1 John 1:5 “This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all”.
“There is no darkness in God”. What does this mean?
To understand this phrase, we need first to understand who God is: He is light by nature. In His presence darkness disappears. The other meaning that God is light is that, nothing can be hidden in his presence. All truth is revealed.
Darkness is the opposite of light. Therefore we cannot relate God to anything that is in darkness. Let us try to understand more about darkness:
In Romans 1:21 “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened”. The word darkened here means that a person is vain in his imaginations about God and foolish in his thoughts about God.
We also read in John 1:5 “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it”. This has reference to a situation when man cannot understand light and has no power to extinguish the light.
Darkness means evil behavior and deeds and that man hates light. “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God”. (John 3:19-21)
We can therefore conclude that darkness symbolizes sin and evil in the bible. These qualities cannot be associated with God whatsoever.