This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.
As I read this verse I am thinking, "if you have been with the Son of God, the eternal one, you have been witnesses to Him, heard him, touched him, and you have something to say from Him, then I want to hear what that is!"
In Him is no darkness at all. This is what strikes me from this verse. No darkness whatsoever is in Him.
Summary from Barnes' Notes of the New Testament:
This then is the message which we have heard of him. This is the substance of the announcement (\~epaggelia\~) which we have received of him, or which he made to us. The message here refers to what he communicated as the sum of the revelation which he made to man. The phrase "of him" (\~ap autou\~) does not mean respecting him, or about him, but from him; that is, this is what we received from his preaching; from all that he said. The peculiarity, the substance of all that he said, may be summed up in the declaration that God is light, and in the consequences which follow from this doctrine.
That God is light. Light, in the Scriptures, is the emblem of purity, truth, knowledge, prosperity, and happiness--as darkness is of the opposite. John here says that "God is light"-- \~fwv\~--not the light, or a light, but light itself; that is, he is himself all light.
This language is much in the manner of John, not only affirming that a thing is so, but guarding it so that no mistake could possibly be made as to what he meant. Comp. John 1:1-3. The expression here is designed to affirm that God is absolutely perfect; that there is nothing in him which is in any way imperfect, or which would dim or mar the pure splendour of his character, not even as much as the smallest spot would on the sun. The language is probably designed to guard the mind from an error to which it is prone, that of charging God with being the Author of the sin and misery which exist on the earth; and the apostle seems to design to teach that whatever was the source of sin and misery, it was not in any sense to be charged on God. This doctrine that God is a pure light, John lays down as the substance of all that he had to teach; of all that he had learned from him who was made flesh. It is, in fact, the fountain of all just views of truth on the subject of religion, and all proper views of religion take their origin from this.
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