GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
LUKE 2:32
32 a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.”
Jesus is light. The Holy Spirit expands on this truth throughout the New Testament. In heaven, John says, there will be no more night. “They will not need the light of a lamp nor the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light” (Revelation 22:5). Also, “God is light; in him there is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). God’s word is a light, “a lamp for my feet and a light for my path” (Psalm 119:105), “the word of the prophets made more certain, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts” (2 Peter 1:19). This is the light that illumines our lives, shows us the way God would have us take, and even displays the presence of God in our lives.
This light of God also recalls the Glory of the Lord, already seen by the shepherds in Bethlehem (2:9). As he describes God, Paul is rapt; thoroughly carried away by God’s ineffable nature, “who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see” (1 Timothy 6:16). The Glory of the Lord was not present here for Simeon to see; he didn’t need it, having had the promise delivered previously. He knew who Jesus was, and what his presence means for mankind.
This light of Christ, proclaimed to his own people and to the Gentiles (Acts 26:23) is presented in this verse in two ways. It is a light for revelation to the Gentiles. This revelation is an apocalypse (ἀποκάλυψις), something revealed or uncovered which was hidden until now, and which could not have been known if it had not been revealed by God. This revelation of Christ is for the benefit of the Gentiles—it is for their salvation.
It is also for glory to God’s people, Israel. This may confuse some Christians, but Simeon really does mean that Christ’s birth gives glory (praise) to Israel the nation. In what way? Because Israel was his cradle; his manger, in that he was born among them and grew up as one of them. He came from Israel, which was always God’s plan, and was prophesied dozens upon dozens of times over the course of the two thousand years that unfolded between Abraham and Jesus. Paul shouts out this glory of Israel: “Theirs is the adoption as sons; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. There are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of Christ” (Romans 9:4-5).
As we stand with Simeon adoring the Christ-child, something needs to be said about the restoration of Israel and the way this is misunderstood so completely by so many Christians today. The modern state of Israel (established in 1948) is not a fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies, although a number of Premillennialist preachers and Christians hold up Scriptures such as Deut. 30:1-6; Isaiah 11:11-12; Jer 23:3-8; Ezek 37:21-28; Amos 9:14-15; Zech 10:10 and other Scriptures like Romans 11:25-26 as proof of this. God brought a remnant of Jews back to Jerusalem in the centuries leading up to the birth of Christ in order that the promises about the Savior would be fulfilled. References to the restoration of Israel are about the spiritual people of Israel—the Holy Christian Church, the Communion of Saints. The confusion over this was begun in the late nineteen and early twentieth centuries by untrained theologians like Arthur Pink (1886-1952) whose high-handed personality made him unable to last long with any group of Calvinists, Methodists, Baptists or Congregationalists in England, the United States, or Australia. Professor Wilbert Gawrisch explained with his customary patience and insight: “The belief that the prophets are foretelling a literal return of the Jews to Palestine, a literal rebuilding of the waste cities of Judah and Israel, a literal harvesting of phenomenal crops, a literal restoration of the temple in Jerusalem with the re-institution of the Mosaic sacrifices and ceremonies—all this is a tragic misinterpretation of highly significant and beautiful prophecies of the coming Savior and his reign of grace.”
There are several dangers in this kind of millennial teaching. (1) It rejects the gospel as the only means of grace for all people of all ages. (2) It has a false sense of history, making the physical nation of Israel, not the church of believers, the center of history. (3) Jesus and his atoning work vanish from sight in the preaching and writings of millennialists, as do the sacraments. (4) Millennialists dull any sense of urgency regarding repentance and the real danger of punishment in hell. (5) Millennialists dull any anticipation of heaven. “As one looks at the millennial scheme,” Lyle Lange observed (this is his list), “heaven is almost an afterthought.” (God So Loved the World, p. 625-627).
The light of the Savior incarnate is the light of the atoning work of God on our behalf for the forgiveness of our sins. We are the restored and true Israel of God. Paul explained this to the Gentiles of Ephesus: “Remember that you who are Gentiles by birth…were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ, you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace” (Ephesians 2:11-14).
May God light your way in the forgiveness we have in Jesus.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Archives by Wisconsin Lutheran Chapel: http://www.wlchapel.org/worship/daily-devotion/
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota