Morning & Evening Devotional Reading–

August 31– Evening

by C. H. Spurgeon, revised and edited by W. C. Neff

“If we walk in the light, as [God] is in the light.”

—1 John 1:7

What does the Apostle say here? As God is in the light! Can we ever attain to this? Will we ever be able to walk as clearly in the light as the One we call “Our Father” and of whom it is written, “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all?” Certainly, this is the model set before us, for the Savior himself said, “Be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.” Although we know we can never rival the perfection of God, yet we are to seek after it. We are 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 ideal to follow, he would only attain to the average and ordinary.

But what is meant by the expression that the Christian is to walk in light as God is in the light? We should take it as communicating likeness but not degree. As one commentator puts it, we may be in the light in terms of “quality but not equality.” We are truly, heartily, sincerely, and honestly in the light, though we cannot be there in the same measure. I cannot bear to live in the sun; it is too bright and hot a place for me. But I can live in the rays of the sun. In the same way, although I cannot attain to the perfection, purity, and truth which belongs to God alone, yet I can set the Lord always before me and strive, by the enablement of the indwelling Spirit, to be more conformed to his image.

We will never be equal 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. Until then, the blessings of sacred fellowship and perfect cleansing go hand-in-hand with walking in the light even now. [M&E]