One thing I love so much about the Christian faith is that it’s both gloriously complicated and gloriously simple. You can devote your entire life to the study of it, spending decades diving into the languages, learning the themes, devouring the rich philosophical underpinnings of the texts and still you won’t be anywhere near the bottom of the majestic ocean that is God’s word.
You can do all that, and yet, a five year old Christian child understands the faith as well as you because a five year old Christian child understands that Jesus is light and sin is darkness. Jesus shines the light because He wants you to see that He loves you. But we stay in the darkness when we want to hide from love, when we want to keep our hands on the things that are forbidden. Children understand this, and at its core, this is what the Christian faith is all about–Jesus bringing light to those in darkness.
So once we were lost in the darkness, clinging to the sins that we thought could make us happy. There we were, thinking we could close our wounds by digging our fingers into the jagged shards of the commandments we broke to pieces. Once were bruised and bloodied, empty and worthless, hopeless and fatherless in the darkness of sin.
But then the God who is light brought His light into the room. The Son of God became flesh and dwelt among us. With His words of mercy, with His righteousness, with the blood from His veins, He poured light into our darkness, burning to ash the condemnation we had earned, cleansing us of our sins, fusing back together those shattered pieces of the commandments and writing our name on His perfect obedience to them.
So in the end, no matter how complex things get, it’s all very simple. When you want the darkness, you don’t want Christ. And when you have Christ, the darkness cannot claim you. So come out of the darkness and rest in the light of your Lord. Come find eternal peace in the arms of the One who has been from the beginning, the One who has forgiven your sins, the One who has overcome the evil one, clothed you in His victory, and made you a child of God.
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