true light, who gives light to everyone” (John 1:9). He said of himself, “I have come as a light to shine in this dark world, so that all who put their trust in me will no longer remain in the dark” (John 12:46). Every mention of light, starting with Creation, is pointing to the true light. The very nature of light as we know it in our world is a picture of the true light.

In today’s verse, Jesus promises to be so present and powerful in his people that we become the transparent vessels through which he shines the light of his grace and truth into our dark world.

Lord Jesus, let me radiate your light. Teach me to be so available to you and so transparent to those in my world that you shine brightly in my life.

Men come and go; leaders, teachers, thinkers speak and work for a season, and then fall silent and impotent. He abides. They die, but He lives. They are lights kindled, and, therefore, sooner or later quenched; but He is the true light from which they draw all their brightness, and He shines for evermore.

Alexander Maclaren(1826–1910), British preacher and Bible expositor