<p>12:36 <i>While you have the light, believe in the light, so that you may become sons of light</i>- This is an intensely urgent appeal to the crowd who had apparently believed in Him. The Lord had set them up to turn against Him (see on :12) but all the same, He begs for them to not do the psychologically inevitable- and to believe in Him.</p><p>John's later interpretation of this is in 1 Jn. 1:7: &quot;But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin&quot;. The light is ultimately God, but we see His light reflected in the face of the Lord Jesus. Walking in the light refers to the Lord's desire that they make the most of every minute of His mortal company. Soon the light would be taken from them, in that He would die. He urges His followers the same way in Jn. 11 . By walking with Him in the light, believing in Him, walking as He walked, they would become sons of light, true believers. But 1 Jn. 1:7 is saying that we who never met the Lord Jesus can walk in the light as much as those who walked with Him in Palestine two millennia ago. And that is indeed the promise of the Comforter- that although He was to be taken from the disciples in death, the ministry of the Spirit would mean that He was as real to believers as He had been to the disciples who literally touched and watched Him. This is quite the challenge to us all. That man is not alone; God with us, in Christ, walks that close, as if literally with us.</p><p><i>Jesus spoke these things, then he departed and hid himself from them- </i>He had just spoken of Himself as the light of the world, which must be viewed and walked in, but having said that, He hides Himself. The idea is that He is the light to those who seek Him, who find where He is 'hidden'; the metaphor of light doesn't mean that He is shining like the sun, obvious to all. He is- but in the spiritual world and heart of the believer.</p>