The Lights and the Darks

Everyone has heard the age-old proverbial caution about washing clothes: don’t wash the lights with the darks. Don’t throw your black socks in the wash cycle with your white dress shirt. The purpose of keeping them separate is not to prevent the darker clothing items from being ruined by the lighter ones—just the opposite. Dye from the dark clothes will penetrate and stain the fabric fibers of your lighter-colored clothes.

Apparently, even God believes in separating the lights from the darks. One of the first things God did when creating the universe is separate the light from the dark:

“And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness” (Gen. 1:4).

God partitioned and divorced light from the dark because, as polar opposites, they did not belong together. He wanted no association to exist between light and dark, perhaps to reflect His own sanctified nature: “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5b).

God also wants His people, who are called “children of light” to remain separate from the dark—the darkness of sin (1 Thess. 5:5). If you have believed the gospel, then God has “called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9), and He wants you to be disconnected and disassociated from the blackness of sin in the world. Paul asked the obvious question, “What fellowship has light with darkness?” (2 Cor. 6:14b). There should be none—no fellowship, no mingling, and no mixing with the filthy and dark garments that are the ways of the world. When you get into the washing machine with the world, its darkness will not be stained by your light—the pitch-black dye of sin will stain you.

Unfortunately, because of the corruption of sin, we love the darkness instead of the light (John 3:19). We would rather remain in the black clothes pile of the world, the very “domain of darkness” (Col. 1:13). But for those who know Christ by repentance and faith, a great separation has taken place. The Lord God separated and removed you from this dark and grimy world and clothed you in pure and unstained vestments of white (Rev. 3:4-5; 7:9). He has separated the “lights” from the “darks.”

God delivered and disentangled you from the world’s dark clothes pile. You must resist the enticing appeal of the flesh to jump back in. As a follower of Christ, you cannot love or live in the darkness any longer. As Christ said, “I have come into the world as light, so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness” (John 12:46). And the same God who separated you will sustain you with the resisting power necessary to abstain from the darkness, so long as you continually submit to Him.

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Bible Gleanings is a widely-read weekend devotional column, written for the Murray Ledger & Times in Calloway County, Kentucky.