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“But there is another side to the matter: God is light indeed, but there is darkness; darkness is death, and men are in it.’
Yes; darkness is death, but not death to him that comes out of it.
It may sound paradoxical, but no man is condemned for anything he has done; he is condemned for continuing to do wrong. He is condemned for not coming out of the darkness, for not coming to the light, the living God, who sent the light, his son, into the world to guide him home. Let us hear what John says about the darkness.
For here also we have, I think, the word of the apostle himself: at the 13th verse he begins, I think, to speak in his own person. In the 19th verse he says, ‘And this is the condemnation,’—not that men are sinners—not that they have done that which, even at the moment, they were ashamed of—not that they have committed murder, not that they have betrayed man or woman, not that they have ground the faces of the poor, making money by the groans of their fellows—not for any hideous thing are they condemned, but that they will not leave such doings behind, and do them no more: ‘This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men’ would not come out of the darkness to the light, but ‘loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.’ Choosing evil, clinging to evil, loving the darkness because it suits with their deeds, therefore turning their backs on the inbreaking light, how can they but be condemned—if God be true, if he be light, and darkness be alien to him! Whatever of honesty is in man, whatever of judgment is left in the world, must allow that their condemnation is in the very nature of things, that it must rest on them and abide.”
– George MacDonald. From the sermon “Light” in Unspoken Sermons.
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