Genesis 1:4

And God saw that the light was good. And God sep­a­rated the light from the dark­ness. Gen­e­sis 1:4

And God saw that the light was good

God of course knew that the light would be good prior to the cre­ation of it, but He here beholds that light for the first time, and He sees that it is good — that it is ben­e­fi­cial to the cre­ation now and that it will be use­ful to cre­ation through­out time.

How des­o­late would the uni­verse be with­out light? There would be no heat, no elec­tric­ity. Sight would be mean­ing­less, even if it were pos­si­ble for life to sur­vive in such a universe.

Undoubt­edly, light is good — very good ((Eccle­si­astes 11:7 says that the light is “sweet” — and how sweet it is! I’ll be get­ting a nice dose of light next week when I’m in Florida!)) — and I’m thank­ful that the Lord made note for us that He deter­mined the light to be a good thing. After all, how often in mythol­ogy do we find the gods mess­ing up? How fal­li­ble are the idols of this world, yet how remark­ably per­fect is our God, the true God of which there is no other!

But Earth would not be fully cov­ered in light at all times; it was not God’s pur­pose to bake the plants which He would soon bring forth, but to sus­tain them, and in so doing He finds use­ful­ness even for the darkness.

And God sep­a­rated the light from the darkness.

Bear in mind that up until this point, there is still no sun nor moon nor stars of the heav­ens. The pre­cise mech­a­nism of this sep­a­ra­tion of light from dark­ness we may not be able to deter­mine, but we can rest assured know­ing that He who brings forth the light is capa­ble of restrain­ing where it shines. And here He thrusts the focal point of light around Earth to but one side of the still-swirling mass, leav­ing the other side in darkness.

I have heard it said on more than one occa­sion — though I regret for­get­ting the sources — that this was the one act of cre­ation which God did not behold and declare good, pre­sum­ably because He hates sep­a­ra­tion. How­ever, I could not dis­agree more with that inter­pre­ta­tion. On the one hand, we see that God even­tu­ally (in verse 31) declares “every­thing that he had made … very good” — “every­thing” would cer­tainly include day and night! On the other hand, to sup­pose that God here does some­thing which He does not find good would be a sup­po­si­tion that God could make a mis­take or act against His own will and deter­mi­na­tion. That sim­ply can­not be, for accord­ing to Jesus, some­thing which is divided against itself (whether that be a house, a king­dom, Satan, or any­thing else) can­not stand (Matthew 12:25–26). Believe it when I tell you that God knew exactly what He was doing and was happy with what He was doing when He sep­a­rated the light from the darkness.

And God has so sep­a­rated the light from the dark­ness that the two can no longer coex­ist; indeed, we can now define dark­ness as the absence of light, and we get only a vague sense of their mix­ture within the shad­ows which may be cast upon var­i­ous objects, yet as the light increases, the dark­ness is dimin­ished accordingly.

I won­der if this play of light with dark­ness may serve as a para­ble or illus­tra­tion of Jesus’ effect on sin­ners? He is “the true light, which enlight­ens every­one … He was made in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own peo­ple did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become chil­dren of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:9–13).

We must be born of God; we must receive the Light — Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

Thou­sands of years ago, Jesus Christ sep­a­rated the light from the dark­ness and it was good. Won’t you today believe in Him, that He was pierced for your sins and risen from the dead that you may live for­ever? Receive Him and be sep­a­rated from the dark­ness. Do not remain in the dark­ness. Do not allow this to be said of you, “And this is the judg­ment: the light has come into the world, and peo­ple loved the dark­ness rather than the light because their deeds were evil” (John 1:19).

“Who­ever believes in him is not con­demned, but who­ever does not believe is con­demned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God” (John 3:18).

Unless oth­er­wise noted, all Scrip­tures quoted within this post come from the Eng­lish Stan­dard Ver­sion of the Holy Bible.