The entire Good News is summed up in the first chapter of John -- and for those who can see it, even in the opening lines of Genesis: Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, "let there be light," and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness.
These lines describe not only the earth at its inception, but our souls before we are born again of water and of the Holy Spirit. The Good News is that God has spoken in us His Divine Word, the new life of His Son, the Word which makes us not children of the earth, but children of God. We are brought to birth by His Word and His Spirit, the breath of His mouth, just as it is written in the second chapter of Genesis. Over our chaos hovers the Speaker, the Word spoken, and the Breath by which He speaks. His Word can never be "unspoken."
The darkness that engulfs us before we are born again is the profound darkness that encompasses the entire earth, even today. The earth indeed is "empty and formless" until the Word of God shapes and forms it. Before Christ, before the spoken Word of God, our ideas and opinions are those of the earth, "empty and formless." When His Word is spoken in us, the Light enters and the darkness can never again overcome us. Peter says that we have been redeemed "from the empty way of life handed down to us by our fathers" -- that is, from the empty and formless life of the world, of the natural man. We no longer belong to Adam, for our natural man has died. The life we now live, we live in Christ as sons and daughters of God.
Paul says in Romans that he is convinced that nothing can ever separate us from the love of God given to us in Christ Jesus -- for I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Rom. 8:38).
This is the Word spoken at the beginning-- Let there be light! And the Light of Christ enters into our darkness, changing us forever. Just as the darkness could not overcome Him in the tomb, so it can never overcome us; His Resurrection is our guarantee of eternal life.
