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“What is the ‘marvelous light’ 1 Peter 2:9 refers to?”

Light is frequently a metaphor for truth, revelation or understanding, not just in the Bible but everywhere in Western literature and beyond. In English, we refer to becoming “enlightened”, meaning we have somehow received a more accurate way of looking at something we formerly did not comprehend. There is even a period in Western history we call the Enlightenment or Age of Reason.

Did this usage originate in the Bible? Perhaps. Many metaphors did.

The Light Metaphor

In scripture, the emphasis of the light metaphor is most frequently (though not always) on spiritual truth — moral guidance based on an accurate understanding of God, as opposed to scientific data or useful information of other sorts.

We can see the writers of scripture using light as a metaphor for understanding very early on. In Job, for example, our title character says this about God:

“He takes away understanding from the chiefs of the people of the earth and makes them wander in a trackless waste. They grope in the dark without light, and he makes them stagger like a drunken man.”

In a typical near-Eastern parallelism, Job compares the loss of understanding to somebody extinguishing all source of illumination. The absence of light leaves you without direction, purpose or certainty. Try to move around without being able to see, and you are bound to stagger through life like a drunk.

Lamps and Lights

Again, the psalmists repeatedly compare light and the truth of divine revelation:

“Send out your light and your truth; let them lead me; let them bring me to your holy hill.”

“Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.”

The writers of scripture also use light as a metaphor for life (the light of life, as opposed to the darkness of the grave) and happiness (the light of person’s face beaming for joy), but when we see light in scripture used as a figure of speech, more times than not its significance is spiritual truth.

The Light of the World

That usage continues into the New Testament, where the Lord Jesus tells his Jewish followers, “You are the light of the world.” Being a light to the nations was one of Israel’s purposes. The nation existed to provide a way for God to get his revelation out there to a planet under the sway of the god of this world. Even when Israel failed to live up to its calling, God accomplished his purpose through them in judgment. The Diaspora spread Jews all over the world of its day, so that the Law of Moses was read everywhere each Sabbath in their synagogues.

The Ethiopian eunuch Philip encountered on his way home was reading a scroll from Isaiah. Where did he get a taste for that? From devout Jews, who were the light of the world in their day. Christians play a similar role in ours.

Marvelous Light

So then, when we come to 1 Peter, I think the apostle is using “marvelous light” just the way “light” is almost always used in scripture. The verse reads:

“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”

Here, he is addressing Jewish Christians, but Peter is no longer talking about the divine revelation of the Law through Moses. He’s talking about the gospel, and what he has to say in this respect applies equally to all believers in Jesus, not just Jews. Where Jews had received light — moral understanding providing the potential for better, godlier individual lives and a more just society — to pass on to the world, Christians live in what Peter calls “marvelous light”. The gospel is as superior to law as Christ was to Moses.

Full Revelation

In the gospel, we Christians have a full revelation of God. God has spoken to us “in Son”, as Hebrews puts it. As those in Christ, we can know and understand God not through pictures, symbols and rituals, but in Spirit and truth. In Christ, we do not go to temple, we have become a temple. In Christ, we do not sacrifice animals for sins, but are invited in Spirit into the presence of God, cleansed once for all by his death on the cross. In Christ, we do more than obey rules. We have the love of God in our hearts in all the power of Christ’s resurrection from the dead, teaching us to respond as he would.

Our very simple job, like that of Israel of old, is to pass on what we know: the excellencies of him who called us. That seems a fair deal to me.