Children of Light (1 of 2)

Chapter 16 described the cosmos. This chapter describes the disciples within it. The new heavens and new earth are not a stage on which generic souls drift. They are the dwelling of specific humans, each one resurrected in his own body, each one transformed by the participation Chapter 15 named. And the most striking thing the New Testament says about what these disciples look like in their final state is that they shine. The destiny of the human in Christ is luminosity.

The text comes from Matthew 13. Jesus has been telling the parable of the wheat and the tares. Verse 43 is the climax. Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Who hath ears to hear, let him hear. The sentence is short and easy to read past. Read closely, it makes one of the largest claims in the New Testament about what the redeemed will be.

The verb shine forth is one Greek word — eklampsousin, from eklampō, to shine out, to blaze forth, to radiate. The verb is active. The righteous are not being lit from outside. They are radiating from inside. Their own being has become luminous. They shine as the sun, not as the moon — not by reflecting borrowed light but by emitting their own. The image is precise and the claim is enormous.

Daniel had said the same thing six centuries earlier. Daniel 12:3 has the angel say that they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever. The image is the same. The wise shall shine. And the duration is named — for ever and ever. The luminosity is not a momentary flash at the resurrection. It is the permanent state of the redeemed.

The disciples were given a preview of this in their own lifetimes. Matthew 17 records the Transfiguration. Peter, James, and John went up the mountain with Jesus, and there, in a moment, the appearance of his face was altered, and his raiment was white and glistering. Matthew 17:2 names the verb in Greek as metemorphōthē — he was metamorphosed before them. The same root as the metamorphoumetha of 2 Corinthians 3:18 that Chapter 15 unpacked. And the image is the same as Matthew 13:43. His face did shine as the sun. The disciples saw, for one terrified hour on the mountain, what they themselves would one day be. Jesus showed them, in His own glorified body breaking through the veil of his humbled body, the body they were being prepared for. The Transfiguration is not a one-off curiosity. It is a preview.

And the light that broke out of Christ on the mountain is the same light that broke out of the tomb on the third day. The resurrection of Jesus was the establishment of the prototype Chapter 9 named. His glorified body was the first instance of what the four properties of the resurrection body look like in actuality. The claritas — radiant glory — that the Transfiguration showed in advance, the resurrection ratified. And in raising Jesus, the Father raised the prototype of what every disciple in Him will eventually be.

Chapter 3 named aevum as the mode of the angels — temporal existence without entropy, succession without decay. Chapter 9 extended aevum to the embodied resurrection body. Now Chapter 17 names aevum as the permanent mode of the redeemed humans in the new creation. The disciples in the Kingdom of their Father are in aevum — unending duration without running-down. The succession of their experience continues. The conversations they have with each other and with the Son continue. The growth and discovery and delight continue. What is absent is the entropy that has marked every temporal existence we know. The disciple in aevum does not age. The disciple in aevum does not weary. The disciple in aevum does not run down toward death.

And the luminosity is the visible mark of the participation. The whole movement of the volume has been a movement of light. Chapter 4 named light as the constant. Chapter 7 named the Word as the Light who came down — tabernacled among the humans he had made. Chapter 8 named the descent of the Light into death, the harrowing, the bursting of the gates. Chapter 9 named the Light coming back out in the resurrection body. Chapter 10 named the Spirit as the bridge that carries the Light into the disciple. Chapter 16 named the Lamb as the Lamp of the cosmos. This chapter names the final extension of the same Light. The disciples themselves now radiate. The Light that came down has come all the way down and now comes back up through the disciples, in their own bodies, in their own glory, by participation in the Lamb who is the Lamp.

And the same movement, read on the second Johannine anchor, has been a movement of love. Chapter 5 named love as what crosses the asymptote from the divine side. Chapter 7 named the descent of the Word as what love does when there is no other way for the gap to be crossed. Chapter 8 named the love that entered what it had permitted, all the way to the wood, the silence, the gates of death. Chapter 10 named the Spirit as the personal existence of the love between the Father and the Son, indwelling the disciple with the essence 1 John 4:8 names as what God is. Chapter 11 named the abiding as abiding in that love. Chapter 13 named poverty of spirit as the open-handed condition that gives indwelling love purchase in the human heart. Chapter 14 named the will being kept because coerced love is not love. Chapter 15 named the participation as communion in love-as-essence. And this chapter names the visible form of the same love. The disciples radiate not because they have been lit from outside but because the love that has been indwelling them has done its native work long enough that the beloved bears the essence visibly. Light and love are the same essence under two anchors. The destiny is luminous because the destiny is love-saturated, and the cosmos is both because light and love have always named the same essence from two angles.