Dividing Light from Darkness

“Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light. God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.”  Genesis 1:3-4

Initially, the created cosmos was in darkness - a darkness which God Himself had to create, “I am...the One forming light and creating darkness” (Isaiah 45:6-7). But then the dark cosmos was energized by the Spirit’s moving, and God’s light appeared. The darkness was not dispelled, however, but only divided from the light, and the day/night sequence began, which has continued ever since.

This sequence of events in the physical creation is a beautiful type of the spiritual creation, “new things have come” (2 Cor. 5:17). Each individual is born in spiritual darkness, but “For God, who said, ‘Light shall shine out of darkness,’ is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6). We are now “qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in Light. For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son” (Col. 1:12-13).

However, the light in the primeval darkness resulted only in a division of night and day. The night still comes, but God has promised that, in the coming Holy City, “there will no longer be any night” (Rev. 22:5).

Just so, even though we have been given a new nature of light, the old nature of darkness is still striving within, and we have to be exhorted: “for you were formerly darkness, but now you are Light in the Lord; walk as children of Light” (Eph. 5:8). Nevertheless, “the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, that shines brighter and brighter until the full day” (Prov. 4:18). When we reach that city of everlasting light, all spiritual darkness will vanish as well, for “nothing unclean, and no one who practices abomination and lying, shall ever come into it” (Rev. 21:27), and we shall be like Christ.