Piper: love for the light

Tuesday, June 18, 2024
Meditation:
    [Jesus:] “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God.”
    —John 3:19-21 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The reason people do not come to the light is because they do not love it. Love for the light is not caused by coming to the light. We come because we love it. Otherwise, our coming is no honor to the light. Could there be any holy motivation to believe in Christ where there is no taste for the beauty of Christ? To be sure, we could be motivated by the desire to escape hell or the desire to have material riches or the desire to rejoin a departed loved one. But how does it honor the light when the only reason we come to the light is to find those things that we loved in the dark?
    ... John S. Piper (b. 1946), Desiring God, Portland: Multnomah Press, 1986, reprint, Random House Digital, Inc., 2011, p. 72 (see the book)
    See also John 3:19-21; Isa. 9:2; 42:6-7; 60:1-3; Mal. 4:2; Matt. 4:13-16; Luke 1:76-79; 2:30-32; John 1:4-9; 8:12; 9:5; 12:35; Acts 13:47; 26:22-23
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, drive all the darkness from my life. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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