From this point of view, the conception of God is presented under four great affirmations:  God is Light (1⁵); God is Righteous (2²⁹); God is Love (4⁸); God is Life (5²⁰).  And though, characteristically, St. John makes no endeavour to bring these ideas into an organic unity of thought, their inter-relation is sufficiently clear.  Righteousness and Love are the primary ethical qualities of the Divine Nature; Life is the essence in which these qualities inhere; and that God is Light signifies that the Divine Nature, as Righteousness and Love, is self-necessitated to reveal itself so as to become the Truth, the object of faith, and the source of spiritual illumination to every being capable of receiving the revelation.  Thus, while Gnostic speculation conceived the Divine Nature metaphysically, as the ultimate spiritual essence in eternal separation from all that is material and mutable, and while Gnostic piety aspired to union with the Divine Life solely by the mystic vision of the Light which is its emanation; with St. John, the conception of God is primarily and intensely ethical.  A deity of mere abstract Being could never awaken his soul to worship.  His homage is not given to Infinitude or Everlastingness.  For him, God is in the least atom of moral good, as He is not in

For him, the Eternal Life, the very Life of God, brought into the sphere of humanity in the person of Jesus Christ, is Righteousness and Love; and with his whole soul he labours to stamp on the minds of men the truth that only by Righteousness and Love can they walk in the Light of God, and have fellowship in the Life of the Father and of His Son Jesus Christ.

    "This is the true God, and Eternal Life" (5²⁰).  It is everywhere assumed in the Epistle that God is the absolute final source of that life - Eternal Life - the possession of which is the supreme end for which man, and every spiritual nature, exists.  This is clearly implied in such a statement as "This is the witness, that God gave us Eternal Life" (5¹¹), and in all the passages, too numerous to be quoted, that speak of the existence of this Life in man as the result of a Divine Begetting.  That God is also the immanent source of Life - that it exists and is maintained only through a continuous vitalising union with Him, as of the branch with the vine - is no less clearly implied in those equally numerous passages that speak of our abiding in God and God's abiding in us.

    In all this it is further implied that God is the source of Life to men because He has Life in Himself.  Omne vivum ex vivo.  Eternal life may be spoken of as His gift (5¹¹, Rom. 6²³); but the gift is not extraneous to the Giver.  It is nothing else than His self-communication to men, the transmission to us of His own nature.  "This is the true God, and Eternal Life" (5²⁰).²

    It must be observed, however, that St. John nowhere merges the idea of God in that of Life.  God is the ultimate Eternal Life; Eternal Life is not God.  God is personal, Life is impersonal;³ and any manner of thinking by which God is reduced to a pantheistic anima mundi is as foreign to St. John as it is to every other Biblical writer.  It is noticeable, indeed, that St. John nowhere carries his conception of God as the Life to its full cosmical expansion.  It would be in full accord with that conception - it is its religious as well as its logical completion - to say that God, as immanent, is the principle of universal life; that life, throughout the whole hierarchy of creation, from the flower in the crannied wall to the archangel, is a pulse of God's own life, a stream not separated but ever flowing from Him as its fountain-head (Ps. 36⁵).  For every finite being life is union with God according to its capacity.  But the lower potencies of the creative Life do not come within the Apostle's horizon.  Man alone, of terrestrial creatures, has capacity for the highest kind of life, which St. John calls Eternal Life; and his concern is exclusively with this.

    What elements, then, are present in St. John's conception of the Divine Life?  Primarily, as has been said, this conception is ethical.  The activities in which the Life is manifested are those of Righteousness (2²⁹), and Love (4⁸).  The life God lives is a life absolutely righteous and loving.  But the conception is also metaphysical.  Essentially, the Eternal Life is nothing else than the Divine Nature itself, regarded, not as abstract being, but dynamically, as the ground and source of all its own manifold activities as the animating principle⁴ in virtue of which the Divine Righteousness and the Divine Love are not mere abstractions, but eternally active forces.  And, finally, the Life of God is a principle of self-communication and self-reproduction.  It is this by intrinsic necessity.  Love cannot but seek to beget love (4⁷); and Righteousness to beget righteousness (2²⁹).  In the Epistle, this generative activity of the Divine Life holds a place of equal importance with its ethical quality.  No thought is more closely interwoven with its whole texture than that of the Divine self-communication.  Eternally, the Father imparts Himself to His only-begotten Son (4⁹), the Word whose life from the Beginning consisted in His fellowship with the Father (h]tij h-n proj to.u pate,ra, 1²).  To men, Eternal Life is communicated as the result of a Divine act, by which, in the terminology of St. John, they are "begotten of God" and become the "children of God" (te,kna tou/ qeou/).  This actual impartation of the actual Life of God is the core of Johannine soteriology.  It is this that makes the Gospel a gospel, and Christ the mediator of a real salvation.  "This is the witness, that God gave us Eternal Life, and this Life is in His Son."

    "And this is the message which we have heard from Him, and announce again unto you, that God is Light, and in Him is no darkness at all.  If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth" (1^5,6).

    The words "God is Light," though unrecorded in any of our Gospels, may quite conceivably contain the verbal reminiscence of an actual utterance of our Lord.  This, however, is not necessarily implied in St. John's statement.  What is asserted is that the whole purport of the Christian Revelation,⁵ from a certain point of view, may be said to be this - God is Light.  And our endeavour, in the first place, must be to determine the sense in which the symbol is here employed.

    Light, the most beautiful and blessed thing in Nature, which seems as if created to be the emblem of all purity and splendour, of knowledge, safety, love and joy, and which fits the world to be the abode of the higher forms of life, has been inevitably associated by men of every race and religion with their conception of the Divine.  It would lead far from our present purpose, however, to attempt an investigation of the typology of Light in the extra-Biblical religions, or even to examine minutely the symbolic meanings and uses of it that are scattered broadcast over the Scriptures themselves.⁶  It will suffice to notice that there are two main lines along which the idea of Light is related, both in the Old Testament and the New, to the being, character and activity of God.

    On the one hand, Light is associated physically or symbolically with the Divine Essence, and with the heavenly world.  Everywhere in the Old Testament, Light is the actual medium of theophany, the physical accompaniment of Jehovah's presence.⁷  In the New Testament also, the same conception of Light as pertaining to the essence of Deity - as the physical element, so to say, of the Divine nature - is abundantly present.  God "dwells in light that is unapproachable" (I Tim. 6¹⁶); and wherever the celestial world is projected into the terrestrial it is in a radiance of supernatural Light.⁸  Following this line of analogy, we might infer that here in our Epistle the idea of Light is associated symbolically with the moral Being of God.  That God is Light in which there is no darkness, signifies the spotless and radiant perfection of the Divine Holiness.

    In another class of passages the symbol is used to express the correlative facts of God's self-revelation and of the enlightenment it brings to man's spiritual perceptions.  Thus, in the Old Testament, it is the symbol of the illuminative action of the Divine Word (Pss. 19⁸, 119¹⁰⁵), of the Divine Spirit (Ps. 36¹⁰, Prov. 20²⁷), and of the witness of the people of God to the surrounding world (Isa. 42⁶, 49⁶, 60^1-3).  In the New Testament this is the prevailing use.  Christ is the avpau,gasma of the Father's glory (Heb. 1³); the Word in whom the Divine Life becomes the Light of men (John 1⁴) and of the world (8¹²); and the prophetic word is a "lamp shining in a dark place" (2 Pet. 1¹⁹).  The subjective illumination which is the counterpart of the external revelation is also Light.  By the "Spirit of wisdom and revelation" the "eyes of the heart" are enlightened (Eph. 1¹⁸); and as, in the first creation, God caused Light to shine out of darkness, so now He shines in the heart "to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" (2 Cor. 4⁶).

    Now, for the interpretation of the Epistle, it is a question of some importance to determine with which of these ideas, essence or revelation, St. John's conception of the Divine Light comes into line.  In my judgment it is with the latter.  That God is Light expresses the self-revelation of God; first, as a necessity that belongs to His moral nature; secondly, as the source of all moral illumination.  But while maintaining this interpretation I must admit that the exegetical authorities, almost with one voice, declare for the opposite view, namely, that Light here denotes the essential Being of God.  "It is the innermost, all-comprehending essence of God, from which all His attributes proceed" (Haupt); "Absolute Holiness and Truth" (Huther); "the Absolute Holiness of God, especially as Love" (Rothe); "the new idea of God as unconditioned Goodness, holy Love" (Beyschlag, ii. 450); "the Love which constitutes the essence of God" (Grill, p. 312).  To this whole class of interpretations there is only one objection - a serious one, however - that they are irrelevant to the context.  While this interpretation of the Light as absolute Holiness or Love serves admirably for this single sentence (1⁵), taken by itself, it will be found that it entirely dislocates the continuity of thought that runs through the paragraph (1⁵-2²).  Examining this paragraph as a whole, we find that the unifying idea is not the Light, but is fellowship with God.  St. John does not introduce the thought that God is Light as an independent thesis.  He does not develop it, or even recur to it.  It is introduced only for the sake of leading up to what follows, "If we say that we have fellowship with Him and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth."  In fact, it is the logical starting-point for the whole paragraph - the major premise from which the Apostle proceeds, in the course of the paragraph, to draw a number of conclusions regarding the conditions of fellowship with God.  These conditions are, abstractly and summarily, that "we walk in the Light, as He is in the Light" (1⁷).  Light is the medium in which fellowship between God and man is consciously realised; the first element which He and we may possess in common.  The crucial question, moreover, is as to what this condition of fellowship - walking in the Light - signifies for sinful men; for, as St. John immediately proceeds to insist, to "walk in the Light" is, first and indispensably, to confess our sins (1^8-10). Obviously, therefore, the Light cannot signify the absolute moral perfection of God.  For sinners, fellowship with God cannot, initially, consist in sharing His moral perfection.  The Light in which we, being yet sinful, can walk so as to have fellowship with God, is the Light of Truth, the Light which His self-revelation sheds upon all objects in the moral universe, and, first of all, upon ourselves and our sin.  The clue to the whole passage, in short, is the idea of fellowship.⁹  As in nature Light is the medium of fellowship, - the social element in which all creatures, whatever their affinities or antagonisms, may meet and be revealed one to another, - so, in the spiritual sphere, the Light, the source of which is the self-revelation of God, is the medium of fellowship between all spiritual beings.  And especially is it the element in which we, though yet sinful, can have fellowship with God; because, when by confessing our sins we walk in the Light, "the Blood of Jesus, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin."

    The single meeting-place of the Holy God and sinful men is, to begin with, the Truth; the only medium of their fellowship, a common view of spiritual realities.  And it is because God is Light that this is possible.  As it is said in the most Johannine of the Psalms, "In Thy Light shall we see light."

    I. That God is Light signifies, therefore, in the first place, that the Divine Nature is, by inherent moral necessity, self-revealing.¹⁰  As Light, by its nature, cannot be self-contained, but is ever seeking to impart itself, pouring through every window and crevice, shining into every eye, bathing land and sea with its pure radiance; so God, from His very nature of Righteousness and Love, is necessitated to reveal Himself as being what He is.  He is Light, and as such is always seeking to shine into the minds He has made in His own Image.  "And in Him is no darkness at all."¹¹  In God there is nothing that hides, nothing that is hidden.  In the Light of His self-revelation there is no darkness, because in His nature there is no inconsistency, no variableness, no secret reserve.  God, as revealed in Christ, is knowable as no other Being is.  His holiness, justice, and love are beyond knowledge, not because there is in Him anything that is not holiness, justice, and love, but because these, as they exist in Him, are beyond the measure of man's mind.  The Divine character is utterly transparent - goodness without a shadow of evil.  It is Light in which there is no darkness, to which there is no arresting horizon, that streams through the spiritual universe from Him who is its Sun, the Word of Life.¹²

    II.  But this thought of God's self-revelation carries with it, as its correlative, the thought of man's illumination thereby.  As the light of the sun not only reveals the sun itself, but brings all things in their proper forms and colours to our vision, so the Light of God makes all things in the spiritual realm visible in their true character.  As all truth is God's thought, and all finite intelligence is participation in the light of the Eternal Reason; so, in the moral sphere, the character that things have in the moral judgments of God and the view of them that is given in the light of His self-revealment constitute what is called, in Johannine phrase, h` avlh,qeia the Truth.  And it is in their perception of the Truth, their illumination by the Divine Light, that there exists for all moral beings a medium of conscious fellowship with God.  For sinful men, especially, this is the only possible medium of such fellowship.  We can come to the Light and walk in the Light, as He is in the Light (1⁷).  Light is the translucent atmosphere in which, even while still morally imperfect and impure, we can come to have a common perception of moral facts and a true fellowship of mind with Him who is the absolutely Good.  This, indeed, is the basis of spiritual religion; it is this that distinguishes Christianity from irrational superstitions and unethical ritualism.  It is no merely emotional, mystical, or sacramentarian fellowship with God that St. John declares to us; but a fellowship in the Truth, in thought and knowledge, and in all that springs from them.  God is not Life merely; He is Light also.  And the complete Johannine conception may be expressed in this, that Life is the medium of our subconscious, Light of all our conscious fellowship with God and with one another (1⁷).

    The relation to God in which such fellowship is consciously realised is expressed throughout the Epistle, as in the Gospel, by the characteristic use of the verb "to know" (ginw,skein)¹³  But the conception of spiritual knowledge, in all its presuppositions and in all its consequences, is equally remote from Rationalism and from Gnosticism.  The perception of spiritual truth is as little attainable by logical faculty or common intelligence as it is by theosophic contemplation.  Spiritual regeneration is the prerequisite of spiritual illumination.  Those only who are "begotten of God" have the power to "see" and "know" Divine realities.  God is Light; and had human nature been animated by a normal and healthy spiritual life, the Divine illumination would have flowed in upon it uninterruptedly by all its channels of affinity with the Divine nature.  And, indeed, St. John's thought is that the Light never has been, never could be, wholly withdrawn.  But "the Light shineth in the darkness, and the darkness apprehended it not" (John 1⁵).  As the original state of every man is death (3¹⁴), so is it also blindness.  And "Except a man be born from above, he cannot see the kingdom of God" (John 3³).  The fundamental Johannine position is that the whole redemptive process has its origin, not in any conscious human act, but in an antecedent activity of the Divine Life in man; and the first fruit and manifestation of this activity is the power to "see," to " believe" on Him who is the Light, to "know" God whom He reveals.¹⁴

    Yet, since Light is the element of conscious activity, of conscious obedience or disobedience (John 7²⁴), of sincerity or insincerity (John 3^19-21), the Epistle strongly emphasises the office of human volition in the response made to it.  The Light is a message in the imperative, not only in the indicative mood; and the Epistle speaks not of "seeing," but of "walking in the Light."  The conception, in both Gospel and Epistle, is that, while the light, which shines around all men, becomes a power of saving illumination only in those who, as "begotten of God," are responsive to its influence, none can be entirely unconscious of its being there, or entirely insusceptible to its claims upon him.  But men may close the shutters of the soul's windows against it.  With an instinctive premonition of what it would constrain them to see and acknowledge, to do and forego, men may and do employ devices of various subtlety to fortify the mind against its entrance.  As in the primeval story the covert of the trees of the garden is preferred to the Light of God's presence, so still "This is the judgment, that the light is come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light, for their works were evil" (John 3¹⁹).

    A brief study of the paragraph (1⁵-2²) will show that this interpretation of the Light fits into the context like a key into its proper lock.  The thesis of the whole paragraph is that "walking in the Light" is the one necessary and sufficient condition of fellowship with God.  This is first stated in the most abstract form.  "God is Light, and in Him is no darkness at all.  If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth" (1^5,6).  Here the affirmation is not merely (as in 2 Cor. 6¹⁴) that two elements so opposite in nature as light and darkness, holiness and sin, purity and impurity, cannot mix and coalesce.  What is in view is the irreconcilable effect of light and darkness.  Light is that which reveals; darkness, that which conceals.  Light is the medium in which we come to see as God sees, to have a true perception of all moral objects - qualities, actions, and persons.  To "walk in the Light" is, therefore, to have, in the first place, the will to see all things in the Light of God, and to acknowledge and act up to what is thus seen to be the truth.  To "walk in darkness" is the effort, instinctive or deliberate, not to see, or the failure to acknowledge and act up to what is seen; to withdraw ourselves, our duties, our actions, our character, our relation to the facts and laws of the spiritual realm, from the light which God's self-revealment sheds upon them.  And to do this is, ipso facto, to exclude the possibility of fellowship with God.

    That this is the Apostle's meaning becomes still more apparent as we follow the concrete development of the thought in the remainder of the paragraph.  This is composed of three parallel pairs of antitheses (1^6,7. 1^8,9, 1¹⁰-2²), which may be arranged thus:
 

Darkness Series	Light Series
16  "If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not the truth."	17  "If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship, one with another, and the Blood of Jesus His Son cleanseth us from all sin."
18  "If we say that we have no sin, we decieve ourselves, and the truth is not in us."	19  "If we confess our sin, we have, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."
110  "If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us."	21  "If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous."

    From this it is evident that to "walk in the Light" is, first of all, to confess sin; to walk in the darkness, to ignore or to deny sin.  All things assume a different aspect in the Light of God; but nothing looks so different as we ourselves do.  The first fact on which the light impinges is our sin.  But, though it exposes sin in all its horror, we may loyally submit to and endorse the result - we may come to the Light and walk in it; or we may "rebel against the Light" (Job 24¹³) and "love the darkness."  The "darkness," therefore, is not the "world," nor "sin, especially as impurity" (Rothe).  It is, in this instance, self-concealment, the cloud of sophistry and selfdeception which it is always the instinct of guilt to gather around itself.  To "walk in darkness" is not necessarily, indeed, to live a double life under any of the deeper shades of deliberate hypocrisy.  For the exclusion of the Light, conscious dissimulation is comparatively ineffective.  Simply to pursue the everyday life of business and pleasure, of purpose and achievement, without reference to the Will of God; to live by the false and mutilated standards of the world; to be blinded by the glare of its artificial illuminations - there are no more effectual and frequented ways than these of walking in darkness.

    It is needless for our present purpose to pursue further the exposition of this paragraph.¹⁵  And it must suffice to indicate in a sentence how, in the remainder of this whole section of the Epistle (1⁶-2²⁹), the contrast between walking in the Light and walking in darkness is developed.

    The Light of God not only reveals sin (1⁷-2²), it reveals Duty (2^3-6); especially, it reveals Love as the highest law for the children of God (2^7-11); as it also reveals in their true character the "world and the things that are in the world," so that it is seen that "if any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him" (2^15-17).  Finally, the light reveals Jesus as the Christ, the Incarnate Son of God (2^18-28).  He who denies the glorious reality of the Incarnation is a "liar," and is blind to the Light of God.

    "God is Light" signifies the inward necessity of the Divine Nature to reveal itself, the fact of its perfect and eternal self-revelation in Christ, and the correlative fact of men's spiritual illumination thereby.  This is the only conception of the Light that fits into the train of thought running through this whole section of the Epistle.