This is the first Sunday after Epiphany, when we commemorate the appearance of God in His Son. It is a strange appearance. The Son appears in the flesh, lives, dies, rises, and then quickly disappears. Light flickers in darkness, but then the light goes out, goes elsewhere, and when then? Does darkness descend?
Last week, Pastor Sumpter preached from 1 John, where John makes this astounding claim: “as He is, so also are we in this world” (4:17). That is the key to understanding epiphany. Jesus came and left, yet He did not leave. He sent His Spirit, and His Spirit is with us. By filling us with the oil of the Spirit, He lit us as lights in the world, lamps on a lampstand. We are the continuing epiphany of God.
But we are the epiphany of God in human flesh only as we do good works before men (Matthew 5), only as we walk in all humility and gentleness, with patience, forbearing with one another in love, only as we each do our part in building the body in love, only as we grow up together into the head, who is Christ.
If, on the other hand, we do not walk in love, striving toward maturity, then we and the world remain in darkness. “The one who says he is in Light and yet hates his brother is in darkness . . . and he does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes.”
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