Christmas Gift Guide - For Women
Christmas Gift Guide - For Women
What Does It Mean to Let Our Light Shine?
Shine with the Light That You Are
The light that we let shine is the light that we are. Jesus said, “You are the light of the world” (Matt. 5:14). So there is a movement from the inside to the outside. What people see from the outside is our “good works.” But that is not who we are. The good works have a light source from inside. The key to understanding the light that shines out through good works is the aim of the works, namely, that people see and give glory to God. Why do they give glory to God and not to us? Because the light that is shining out is the light of God, or the light of Jesus who is the revelation of the glory of God.
So what does it mean then that we are the light of the world? How do good deeds grow from who we are in such a way that they make God look glorious? Here it would be wise to stay close to the context of Jesus’s words. He has just spoken the Beatitudes: Blessed are the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, and those who suffer for righteousness’ sake (Matt. 5:3–10). Here is a kind of identity that is very unusual in the world. It is like savory salt when things are tasteless and flat,1 and it is like hope-filled light when people are stumbling around in the dark.
But the closest beatitude to the command to let your light shine for the glory of God is that you are blessed when you are reviled. “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you” (Matt. 5:11–12). Immediately following this command to rejoice in persecution comes the statement: “You are the salt of the earth. . . . You are the light of the world” (Matt. 5:13–14). Therefore, I conclude that what is most salty and bright in this insipid and dark world is the almost incomprehensible joy of Jesus’s followers in the midst of persecution and the hardships of life.
All That Jesus Commanded
John Piper
In this repackaged edition of What Jesus Demands from the World, John Piper walks through Jesus’s commands, explaining their context and meaning to help readers understand Christ’s vision of the Christian life and what he still requires today.
It is a joy that is meek and merciful and pure and peaceable, but these things alone do not awaken people to the glory of God. In order to waken people to consider God as an explanation for our good works, there generally must be an obstacle of suffering that would ordinarily cause them to be angry or despairing but does not have that effect on us. Rather they see us “rejoice” in hardship. They see that this hardship does not make us self-centered and self-pitying and mean-spirited. Instead they see our joy and wonder what we are hoping in when ordinary props for hope have been knocked away. The answer, Jesus says, is that we have great reward in heaven (Matt. 5:12). That is, Jesus has become a treasure for us that is more precious than what the world offers. Therefore, when persecution or calamity take natural pleasures away, we still have Jesus, and we still have joy.
Now when our good works get their flavor from this salt and glow with this light, the world may well be awakened to taste something they have never tasted before and to see something they have never seen before, namely, the glory of God in Jesus. If we give a word of testimony concerning the truth and beauty of Jesus,2 and if the Spirit mercifully blows on the hearts of those who see the evidence of that beauty in our lives, then people will “give glory to [our] Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 5:16).
Is the Glory of God an “Ulterior Motive” for Love?
The supremacy of the value of the glory of God is seen in the way Jesus makes the command of Matthew 5:16—“Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” He explicitly says that our aim in doing good works for others is that they might glorify God. Sometimes people who talk much of love but are not God-centered the way Jesus is say things like, “If you do good to people to get them to glorify your God, you are not loving them, for you have ulterior motives.”
This kind of criticism results from a failure to experience the glory of God as the greatest gift and highest joy imaginable. How could it not be love to lay down your life for someone (in doing good for them) specifically with a view to satisfying them with the glory of God forever? This motive is not ulterior; it is open and front and center. It is the very essence of love: followers of Jesus are not do-gooders with no eternal aims for those they love. They know exactly what the greatest and highest and most joyful good is: seeing and savoring God in Jesus forever. This is their aim and they are unashamed of it. They think any lesser aim is a failure of love.
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Jesus Loved Us by Obtaining for Us God’s Glory
We have seen it already, but it is so important we should see it again from different texts: Jesus loved like this. In his darkest hour he let his light shine most brightly in a “good work.” As he did the greatest “good work” that has ever been done, he pondered out loud, “And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’?” His answer is no. Instead he described the ultimate reason why he came to the hour of his death: “But for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name” (John 12:27–28). D. A. Carson rightly calls this “nothing other than an articulation of the principle that has controlled his life and ministry (John 7:18; 8:29, 50).”3 From beginning (John 2:11) to end (John 12:28) Jesus let his light shine—did his good works—to vindicate and display the glory of God.
The way he thought of this as the supreme act of love was not only that it cost him his life (John 15:13) but that it obtained freely for sinners the greatest gift possible. He prayed for it in John 17:24, “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory.”
This was the final, greatest, and most satisfying gift obtained by Jesus in the “good work” that he did on the cross. This will make no sense at all to a person who does not see and savor the glory of God above all other gifts. But for those who have renounced all that this world offers (Luke 14:33) and set their heart on the “great reward” in heaven, namely, the enjoyment of the glory of Jesus, Jesus’s purchase of this reward at the cost of his life will be the greatest act of love imaginable.
Letting Our Light Shine, Like Jesus, in the Way We Die
When Jesus calls us to let our light shine that others may see our good deeds and glorify God, he is calling us to join him in the work he came to do. And just as he pursued the glory of his Father through his final act of dying, he expects that we will do the same. Therefore, he said to Peter, “‘Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted, but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go.’ (This he said to show by what kind of death he was to glorify God)” (John 21:18). Jesus simply takes it for granted that his disciples will make God look good in the way they die.
The only question is, how will we die? That decision lies in the hands of God, as Jesus makes clear with the words, “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows” (Matt. 10:29–31). In other words, if God rules over how the birds die, how much more surely will he govern your death.
When Jesus calls us to let our light shine that others may see our good deeds and glorify God, he is calling us to join him in the work he came to do.
Jesus’s Light—and Ours—at His Second Coming
The final great historical display of Jesus’s shining light—and ours—happens at his second coming. He tells us how it will be both for him and for us. For him, he says, “The Son of Man is going to come with his angels in the glory of his Father. . . . All the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. . . . Then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory” (Matt. 16:27; 24:30; 25:31, KJV). He came the first time to display the glory of his Father. He will come the second time to complete that revelation and “gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all law-breakers” (Matt. 13:41). What about for us?
What will his second coming mean for us? It turns out that letting our light shine will be our eternal vocation. We will never cease to have this calling. This is why we were created: to be so satisfied with our great reward, the glory of God in Jesus, that we reflect his infinite worth in acts of love that cause others to see and savor and show more of the glory of God. We can see our eterna l shining in Matthew 13:43 where Jesus describes what becomes of his followers at his second coming: “The righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.”
This is our final destiny. Beholding the glory of Jesus (John 17:24), we will shine with the beauty and the love that he has. The church that he promised to build (Matt. 16:18) will find its final destiny in reflecting to one another the glory of Jesus, so that our enjoyment of him will be all the greater because of the manifold manifestations of it in the shining members.
The Bright Command
Jesus’s command for all the world is that all human beings find in him the all-satisfying glory for which we were made. Then he commands that we turn from trusting in anything else, and bank our hope on the “great reward” of everlasting joy in him. And then, in that hope and joy, he commands that we let that light shine in sacrificial good deeds of love, so that others will see and savor and spread the glory of God.
Notes:
- W. D. Davies and Dale Allison give eleven possible meanings for “you are the salt of the earth” (Matt. 5:13), and then conclude that perhaps that’s the point: the many uses of salt. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, International Critical Commentary, Vol. 1 (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1988), 472–73. But I follow those who think that the savor of salt is the most natural thing referred to. There is a kind of radical life rooted in the promises of the Beatitudes that has a rare and wonderful taste in a world gone flat with an excess of superficial titillation.
- Jesus would consider it a great mistake if we took his words to mean that a person could come to a saving sight of the glory of God in our deeds without some verbal testimony as to who Jesus is and what he has done for us and promised to us. This is why Jesus sent his disciples out to preach and to do good works (Matt. 10:7–8; Luke 9:2; 10:9). Not either-or, but both-and. The great saving task of the followers of Jesus is to speak the gospel along with a life of salt-like, light-like love: “And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come” (Matt. 24:14).
- D. A. Carson, The Gospel According to John (Grand Rapids, Mich: Eerdmans, 1991), 440.
This article is adapted from All That Jesus Commanded: The Christian Life according to the Gospels by John Piper.
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