Recently I have been going through Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament; Mr. Vincent (U.S., 1834-1922), a longtime professor at Union Theological Seminar in New York City, was a highly regarded scholar of New Testament Greek.

I very much appreciated his comment on the verse above:

The Light of the World: Not a lamp, as John the Baptist (John 5:35). Light is another of John’s characteristic terms and ideas, playing a most important part in his writings, as related to the manifestation of Jesus and His work upon men.

What a healthy reminder this is to us regarding the nature of the Lord’s work, and of how the Lord desires, through His work, to bring us into His light! Then, as the apostle Paul tells us, we will “shine as luminaries in the world” (Phil. 2:15).

Mr. Vincent goes on to cite examples of how John in his writings stresses this matter of Christ being light to the world, to make us “sons of light”:

He comes from God, who is light (1 John 1:5). “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men” (John 1:4)….The object of Christ’s work is to make men sons of light (John 12:36,46), and to endow them with the light of life (John 8:12).

The verse Mr. Vincent cites regarding us being “sons of light” says,

While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of light.
— John 12:36

Today there is so much darkness in the world! All around us, it seems, the corruption is only increasing, to an extent we would hardly have believed possible even just a few years ago. How it needs the shining of this light!

The only hope is for us, as those who have indeed “believed in the light,” to give the Lord the ground to work Himself, the True Light, more and more into our being, and to take our stand as “sons of light,” who allow His light to shine through us in this dark age. In this way we will bring His light to this “crooked and perverted generation” (Phil. 2:15), that so many more may become “sons of light” as well.

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— 8 July 2026 —