S200P7 – Who we were: hidden
Jn. 3:19-20
This is the judgment: the Light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. For every wrongdoer hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his activities will be exposed and condemned.
When my niece was very little, she would never come to me. I remember visiting her when she was just a toddler, and it would be utter mayhem if my brother left the room. She would begin to scream and cry, and it would only get worse if I approached her. Whenever she would behave this way, it hurt my heart a little bit. As her uncle, I wanted to be able to hold her and play with her and just spend time with her. Sometimes older children purposely stay away from Mom and Dad and desire no relationship with them. They get absorbed in their own little world, and their friends and self-interest become more important than family relationships. They might even hide aspects of their lives from their parents in a bid to feel more independent than they are. Most times, these are secrets founded in shame. Before Christ, we hid from our heavenly Father just this way.
For as open and vocal as many people in the world seem to be about broadcasting their sin to everyone, and for as accepting as this world has become of many evil things, we all have our secrets. Each of us has something or many things that we keep to ourselves for fear of shame or rejection. This is why many of us have spent years hiding from God’s light. We wanted to remain in the shadows because we did not want to be exposed. We wanted to stay in the darkness because we thought it kept the attention off us. But then God shows us the reality of our circumstance, and we realize that we are not really comfortable in those shadows. We realize that true life means exposing ourselves to the light and being completely transparent with our Father in heaven. And as we do that, we begin to recognize that the word is true when it tells us that there is no condemnation in Christ.
The difference between our secrets before Christ and our secrets after Christ is that there is no longer shame; there is no condemnation. What we have now is confession, forgiveness, and repentance. There is no fear of exposure because we desire God to expose every sin so that we can tackle it head-on. Our desire is not for evil to remain in our lives but for it to go. When we truly love God and seek his kingdom, we understand that there is no room for evil in our lives. God is light, and there is no darkness in him. If we are to live with him by his Spirit, then we must be willing to expose everything about us to his light. Father, thank You for illuminating our lives and exposing the sin within us, and bring us to repentance when we seek evil instead of your kingdom.