Names of God: Phos

 

Last week we looked at the name, Xulon Zoe, in it we saw that Jesus is the Tree of Life and we saw this Tree of Life is the Cross of Christ.

Today we are looking at one of my very favorite names of Christ… and the more I study it… the deeper I dig into it… the more I expound upon it… the greater I come to love it and the One of whom it speaks of, my Jesus.

Today we will see that the Huios, that the Eschatos Adam, that the Xulon Zoe, is also the Phos.

 

In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men.

The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.
John 1:4-5

 

This is the message we have heard from Him

and announce to you,

that God is Light,

and in Him there is no darkness at all.

1 John 1:5

Phos is the Greek word for Light and it means light, anything emitting light, brightness. Metaphorically it is the extremely delicate, subtle, pure, brilliant quality of truth and its knowledge, together with the spiritual purity associated with it. It is that which is exposed to the view of all, openly, publicly. According to reason and the mind it the power of understanding especially moral and spiritual truth.

What we have learned about the light through science is that it travels in a straight line, dark rough surfaces absorb it, and bright smooth surfaces reflect it. What we have also learned is that the best reflector of light is a mirror…

As I thought of Jesus, our Phos, our Light… I thought of  how we can either absorb His light or we can reflect it. My mind then went to what I believe is an example of us absorbing His light… and remember that is dark and rough things that absorb light.

Beware that you do not forget the Lord your God by not keeping His commandments and His ordinances and His statutes which I am commanding you today; otherwise, when you have eaten and are satisfied, and have built good houses and lived in them, and when your herds and your flocks multiply, and your silver and gold multiply, and all that you have multiplies, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the Lord your God who brought you out from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery
Deuteronomy 8:11-14

Know therefore today that it is the Lord your God who is crossing over before you as a consuming fire. He will destroy them and He will subdue them before you, so that you may drive them out and destroy them quickly, just as the Lord has spoken to you.
“Do not say in your heart when the Lord your God has driven them out before you, ‘Because of my righteousness the Lord has brought me in to possess this land,’ but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is dispossessing them before you. It is not for your righteousness or for the uprightness of your heart that you are going to possess their land, but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord your God is driving them out before you, in order to confirm the oath which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
Deuteronomy 9:3-6

You see Jesus lets us know in Matthew 5: 45 that God causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. His light shines on all of us. And the more we know of His Light the more we are expected to reflect it…

God had given great Light to Israel. He had revealed much to them and He did so, that they might reflect Him to the other nations, to the world… but instead of reflecting Him, the nation absorbed Him, and then they began to actually think they didn’t need Him… and they did exactly what God warned them not to do in Deuteronomy. And the great city on the hill, the great light to the nations, became darker and darker and rougher and rougher.

When the Light, Jesus, stood before the nation of Israel in the flesh He said to them in Matthew 5:14-16You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden; nor does anyone light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.

They were supposed to be shining their light, reflecting the light of God to the world, so that God would be glorified by all. When we choose to take the Light that we have had clearly revealed to us and absorb it and cover it we ourselves become dark and darker and so does the world around us.

Darkness absorbs light, but bright smooth surfaces reflect it.

The way of the righteous is smooth;

O Upright One, make the path of the righteous level.

Isaiah 26:7

 

A voice is calling, “ Clear the way for the LORD in the wilderness;

 Make smooth in the desert a highway for our God.

Isaiah 40:3

 

A mirror is the absolute best reflector of light… a mirror displays the image that it is reflecting… now think a moment… how did God create us?

God created man in His own image,

in the image of God He created him;

male and female He created them.

Genesis 1:27

God created this huge universe in all its splendor yet when He wanted something, that would best reflect Him… He created us.

Crazy! Right?

He created us that we might reflect His image to all creation… but man fell, sin came, and the image was distorted… the mirror was smeared and broken. There would never be another son of Adam who could rightly reflect the image of God, not another child of Adam on the earth that could light the way out of the darkness of sin…

Not until God would send Huios, the Eschatos Adam, our Xulon Zoe.

And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us,

and we saw His glory,

glory as of the only begotten from the Father,

full of grace and truth.

John 1:14

God sent the Phos into the world and this Phos was the life for us all… Jesus walked this earth as the example of the mirror image that you and I were created to display. He came as the exact representation of the very nature of God the very radiance of the glory of God (Hebrews 1:3).

And every one who see His Light and comes to His Light the veil of darkness is removed… when we look at ourselves in the mirror of the Word, in the very face of Christ, in the Light of the glory of God and we see how very marred we are and we cry out for more Light and we are received by the Light and this life enters us and that marred image… the Light begins to burn away and He begins to transform us into the image of the One we behold… Jesus.

But to this day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their heart; but whenever a person turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.
2 Corinthians 3:15-18

And as we take this revealed Light and choose not to absorb it, but reflect it… we bring glory not to ourselves but to our God, our Creator, the One whose image we were created to reflect. And we preach not ourselves as the answer but as we are being transformed into the image of Christ, from glory to glory, then when others see our face and the works of our hands, it will not be us that they see but it will be the Light of the glory of God in the face of Christ.

For we do not preach ourselves but Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as your bond-servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, “Light shall shine out of darkness,” is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.
2 Corinthians 4:5-6

Here’s another thing about light… it doesn’t matter how bright the light… light breaks the darkness.

I shared this over a year ago in this post: The Light.

Here’s the bottom line… it doesn’t matter how dark your darkness… the very moment you turn to the Light you can see… the question is not whether or not you can find the Light… but will you indeed come to the Light.

This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God. 

John 3:19-21

Here’s a video from NASA about the speed of light… watch the first 3 minutes.

 

 

Light is the fastest thing in the universe… It reaches us across vast distances. It reveals the history of the cosmos. Nothing can go faster than the speed of light.

Light speed is the fundamental linchpin of the universe, the very cornerstone on which the universe is built, it is king in the cosmos. It is instantaneous to us. It is infinite to us.

So let’s look at this in light of the Phos…

Jesus is the fastest thing in the universe. He reaches us across vast distances. He reveals to us the history of the cosmos. Nothing is faster than Him, He speaks and it happens, He wills and it is.

Jesus is the fundamental linchpin of the universe. He is in fact the very cornerstone on which it was built, for from Him and through Him, and to Him are all things. He is the King in the cosmos, for He is the Kings of all kings. He is instantaneous to us, the moment we call, the moment we turn, He is there. Jesus is infinite to us. We can study Him for all eternity and still never grasp all of who He is…

Wow…

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