John 12:35-36 New English Translation
35 Jesus replied,[a] “The light is with you for a little while longer.[b] Walk while you have the light, so that the darkness may not overtake you.[c] The one who walks in the darkness does not know where he is going. 36 While you have the light, believe in the light, so that you may become sons of light.”[d] When Jesus had said these things, he went away and hid himself from them.
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- John 12:35 tn Grk “Then Jesus said to them.”
- John 12:35 tn Grk “Yet a little while the light is with you.”
- John 12:35 sn The warning Walk while you have the light, so that the darkness may not overtake you operates on at least two different levels: (1) To the Jewish people in Jerusalem to whom Jesus spoke, the warning was a reminder that there was only a little time left for them to accept him as their Messiah. (2) To those later individuals to whom the Fourth Gospel was written, and to every person since, the words of Jesus are also a warning: There is a finite, limited time in which each individual has opportunity to respond to the Light of the world (i.e., Jesus); after that comes darkness. One’s response to the Light decisively determines one’s judgment for eternity.
- John 12:36 tn The idiom “sons of light” means essentially “people characterized by light,” that is, “people of God.”sn The expression sons of light refers to men and women to whom the truth of God has been revealed and who are therefore living according to that truth, thus, “people of God.”
New English Translation (NET)
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