Light-Like!

Centuries ago, to a spiritually dark world, similar to ours, Jesus Christ came and announced, 'I am the light of the world!' As the 'light of the world', Jesus is the personal, final, full revelation of God to mankind. As the 'light of the world', Jesus expresses the holiness of God and exposes the sinfulness of man. As the 'light of the world', Jesus opens blinded spiritual eyes of the humble and blinds the spiritually proud. As the 'light of the world', Jesus leads us from the realm of spiritual darkness to the realm os spiritual light, and in the process, he transforms our lives so that we become 'lights in the world.' But why are we so dim bulbs? How can we increase our spiritual lumens? Paul gives us the answer in Ephesians 5. We increase our spiritual lumens by being separate from the world! God has called us to be 'in' the world, but not 'of' the world, to be 'in' the world, but the world is not to be 'in' us. One of the reasons our 'lights' are so dim is because the world surrounding us sees little difference between us and them. It's the world 'in us' that causes our lights to dim. We also increase our spiritual lumens by developing 'light-like' character qualities. Separation from the world without the corresponding development of personal holiness produces external religious legalism and internal, self-righteous hypocrisy. Case in point: the Pharisees of Jesus' day. To be God's light bearers in our world, we must concentrate on developing 'light-like' character qualities-- personal internal holiness!