This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.
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Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
What is this? Those same have seen, have handled with their hands, the Word of life: He was from the beginning, and for a time was made visible and palpable, the Only-begotten Son of God. For what thing did He come, or what new thing did He tell us? What was it His will to teach? Wherefore did He this which He did, that the Word should be made flesh, that God over all things should suffer indignities from men, that He should endure to be smitten upon the face by the hands which Himself had made? What would He teach? What would He show? What would He declare? Let us hear: for without the fruit of the precept the hearing of the story, how Christ was born, and how Christ suffered, is a mere pastime of the mind, not a strengthening of it. What great thing do you hear? With what fruit you hear, see to that. What would He teach? What declare? Hear. That God is light, says he, and there is no darkness in Him at all. Hitherto, he has named indeed the light, but the words are dark: good is it f...
Who is he that overcometh the world, &c. For by believing he hopes, by hoping he invokes, by invoking he loves Christ, and therefore he is strengthened by the grace of Christ to despise the world, and by despising he overcomes it, according to the saying of S. Paul, "I am able to do all things in Him who strengtheneth me." For he who believes in Christ, ought to follow the precepts of Christ and obey Him, not the world.
S. John proves his thesis ex hypothesi, the general from the particular. He proves, I say, that faith is the victory of believers, because the faith of Christ is the victory over the world. And at the same time he confutes Cerinthus, Ebion, and the other heretics of that age, who denied the Divinity of Christ. Hence when Peter confessed this doctrine, saying, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God," he deserved to hear from Him, "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church."
God is light We cannot have this fellowship with God the Father and his Son Jesus Christ, if we walk in the darkness of sin: we must walk as the children of light. (Witham)
Draw whatever (veil of) darkness you please over your deeds, "God is light.".
Nay, but this whole world is the one house of all; in which world it is more the heathen, who is found in darkness, whom the grace of God enlightens, than the Christian, who is already in God's light.
