God has come to earth looking for you. That may or may not be good news to you. You may think of yourself as an outlaw on the run out in the desert with God in hot pursuit. Or you may think of yourself as a lost sheep with your Shepherd unwilling to abandon you to the wilderness. 

When Adam and Eve had sinned against God and hidden themselves from Him, God noticed. He called out, “Where are you?” (Genesis 3:9) God knows they’re hiding, because He knows everything. But He also knows they’re hiding, because they’re not “in the light,” out in the open. Their relationship with God, like ours, is meant to be face-to-face. 

“Where are you?” God is looking for you, too. God is not looking for you, though, because of what you’ve done. He’s looking for you, because He loves you. In fact, He has taken the first step towards you. We who are in hiding from God would never take that first step. So He calls us. He invites us. He welcomes us into the light. 

We love God because He first loved us (1 John 4:19). Even in our hiding. Even as His enemies.  

How you imagine you look in the dark is not how you actually look in the light. Get dressed in the dark, put your hand through your hair, and you imagine yourself looking sharp and ready for the day. Step into the bathroom light and you realize you’re not really ready at all. 

The light of God is an unforgiving light. It will uncover and show every blemish you have. Nothing is left hidden, unexposed. And the closer you get to the light, the more you see of yourself that you didn’t want to and that you didn’t know was even there. In that sense, God’s light is unforgiving. 

And, yet, there is good news. Perfect love casts out all fear of condemnation (1 John 4:18). Condemnation before God is the just sentence and execution of that sentence over our sin. But John says that in the light of God there is one reason to not fear. “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” (1 John 4:10) 

Jesus has come into the world as our sentence- and execution-absorbing sacrifice. As Paul exults, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 8:1)

Jesus is the light of the world. He is the unforgiving and forgiving light of God. Where He comes, He comes like a sword, revealing the thoughts of our hearts (Luke 2:33-35). He is unforgiving in what He shows us about ourselves. But at the same time, He was pierced for our transgressions and sin. He took the sword of our death, so that we could be forgiven our just sentence and execution. He is our forgiving light. In Him there is forgiveness for all our sins.

So come out of the dark into His marvelous light. Jesus, our Light, has come looking for you. In Him, the truth and the light of God’s goodness shines bright in the world. In Him, there is waiting for you everlasting freedom and abundant life. You can come out of hiding.