Spurgeon: August PM
* 08/31/PM
"If we walk in the light, as He is in the light."
--1 John 1:7
As He is in the light! Can we ever attain to this? Shall we
ever be able to walk as clearly in the light as He is whom we
call "Our Father," of whom it is written, "God is light, and in
Him is no darkness at all"? Certainly, this is the model which
it set before us, for the Saviour Himself said, "Be ye perfect,
even as your Father who is in heaven is perfect"; and although
we may feel that we can never rival the perfection of God, yet
we are to seek after it, and never to be satisfied until we
attain to it. The youthful artist, as he grasps his early
pencil, can hardly hope to equal Raphael or Michael Angelo, but
still, if he did not have a noble beau ideal before his mind,
he would only attain to something very mean and ordinary. But
what is meant by the expression that the Christian is to walk in
light as God is in the light? We conceive it to import
likeness , but not degree . We are as truly in the light, we
are as heartily in the light, we are as sincerely in the light,
as honestly in the light, though we cannot be there in the same
measure. I cannot dwell in the sun, it is too bright a place for
my residence, but I can walk in the light of the sun; and so,
though I cannot attain to that perfection of purity and truth
which belongs to the Lord of hosts by nature as the infinitely
good, yet I can set the Lord always before me, and strive, by
the help of the indwelling Spirit, after conformity to His
image. That famous old commentator, John Trapp, says, "We may be
in the light as God is in the light for quality , but not for
equality ." We are to have the same light, and are as truly to
have it and walk in it as God does, though, as for equality with
God in His holiness and purity, that must be left until we cross
the Jordan and enter into the perfection of the Most High. Mark
that the blessings of sacred fellowship and perfect cleansing
are bound up with walking in the light.