In part one, we saw that John 1:5 harkens back to the Light’s penetration into the darkness on creation’s first day. In this verse, John succinctly condenses and anticipates a dominating theme in the Gospel’s plotline. Light versus darkness (e.g., John 8:12; 11:10; 12:34, 46) invokes a cluster of imageries: day–night (e.g., John 9:4) and sight–blindness (9:1–40), all present in Isaiah’s prophecies to which John’s prologue alludes (Isa. 9:2; 42;6–7; and 60:1–3). The Evangelist masterfully compresses profound theological claims concerning the commanded Light on the first day of creation. He foreshadows the arrival of the True Light—the Messiah—in the Last Days, the Light that shines and cannot be extinguished. Consider, then, how this one verse in the prologue condenses the storyline of John’s Gospel even more densely than 1:9–11.[1]
1. “The True Light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He was 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” (John 1:9–11).
With luminary imagery harking back to Genesis 1:3, the Evangelist subtly but unmistakably speaks of the Word’s advent (John 1:5). He shrewdly prepares attentive hearers and readers for the much more explicit announcement of the Word’s incarnation in John 1:14, “The Word became flesh and tabernacled among us.”
Modern English Bibles translate 1:5, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome [katalambanō] it” (emphasis mine). As one reads and studies the Greek text of John’s Gospel, one sees that on occasions, John uses words with two meanings, intending both. The KJV’s “comprehended it not” hints at this, but the ASV’s “apprehended it not” effectively captures John’s intended dual sense of katalambanō. The darkness neither understood the light nor overpowered the light.[2] Thus, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not apprehend it.” A minor expansion on this assists in showing how the plotline of John’s Gospel is compressed in 1:5—“As day emerged from night when the Word spoke Light into darkness in the beginning, so the darkness did not apprehend the True Light, the Word incarnate.”
2. Katalambanō bears these senses: (1) “to grasp with the hand to make something one’s own” (e.g., 1 Cor. 9:24; Phil. 3:12); (2) “to grasp with the hand to gain control of someone in pursuit” (e.g., Mark 9:18; John 12:35; 1 Thess. 5:4); and (3) “to grasp with the mind, to comprehend” (e.g., Acts 25:25; Eph. 3:18).
Twice, Jesus explicitly presents himself as “the Light of the world”: once publicly at the Festival of Tabernacles (John 8:12), and again privately to his disciples while still in Jerusalem following the festival (just before he gave light to the blind man when he gave him sight in John 9:5). During Israel’s festival commemorating the Lord’s covenant mercies in the wilderness with water from the rock and the protecting pillar of fire at night, Jesus presents himself as greater than the rock, the one who quenches true thirst and banishes darkness (John 7:37–38; 8:12; cf. 1 Cor. 10:4). Similarly, with the lighting ceremony, Jesus boldly announces that he displaces the ball of fire in the sky, “I am the Light of the world. The one who follows me will not walk in the darkness but will have the light of life” (John 8:12). Belief acknowledges that Jesus is the one who gushed water and provided protection day and night. Later, Jesus privately repeats this bold claim while still in Jerusalem, when he and his disciples come upon a man living in darkness from birth, for he was born blind. About to perform an uncommon miracle, Jesus prepared the Twelve by announcing, “We must accomplish the works of him who sent me while it is day. Night is coming when no one can work. When I am in the world, I am the light of the world” (John 9:4–5). Yes, the sun that lights the world is but a created imitation of the original— the True Light shining in darkness.
Clustered imagery in two prominent passages develops John’s light-darkness motif, echoing John 1:9, “the True Light was coming into the world,” and John 1:5, “the darkness did not apprehend it.” In both, Jesus ascribes to Light a titular function as in the Gospel’s prologue; Jesus is the Light. The initial passage, John 3:19–21, echoes the phrasing of John 1:9 as it announces,
Now, this is the judgment: the Light has come into the world, and humans loved the darkness instead of the light because their deeds were evil. For everyone who practices evil hates the Light and does not come to the Light, lest his deeds be exposed. But the one who does what is true comes to the light that it may be obvious that his deeds have been brought about by God. (emphasis added)
Jesus, “the Light of the world,” divides, prompting evildoers to retreat into darkness and doers of good to embrace him, the Light, testifying that what they do “has been done through God” (John 3:19–21).
In chapter 12, the culmination of the light-darkness theme (John 12:35–36, 46) coincides with the climaxing of three other core themes with their own supporting images:
- “glory”–“glorified” (John 1:14; 2:11; 5:44; 7:18; 8:50, 54; 9:24; 11:40; 12:41, 43),
- “my hour” (John 2:4; 4:21, 23; 5:25, 28; 7:30; 8:20; 12:23, 27), and
- “lifted up” (John 3:14; 8:24; 12:32, 34).[3]
3. From this point in John’s narrative, two themes continue: (1) the “glory” theme ends with Jesus’s “High Priestly Prayer” (John 17:5, 21, 24), and (2) the “my hour” theme continues at the opening of Jesus’s “Farewell Discourse” and ends with his “High Priestly Prayer” (John 13:1, 16:2, 4, 21, 25, 32; 17:1).
Chapter 12 is the structural and theological hinge on which the entire Fourth Gospel turns. Here, John reflectively summarizes the escalating conflict between Jesus and his religious opponents in Jerusalem, the zealous guardians of Israel’s traditions and Temple, throughout chapters 2–11, the “Book of Signs.” This conflict intensifies when Jesus’s giving sight to a blind man on a Sabbath day blinds those who claim to see.[4] The blind rulers threaten to banish all who believe in Jesus from the synagogue (John 9:22). Jesus, after he raised Lazarus from the dead, returns to Bethany, where he is anointed for his own burial (John 12:1–8). Drawing a large crowd, the tension intensifies such that the chief priests conspire to put Lazarus to death in addition to Jesus (John 12:10). With hostilities peaking against him, Jesus carries out his final public prophetic act, fulfilling Zechariah’s prophecy by riding into Jerusalem on a donkey, an act even his disciples did not comprehend (John 12:12–19) but which increases the Pharisees’ ire and jealousy over his popularity (John 12:19).
4. “For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind” (John 9:39).
Likewise, in chapter 12, John’s account anticipates and foreshadows chapters 13–20. When Philip and Andrew tell their teacher about Greeks who want to see Jesus, he explicitly announces, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified” (John 12:23). Following this utterance to his disciples, Jesus announces the same to the crowd, “Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say, ‘Father, save me from this hour?’ But for this purpose, I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name” (John 8:27–28). The hearing and sight-impaired crowd interpret the Father’s audible approval as thunder (John 8:28–29). Jesus explains the voice is one of “judgment of this world” and the defeat of “the ruler of this world” (John 12:31), effects to be accomplished by his being “lifted up from the earth” (John 12:32). This announcement of being “lifted up,” which the unbelieving Jews understand to mean “crucified,” does not deter the crowd. Instead, presuming to pass judgment on Jesus, they add this to their interrogation repertoire, “We have heard from the Law that the Christ remains forever. How can you say that the Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man?” (John 8:34). They sustain their prosecutorial dispute over Jesus’s identity (e.g., John 6:14, 42, 60; 7:15; 8:48, 52–53; 9:29; 10:19; 11:37), even to the cross. They misjudge the crucifixion as vindicating them, but truthfully it indicts them.
The strongest light-darkness echo in the climactic passage is from John 1:5, using the same verb apprehend (katalambanō, John 12:35). The prologue assures readers that darkness did not apprehend the Light, Jesus Christ. But here, Jesus warns all who hear him, “lest darkness apprehends you.” Darkness does not extinguish the True Light, Jesus, but threatens to apprehend Jesus’s opponents who fail to apprehend the Light.
Therefore, Jesus said to them, “The Light is among you for a short time. Walk while you have the Light, lest darkness apprehends you. And the one who walks in the darkness does not know where he is going. While you have the Light, believe in the Light, that you may become sons of the Light.” After Jesus said these things, he hid himself from them (12:35–36; my translation).
This is not the first time Jesus hid himself from those who were seeking to apprehend and kill him (John 7:32, 45-52; 8:49–59). Once before, “because his hour had not yet come,” when Jews, provoked by his teaching, picked up stones to hurl at Jesus, he hid from them and left the Temple (John 8:59). Both actions are parabolic, signifying a divine warning of rejection.
Now, when Jesus hides, he conceals the Light from the Jews. Judgment has fallen on them. They neither laid hold of him as their Messiah nor, on their own terms, arrested him. By hiding, Jesus brings about his prophetic announcement, “I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord” (John 10:17-18).
By hiding, Jesus, who is the Light, publicly dramatizes the truths John succinctly captures in the prologue: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not apprehend it” and “He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him” (John 1:5, 11). Herein is his prophetic pronouncement of impending judgment. John seizes the occasion to present a narrator’s soliloquy to explain Jesus’s symbolic hiding as the appropriate climax to his public signs and teaching that have provoked such widespread unbelief among his own people. Indeed, Jesus performed his many signs in plain sight of his fellow Jews. John explains that they saw his signs, yet they did not believe, as Isaiah prophesied,
Jesus could not fulfill his messianic mission apart from being rejected and subjected to death by the religious authorities, who threatened to expel everyone who believed in him from the synagogue. Following his recitation of Isaiah, John recites a summation of Jesus’s message that features him as the inextinguishable Light of the world: “I, Light, have come into the world, that everyone who believes in me may not remain in the darkness” (John 12:46; my translation).
John’s masterful writing draws his readers into the plotline’s progression. He attentively confines all twenty-three uses of “light” (phōs) within the “Book of Signs” (John 1:19 –12:50), which narrates Jesus’s public self-disclosure to his own people as the Light of the world by performing signs revealing his identity.[5] Similarly, to replicate for readers the Messiah’s sorrowful suffering, John mindfully restricts his use of “night” to three times in the “Book of Glory” (John 13–21), once with extraordinary significance, bringing his light-darkness motif to its lowest point (13:30).[6] So, John compels readers to sense the plotline’s dramatic turn in chapter 12, when the Light conceals himself and night’s judgment falls on Jerusalem’s Passover pilgrims. The light is departing.
5. Of the twenty-three uses of “light” (phōs) in the Fourth Gospel, only two are not used figuratively, though Jesus uses them proverbially (John 11:9–10).
6. The other two occurrences are (1) as an identifier of Nicodemus, “who came to Jesus by night” (19:39), and (2) as a time indicator, “that night they caught nothing” (21:3).
So, John prepares readers for the moment Jesus gives the designated morsel of bread to Judas, signaling that he is the betrayer, and says, “What you are going to do, do quickly” (John 13:27). The indicated traitor promptly departs. “And it was night” (John 13:30). What ominous words! “And it was curtains” is a near equivalent English idiom. The night that fell on Judas was the divine judgment of “outer darkness” (Matt. 8:12; 22:13; 25:30). Judas, consumed with darkness, proceeded to lead a cohort of soldiers and officers from the chief priests and Pharisees, needing the light of lanterns and torches despite the Passover’s full moon, with weapons in hand to apprehend and bind Jesus (John 18:12).[7]
7. Observe that the words translated “apprehended and bound” are synelabon kai edēsan, the first of the same basic root, lambanō, but with a different prefix, syn, instead of kata.
At the same time, “And it was night” signals the looming “hour when darkness reigns” for Jesus also (cf. Luke 22:53).[8] Observe a difference between the Synoptic Gospels and John’s. They all report that on the day of crucifixion, at the sixth hour, the highpoint of daylight, the sun’s light vanished, immersing the whole land in darkness until the ninth hour, when Jesus bowed his head and gave up his spirit (Matt. 27:45; Mark 15:33; Luke 22:44). John does not report this. Why?
8. Cf. D. A. Carson, The Gospel According to John (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), 476.
Consider how John’s storyline unfolds. At the climax of Jesus’s ministry, after performing “so many signs before” the Jews, but “they still did not believe in him” (John 12:38), he hid from them. It is at this juncture that John steps forward as the narrator to account for the widespread tragic unbelief among the Messiah’s own people (recall John 1:11). The Evangelist declares this extensive unbelief fulfilled God’s prophecy uttered by Isaiah: “Lord, who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” (12:38, NIV). Then, John explains, “For this reason they could not believe, because, as Isaiah says elsewhere:[9]
By citing Isaiah 6:10, John indicates that God judicially hardened the Jews so they would not believe. This differs from D. A. Carson, who surprisingly claims, “This passage from Isaiah 6 is not said to be fulfilled in Jesus’ ministry. It may simply be listed as supporting evidence of the kind of judicial hardening that makes the prophecy of Isaish 53:1 . . . understandable” (The Gospel According to John, 449). The allusion to Isaiah 52:13 (“lifted up”) and the citations of Isaiah 53:1 and 6:10 together, suggest Jesus fulfills all three passages.
John’s citation of Isaiah 6:10 occurs at a noticeably different time within Jesus’s ministry from where it occurs in the Synoptic Gospels. They all report that relatively early in his ministry, while teaching the crowds with parables, Jesus quotes Isaiah 6:10 to explain the purpose of his teaching the crowds with parables. It is to fulfill the prophet by preaching ears deaf, hearts hard, and eyes blind by way of his parabolic teaching (Matt. 13:10–15; Mark 4:10–13; Luke 8:9–10).
So, distinct from the Synoptic Gospels, it is plausible that John does not mention the three hours of darkness during the crucifixion because he wants readers to recognize that Jesus’s being “lifted up” on the cross is his exaltation by way of a strong allusion to Isaiah 52:13.
Conclusion
John’s compact statement, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not apprehend it” (John 1:5), does more than begin the light-darkness theme in the Fourth Gospel. It anchors the theme “in the beginning,” when, on the first day of creation, “the Light of the world” penetrated the darkness (Gen. 1:3). Thus, John 1:5 launches the significant core theme of Christ Jesus as the Light opposed to darkness with associated images of day-night and sight-blindness. The theme of Jesus as “the Light of the world” climaxes in chapter 12, where three other themes concerning the Messiah converge—(1) “my hour,” (2) “glory,” and (3) “lifted up.” Thus, John’s Gospel tells us that God’s redemptive purpose in his Son was assured even before he fully entered his passion. This constrains us to bow in humble worship before Messiah Jesus, who is high and lifted up, who entered into the darkest night bearing our sins to the tree of crucifixion that he might banish sin’s night, darkness, and blindness for us, and lead us into the daylight of God’s favor. Receive the comfort of these words Jesus utters to his chosen disciples on the night of his betrayal: “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world, you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world” (16:33).
