Coming Out of the Dark - John 3:20-21 and Gloria Estefan

I haven’t memorized a lot of scripture in my day. Apparently I’ve been too busy filling my head with quotations from movies like Big Daddy and Can’t Hardly Wait. One scripture I do have memorized, though, is John 3:16. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” I just typed that from memory and even though it’s missing a couple “begottens” and “believeths”, I’m pretty sure it’s about the same as it was when I memorized it 22 years ago. And even though John 3:16 is one of the most famous verses in the Bible I still felt a little trepidation about leading a Bible study on the third chapter of John’s gospel. How would I bring life to a passage that so many people knew? How would I inspire thought-provoking conversation about a chapter that most people had already thought about? When it came down to it, I wouldn’t; God would be the life-giver and inspirer of his very own inspired word.

As I was reading John 3:16-21 out loud to the group, I was struck by verse 21 in a way that I cannot begin to explain. I’d read John 3:21 before, very recently as a matter of fact, as I had prepared for the Bible study. Yet in that moment, sitting reading the passage as we sat in a circle in my living room, God’s word came alive again. And even after a life lived following Christ, three years spent in seminary, hours spent teaching and leading discussion, and nights spent huddled with the scriptures, it’s nice to know that the double-edge of God’s word hasn’t dulled.

John 3:20-21 says: ²⁰ All those who do evil hate the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. ²¹ But those who live by the truth come into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God. When I first read this passage preparing for the study I focused quite a bit on darkness and light and how we could be children of the light. My thoughts wandered down the trail which led to removing dark deeds from our lives in order to live as children of the light. And while that trail is true and we should remove dark deeds from our lives, as I read the passage out loud to the group, the Holy Spirit struck me with more meaning to which I had been blinded.

Reading the passage out loud, I saw that John 3:21 wasn’t merely calling us to purge our lives of our dark deeds but to bring our dark deeds into the light. John 3:21 calls us to accountability, opening our lives and taking that which we long to keep in darkness and dragging it out into the light. Those who do evil and hate the light continue in the darkness because they fear that their deeds will be exposed; the only flaw in that logic is that all our deeds are already exposed to an omniscient, omnipresent God. So those who do evil remain in the darkness, deluding themselves into thinking that there is safety and anonymity within the dark. Children of the light, however, recognize that their deeds, no matter how dark, are always done in the sight of Holy God; this sobering truth pushes them to pull their dark deeds into the light within the safety of honest accountability. This passage challenges us not to simply stop doing dark deeds but, when we inevitably do, to bring those deeds from the darkness into the light. It is in the light that sin can be seen for what it is and it is within trustworthy accountability that we find the strength to kill the deed and purge the darkness.

But the dark can be comforting, like slipping on a pair of slippers that have perfectly formed to your feet. However, while the dark may hold an amount of comfort and safety, there is never any peace in the dark. In the dark we wonder who will find out, what they will think when they do and how that will affect our relationship with them. When we find those people, though, who love us and accept us not only for who we are but for who we aren’t, we decide when to bring the dark into the light and no longer have to live in fear of being discovered. So, how can you go from darkness to light and who will help bring you there?