Read 2 Corinthians 4:4–6 and Ephesians 1:15–23; 5:8–11

In Plato’s famous Allegory of the Cave, people live imprisoned in chains, staring ahead at a wall with a fire casting light from behind them. Unbeknownst to them, puppets and moving objects behind them are creating the shadows they see on the wall. They believe the shadows are reality. They have no idea that there is a bright sunlit world outside. Even when others tell them about the real world, they still don’t want to leave their cave.

The allegory reminds me of Paul’s words: “The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Cor. 4:4). In contrast, when we are born anew in Christ, we become children of the light—children of the sunlit world (Eph. 5:8). God illuminates our hearts and minds through the gospel so we can see Christ in his glory. As we fix our eyes on Jesus and remain in him, God progressively puts everything in its proper perspective. The result is that the church collectively and people individually are better able to discern good from evil. We grow to see and discern the details of beauty, goodness, and truth—to see the world and people aright. No doubt, we need each other to remain in the light to experience God’s shalom—to see and to love.

Ephesians 5:9 reveals something breathtakingly beautiful about the fruit born of light. The fruit is “all goodness, righteousness and truth.” Gazing at the face of Christ, we start to see him more and more in our lives and in our world. We see Jesus showing up in thousands of ways and in all sorts of places—sometimes quite unexpectedly. We’re enabled to find the goodness, righteousness, and truth present even in difficult or painful circumstances. Similarly, others see these virtues manifested in our own lives and give thanks to God.

The knowledge revealed to us through God enlightening our hearts fills us with overflowing joy and enduring hope (Eph. 1:18). It is hope for the present because of the “incomparably great power” we have through the Spirit to do God’s will in the world (v. 19). This hope is further buttressed by the knowledge that God is ever for us. And we also have hope for the future because we catch glimpses of our glorious inheritance.

Indeed, as we remain in Christ and connected to one another, we know at a deep level that evil is the counterfeit, the shadow world. As Gerard Manley Hopkins described in his poem “As Kingfishers Catch Fire,” we grow to see Christ playing “in ten thousand places” and the glory of God shining everywhere. This is Advent light.

Marlena Graves is assistant professor of spiritual formation at Northeastern Seminary. She is the author of several books, including The Way Up Is Down.

Read John 1:1–18

The apostle John contextualizes his account of the words and deeds of his good friend Jesus with an opening prologue that crackles with energy and wonder. Jesus, John wants to tell us, is the very Word of God. He was with God at the creation of the world. He is God. He is life itself, and that life is the light of the world.

Then comes verse 5: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” At least that’s what it says in my 2011 edition of the NIV. But here’s a striking thing: My older edition of the NIV (the 1984 translation) reads differently. It says, “The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.”

The Greek word alternatively rendered “overcome” and “understood” is katalambanó—which means to “take hold of” or “grasp.” We need more than one English word to try to hint at the full gist of what John is saying here.

John has seen the Light of the World with his own eyes. He’s gone fishing with him. He’s eaten with him. He’s prayed with him. And he’s watched him endure the most horrific death imaginable and then come back to life. So John knows that there is no darkness in the universe that can permanently grasp and defeat this light. The darkness cannot overcome it.

But John also knows that our human minds, left to their own devices, cannot begin to grasp the love on offer in the astonishing fact of the Incarnation. The darkness cannot understand it.

John’s prologue culminates with a breathtaking meditation on the lengths to which God has gone to reach us with his illuminating love. “The Word became flesh,” he writes, “and made his dwelling among us.” Or, as The Message paraphrase renders it, the flesh-and-blood Word “moved into the neighborhood.”

The Mighty God came in the staggeringly vulnerable form of a human baby. The Prince of Peace allowed himself to be birthed into a world of sin and chaos—God made huggable, woundable, kissable, killable.

Only the Light of the World can give us the power to begin to understand what God has offered us in the birth of Jesus. So, this Advent, let us pray the prayer the apostle Paul offered the Ephesians (3:18): that we, “being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ.”

Carolyn Arends is a recording artist, an author, and the director of education for Renovaré. Her most recent album is In the Morning.

Read John 1:19–34 and 3:22–30

“He must increase, but I must decrease” (KJV). I remember hearing this verse as a child and imagining Jesus growing bigger and bigger while John the Baptist shrank! The context of John’s statement clarifies his meaning: John’s disciples have told him that “everyone is going” to Jesus, so John declares, “He must become greater; I must become less.”

John’s ministry began before Jesus’ did, so John watched the number of Jesus’ followers grow from zero to a lot more than John had. This could have been heartbreaking, because “the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem” had been going out to the wilderness to see John (Mark 1:5).

The Gospel of John, however, consistently depicts John the Baptist merely as a witness—one who bears testimony—to the identity and greatness of Jesus. Each portion of today’s two passages shows John explaining who he is and isn’t or who Jesus is. Jewish leaders from Jerusalem question John about his identity, and he denies being any kind of Messiah. He is just preparing the way for the Christ. Yes, he has a ministry of water baptism, but his status is greatly inferior to that of the coming one. John points out Jesus as God’s sacrificial lamb, who will take away the sins of the world, and who will immerse people into the power of the Holy Spirit.

Later, when Jesus’ followers have eclipsed John’s in number, John insists this is fully appropriate. He likens himself simply to the best man in a wedding, where Jesus is the groom. John’s analogy in 3:29 is striking, particularly when we understand its cultural context. Ancient Jewish custom called for the best man to wait outside the bedroom when the bride and groom consummated the marriage. Traditionally, the groom would shout for joy to confirm their new marital intimacy, and the best man would share that joy.

The Christian life is all about deferring more and more to Jesus, the Mighty God. A generation later, Paul would say in Philippians 1:18 that “the important thing is that in every way … Christ is preached. And because of this I rejoice.”

I have recently retired and need to learn this lesson more than ever. Being in the limelight is not the point. Humbly magnifying Jesus is. I need to shrink.

Craig L. Blomberg is distinguished professor emeritus of New Testament at Denver Seminary and the author of numerous books, including his Matthew commentary and Interpreting the Parables.

Read Matthew 24:29–44

Questions arise with the first word of this passage: “Immediately”!

Most of the rest of the content in verses 29–31 has almost always been understood to describe Christ’s return, depicted poetically in the language of Isaiah 13:10 and 34:4 as involving cosmic upheaval. (Some have instead taken it as a sort of invisible coming of Jesus in judgment through Rome’s destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70—though the idea of gathering the elect from one corner of the world to another doesn’t fit that interpretation.)

When will Christ come back? This message on the Mount of Olives was provoked by Jesus’ disciples asking him when he would come back (Matt. 24:3). He itemized a long list of what must happen first (vv. 4–26) and now says, in essence, “Watch for these things to know when my coming is near,” just as a fig tree in leaf portends the arrival of summer.

Examples of all “these things” occurred by A.D. 70, so the church in every generation since has believed it might see his return. Jesus is not saying he will return in the disciples’ lifetime, merely that all the preparatory events will have occurred. “These things” in verse 34 have to be the same as “these things” in verse 33—which show that Christ’s return “is near” but not yet here. So they can’t include his actual return—just the signs that prepared for his return. When he returns, he will no longer be merely “near, right at the door,” but he will have arrived!

We can’t know the precise timing of all this, so we must always be prepared. Those who aren’t will be caught off guard by the suddenness and surprise of the final events. If we remain alert at all times, we don’t have to worry about a midnight burglar. Of course, Jesus isn’t coming back to steal anything from us; it is the idea of unexpectedness he’s highlighting in this comparison.

But what about “immediately after the distress of those days”? Perhaps the distress here is the distress that characterizes the entire period between Christ’s two comings. After all, 2 Timothy 3:12 promises persecution to all the godly (even amid the many joyous moments in the Christian life).

However we interpret it, here is testimony to Jesus as the Mighty God who will put all things right in his perfect timing. Today, many Christians have recovered the biblical call for justice in this life, and rightly so—we should do all we can to help others. But war, sickness, natural disaster, injury and disability, poverty, and broken relationships all require us to ultimately trust God for complete restitution and restoration in eternity. And in the grand scheme of eternity, his return will probably seem to all of us like it indeed happened “immediately”!

Craig L. Blomberg is distinguished professor emeritus of New Testament at Denver Seminary and the author of numerous books, including his Matthew commentary and Interpreting the Parables.