1 John 1:5 could arguably be the most important verse in the Bible. With reference to Jesus, it reads, “This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.”
Why could that be so all important? Because the apostle John is summarizing the whole of Jesus’ life and ministry in one sentence. He was born, taught, performed miracles, cast out demons, suffered, died, and rose from the dead, all to give us this message: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.
What I take that to mean in view of the use of the images of light verses darkness in Scripture is that, as light, God is good, thoroughly good, with not one bit of evil or wrong in him.
Another way of defining his goodness is that every single thing God thinks, says, our does is always of maximum possible benefit to all of His creation all at once. God by His own nature of perfect goodness cannot do otherwise. He cannot act in any way that would be anything short of the highest and the best possible good for everyone. This perfect goodness is His glory.
And when in this or that situation we read that God does something “for His glory,” it means He is acting to make sure that nothing interferes with His intentions to maximally bless everyone involved. And to glorify Him is to celebrate the fact that He is like that and cannot be otherwise.
The more we grasp this one truth, the more we cannot but treasure Him intensely and supremely above all things. Truly, if all we took to heart from the totality of Jesus’ life and ministry is this one truth — God is light; in him there is no darkness at all — we would find the implications to be so unimaginably powerful that we would realize it is all we need to know to be all that we want to be.
