Jesus Is Not Like Light, Light Is Like Him

by Dave Miller

Light Is Like Him: The Power of the Logos

When I was younger, I learned to think of truth primarily as something propositional. In school and in the culture around me, truth was treated as knowledge that could be discovered, understood, and applied. You gathered facts, learned principles, and then used those truths to interpret the world. Truth helped explain how things worked. If you knew the right information, you could recognize patterns, make predictions, and understand the order of things.

That way of thinking made sense in a Western, science-shaped culture. Truth was something external that could be examined and described. It was largely informational. Once you discovered it, the work was done. You knew it, and now you could use it.

But over time, through years of reading the Scriptures, walking with Jesus, and learning from thoughtful teachers like Dallas Willard, I began to see that the biblical idea of truth is much deeper than that. Truth in Scripture is not merely information. It is active. It is powerful. It does something.

This realization began to grow in me as I spent more time in the Gospel of John.

John opens his Gospel with a profound statement: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). The word John uses for “Word” is Logos. In Greek thought, Logos carried the idea of the underlying order and wisdom that gives structure to reality. John takes that concept and applies it directly to Jesus.

Jesus is the Logos. He is not merely someone who speaks truth. He is the living wisdom through whom the world itself was created.

John continues, “Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:3–5).

That statement changes everything. The Logos is not simply communicating truth to the world. The Logos is the one through whom the world exists at all.

In a previous reflection I explored this idea using the example of water. Jesus does not say that He is like water. Instead, the pattern in creation is that water is like Him. Water satisfies thirst, but only temporarily. That recurring cycle of thirst and satisfaction teaches us something deeper about our souls and prepares us to understand the promise of the Living Water.

Creation is structured in such a way that it points us back to the Logos.

The same insight begins to appear when we think about light.

When I first encountered Jesus’ statement in John 8:12—“I am the light of the world. Anyone who follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life”—I understood it mostly as a metaphor for knowledge. Light exposes what is hidden. It reveals what is true and drives away darkness.

That interpretation is partly correct, but it is incomplete.

In our modern understanding, truth is often treated as something static. Truth describes reality, but it does not necessarily change it. You discover a fact, store it in your mind, and move on. Truth becomes informational rather than transformational.

But the biblical picture is different.

In Scripture, truth is alive because it is rooted in the Logos. Truth is not just something we know; it is something that carries the power of God.

The opening chapter of Genesis begins with a command: “God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light” (Genesis 1:3).

That moment is not merely the beginning of visibility in the universe. It is the beginning of energy, motion, and life. Light is the first expression of ordered creation. From that moment forward, the entire system of life on earth depends upon it.

Every form of biological life ultimately depends on light. Plants convert light into energy through photosynthesis. Animals depend on plants or on creatures that depend on plants. Even the energy stored in fossil fuels is ancient sunlight captured and preserved over time.

In our world, light is the fundamental source of energy and life.

When John describes Jesus as the Light of the world, he is not merely offering a poetic metaphor. He is pointing to a reality embedded within creation itself.

Light illustrates the dynamic power of the Logos.

This is where the perspective offered by Dallas Willard becomes particularly helpful. In The Divine Conspiracy, Willard explains that the Kingdom of God is not a distant place waiting for the end of history. The Kingdom is the present range of God’s effective will. It is the realm in which God’s action is actually occurring.

Jesus did not come merely to give us correct information about God. He came to invite us into the living reality of God’s Kingdom.

Truth in the Kingdom is not merely propositional. It is participatory. It carries the power of God’s presence.

This is why Jesus could say something as radical as, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). Truth is not simply a statement about reality. Truth is a person. Truth is the living Logos through whom the world was made and through whom the Kingdom of God is advancing.

The New Testament reinforces this idea when it speaks about Christ’s sustaining power. Colossians 1:16–17 declares, “For everything was created by him, in heaven and on earth… All things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and by him all things hold together.”

Think about what that means.

The world does not simply run on its own once it has been created. The Logos is actively sustaining it. The order, stability, and continued existence of the universe are held together by the word of His power.

Even the crucifixion reveals this reality in a startling way.

The soldiers who nailed Jesus to the cross were themselves being sustained by the very Logos they were rejecting. The One they were crucifying was the One holding their bodies together, sustaining their breath, and allowing their hearts to beat.

The power of the Logos was literally holding the crucifiers together while they crucified Him.

That reality reveals something profound about the character of God. The power that holds the world together is not merely mechanical or impersonal. Scripture tells us plainly that “God is love” (1 John 4:8).

The sustaining power of the Logos is driven by love.

God’s power does not operate like domination or control. Instead, it expresses itself through provision, protection, patience, and care. The same Logos who spoke light into existence is the Logos who willingly endured the cross for the sake of the world.

Light, then, becomes an illustration of this deeper truth.

Light reveals, but it also energizes. It illuminates, but it also sustains. It exposes what is real, but it also powers the entire system of life on earth.

Light is not merely like truth.

Light is like Him.

The Logos is the source of the power that light illustrates. Creation itself is designed to help us recognize the deeper reality behind it. Just as water teaches us about thirst, light teaches us about the living power of truth.

Truth is not merely something to be discovered and stored as knowledge.

Truth is the active presence of the Logos moving the world toward the purposes of God.

And when we begin to see it that way, the words of Jesus take on a much deeper meaning.

He is not simply offering us better information about reality.

He is inviting us to live within the Light that holds reality itself together.