Sunday Devotional: Genesis 1:4

God saw the light that it was good, and God made a division between the light and the darkness.

On that first day of creation, when God called all matter into existence, He commanded light into being, and light broke forth. Where there had only been darkness over the face of the deep, there now shone light.

Notice that God makes no qualitative judgment about the darkness, though He must have formed that too. As John 1:3 and Colossians 1:16 remind us, speaking of Jesus (God the Son), all things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing exists. Indeed, Genesis 1:1 says that God made “the heavens and the earth,” that is, everything. So every molecule, every atom, and even the deep and the darkness were formed by God. But we are not told that God called these things “good.” As we will see, over the course of the following five days God will make things and call them “good.” So what does God mean by calling the light “good”? Are the darkness and the deep bad? Were they just okay, but God was more impressed with the light?

First, I think it’s important to note that we are not told the means by which God made anything prior to the light. We are simply told that God existed from the beginning, and it was God who created everything. However, from here on out, God speaks everything into existence. He said, “Let there be light” and light appeared. Everything that God creates by the word of His mouth is declared by Him to be “good.”

The Hebrew word tōv means “good” in just about every sense you can think of: pleasant or desirable, moral, useful, efficient, beautiful, excellent quality, and so on. In this context, speaking of things that God has just made, I don’t think He is referring to its moral nature. Rather, I think by “good” He means it is exactly as He intended, both in form and in function. The light appears exactly as God meant it to appear, and it functions exactly as God intended it to function. This use of “good” becomes more apparent the further we read the creation account.

However, we can’t ignore the fact that “light” and “darkness” come to have moral overtones in Scripture. In John’s Gospel and epistles, we see in particular the use of darkness and light as metaphors for spiritual blindness and spiritual enlightenment. Jesus is the “light that shines in the darkness” but “the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5). God is light, and there is no darkness in Him. If we say we have fellowship with God but walk in darkness, we are lying, but if we walk in the light we have fellowship with one another and Jesus’s blood cleanses us from all sin (1 John 1:5-8).

While the fact that God makes a division between the light and the darkness has a very practical meaning in the context of Genesis 1:4, it also points forward to a spiritual reality. I could have said “divided” instead of “made a division”–both are perfectly acceptable translations of the Hebrew. But I wanted to emphasize the fact that God makes a clear distinction between light and darkness. The two cannot co-exist in the same space. And until God calls light into being, there is only darkness. Again, not only is this the physical reality of what God did in creation, but it is analogous to what God has done in this dark and fallen world.

This fallen world is in a state of spiritual darkness, as are our fallen souls. We are wandering around blindly, groping for happiness, pleasure, and the things that delight our darkened nature. Then light came into the world, the true light which enlightens everyone: Jesus (John 1:9). He has overcome the darkness and now brings us into God’s glorious light. Jesus opens our eyes so we can see clearly the things that delight the Lord, and he enlightens our darkened natures so that we now desire those things.

May we rejoice that God has spoken into the darkness and called forth the Light of the World!