Richard Bauckham, in the opening line of his Oxford University Press book, “Jesus: A Very Short Introduction,” writes that Jesus “is the best known and most influential person in world history.”
But if you want to get to know Jesus rather than Bauckham’s good book, you should start with the Bible, particularly the Gospels. They are the primary source document for the person of Jesus. And 8 times in John’s gospel, Jesus refers to Himself with the same term God identified Himself with to Moses centuries before: I Am.
Each time Jesus uses that name for Himself, He declares His divinity, but He also attaches a metaphor to help us understand Him more personally and deeply. And so in this text, He declares to a people walking in darkness that He is the Light of the World.
The big idea is that we’re all forever in the dark apart from Jesus, but in Jesus we can have the light of life. So we answer the following three questions: What’s the problem with the darkness; How is Jesus the Light of the World; and How should we respond to Jesus?
Scripture: John 8:12-30; Isaiah 9:1-6, 5:20; Deuteronomy 13, 19; John 1:1-18, 3:18-19
