Carrying over a bit from verse 21, it's hard in our modern world to grasp the significance of darkness. I live in the city, so there are always street lights shining no matter how dark the night would be without them. Campgrounds in the country also have lights shining to show the way to the bathrooms. Quite a few people choose to have lights on all night around their campsite or house. But even if you were deep in the countryside without any lights on, there is nowadays often a city close enough nearby to shine its collective lights into the night and reduce the darkness even on a moonless night. And if the light isn't bright enough wherever we happen to be, it's very easy to flip a switch to turn another light on. But in Paul's time it was a little harder to lighten the darkness.
It's pretty obvious to notice if the world around you is dark. What may be the most astounding about those who reject God is their insistence that they are wise: their denial of the darkness of their hearts. If everyone around you is also stumbling through darkness they may assume that the one person insisting that they can see better than everyone else has a light to see by while everyone else is blind and couldn't see even if the road was flooded with light. But no one who CAN see will be deceived. If you have the true light of God, it is much easier to identify who is blind and who also has light to walk by.
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