“This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn’t go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again. Anyone who trusts in him is acquitted; anyone who refuses to trust him has long since been under the death sentence without knowing it. And why? Because of that person’s failure to believe in the one-of-a-kind Son of God when introduced to him.

19-21 “This is the crisis we’re in: God-light streamed into the world, but men and women everywhere ran for the darkness. They went for the darkness because they were not really interested in pleasing God. Everyone who makes a practice of doing evil, addicted to denial and illusion, hates God-light and won’t come near it, fearing a painful exposure. But anyone working and living in truth and reality welcomes God-light so the work can be seen for the God-work it is.” (The Message)

It is generally thought that the words of Jesus in this third chapter conclude at verse 15, and that the two paragraphs under consideration today are the comments of John the evangelist, the author of this fourth gospel.

Wouldn’t you like to hear a political leader define our real crisis? That would indeed be ‘radical’ politics – getting ‘to the root’ of our problems:

 “This is the crisis we’re in: God-light streamed into the world, but men and women everywhere ran for the darkness.

Here is one of the great realities we have to reckon with, and we see it everywhere: people prefer their sin to Jesus. It suits them to live in unrepentance and to go there own way. They are ”addicted to denial and illusion”. When it comes down to it, it is not about how credible the claims of Christ are, but that people do not want this Man to reign over them.

”In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (1:4,5)

While this is gloriously true, it is also the case that ”the darkness” hates it. There are only two types of people in this world: those who love ”the light” and want to walk in it; and those who ‘hate’ it