The Light That Shines Within

I want to share a few words from Baxter Kruger’s The Mediation of Jesus Christ, one of the most powerful books I’ve ever read about who Jesus really is. Kruger reminds us that to speak of Jesus is to speak definitively about the being of God, about all creation, and about humanity’s relationship with both. The life of the Triune God and the life of creation are not separate, but bound together in a living union.

IN UNION WITH HIM

Jesus Himself is that union. In Him was life, and that life was the light of all people. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing came into existence. Paul says in Colossians that in Him all things consist and hold together. Everything that exists—everything that has breath—has its being in Him.

This means we are not separated from Him; we exist in Him. We live because His life sustains us. Apart from Him, there is no life.

John tells us that the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has never overcome it. Where is that darkness? It’s not merely “out there” in the world—it’s within us. The darkness is the blindness of our own minds, the lies we believe, the ignorance that keeps us from seeing the truth of who we are in Christ.

Jesus said,

“If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink.”

Where do we come to Him? He is not far off—He is within us. The living Christ, the Light of the world, dwells in you. You can’t live apart from Him; your very breath is His life in you.

Paul wrote to the Colossians,

“You who were once alienated and hostile in mind… He has now reconciled in His body of flesh by His death to present you holy and blameless before Him.”

Notice that—our alienation was “in our minds.” We were never truly separated from God, only darkened in our understanding.

Ephesians 4 echoes this:

“They are darkened in their understanding, estranged from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them.”

Humanity’s sense of separation comes from ignorance, not from God’s rejection. And He refuses to let His creation perish.

THE HOPE OF THE GOSPEL

So He entered into this world. The eternal Word became flesh and lived among us—and within us. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it.

Baxter Kruger writes:

“If the creator dies, the creation has no way of continuing to be. If He goes down, we go down. And that is the astonishing truth the disciples of Jesus are trying to tell us. The incarnate mediator of creation died—and we died with Him. He rose—and we rose. He ascended—and we ascended. All of us, and all of creation, were lifted up in renewed union with the Father and the Holy Spirit.”

That’s the hope of the gospel. Jesus Christ, the Father’s Son, has taken full responsibility for His creation and for all our destructive blindness.

The Word who was face to face with the Father and the Spirit—the eternal dance of self-giving love—spoke creation into being out of that fellowship of joy. Through Him, in Him, all things came to be and are held together.

That same Word became flesh. He entered our darkness, died our death, and rose to bring us into the light of His life. Everything that exists in Him was raised with Him. That’s the good news—the gospel I’m coming to see more clearly every day.

The light shines in the darkness. And that light is in you.