God’s Word for You

Genesis 1:3 Let there be light

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Saturday, July 25, 2026

3 God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.

Now, before God began to shape and fill the world, preparing it for man and the lesser creatures, he commanded that there he light. There are two usual words in Hebrew for the act of speaking, and this is common in many languages. Even in English, we interchange “say” and “speak.” In Hebrew, these are the words amar and dabar. Now, dabar can also stand for a “thing” (such as in Exodus 22:9). But amar always only stands for the spoken word. So when Moses tells us that God “said,” using amar, he means that God used no other thing than the power of his own divinely spoken word. He said this, and the mere saying caused the meaning of the words to become, to appear, to exist.

Here it would be wise to compare Moses’ words with the beginning of John’s Gospel, “In the beginning was the Word” (John 1:1). John’s statement tells us that before the creation when there was not one single created thing, God nevertheless had the Word. The Word of God, the Second Person of the holy Trinity, is not a created thing, but God even as the Father is God and as the Holy Spirit is God. “Therefore,” Luther teaches, “in the beginning and before every creature there is the Word, and it is such a powerful Word that it makes all things out of nothing… This Word is God and yet is a person distinct from God the Father, just as a word and he who utters a word are separate entities.”

Light was made, then, with the power of God’s word. It was not formed from what was already made. What that was in terms of luminescence, that is, what had already been made, was only darkness. Light cannot be made out of darkness any more than life can be made from death—except when God’s divine power speaks. Neither is light a product of water, nor of mist, or mud, or fog. Such things catch or reflect light, but they do not produce it. Light did not evolve from anything; it was brought into being by God.

Since there were no objects to make light as yet, since neither the sun nor the stars nor their light was yet made, what was the nature of this light? Some think that this might be evidence of the creation of the angels. But why not say this more clearly? Indeed, regarding the making of the angels, there is nothing in this chapter to help us, and the Lord is silent about the precise moment when he brought forth the angels, although they do already appear in the account of the fall (in the first and last verses of chapter 3). We will take up the matter of the creation of angels when we consider Genesis 1:9 or 1:10.

If this light did not necessarily come from the luminescent angels, where did it come from? Some of our theologians, including Luther and Gerhard, are of the opinion that it was a true light coming from some source which, like the sun, which from our point of view moves in a circle around the earth, gives us day and night. Of course, we would adjust this language about the sun, knowing that while the sun does indeed move through space, it is our world’s rotation that creates the illusion (if I may call it that) of the sun moving in a circle.

But in heaven, we will have light, and indeed “there will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light” (Revelation 22:5). And earlier, John says, “the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp” (Revelation 21:23). So this light, the light of the first, second, and third days of creation, is perhaps a foreshadowing of the kind of light we will enjoy forever in heaven. For even suns and stars have a lifetime with limits, and they die, although it takes what seems now like a very long time. But in eternity, what is the lifetime of a star? It is the batting of an eyelash, the flitting of a swallow, the soft snore of a cat on the couch. It is here, and then it is not. So light in heaven will come from another source, from Christ himself, our Lamp. And therefore it should at least not surprise us that before the sun was made, or the stars, that light of some kind was brought forth. Was it bright or dim? Was it constant, or being light for a watery mass, did it waver and dance like light seen underwater? We cannot say. This is enough for us to ponder here.

God made light by the power of his word, according to his will. This is because his power is infinite. It pleased him in his wisdom to do this, and to bring about light in this way, along with the rest of his creation. He says, “I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say: My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please” (Isaiah 46:10). Whatever he wills, whatever he desires to bring about, will be.

After all, what is missing in me? Righteousness, holiness, perfection, sinlessness. I’m not without sin, and I can’t live in a way that sin will be purged from me by my own doing, either in this lifetime or after. Sin is only removed from me by the blood of the Son of God, given willingly and innocently on the altar of the cross.

So just as I can stand before God’s eyes righteous and guiltless without any of that coming from anyone other than the Son of God, so also such a lesser thing as light can exist without coming from anything other than the Son of God. As there was light on the first day, the second day, and the day after, so also we who believe in Jesus shall live forever sinless and righteous in heaven, every day there, where there is no time, only now, and a string of yesterdays, and an eternal calendar of tomorrows after tomorrow. This righteousness will be unstainable, unassailable, and eternal, a changeless light where there will be no night (Revelation 21:25). “Let the light of your face shine upon us, O Lord” (Psalm 4:6).

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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