This is the message which we have heard from him and announce to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.
God is light ... Orr supposed that a similar grand pronouncement found in  1 John 3:11, introduced by words almost identical with the introductory clause here, might indicate that we have in the words "God is light" an actual saying of Jesus Christ repeated by him at various times.[24] He based this upon the fact that the statement in  1 John 3:11, that we should "love one another" was indeed an actual saying of Jesus recorded in the Gospels.  It has the same authority either way.  "To the Christians alone, God is revealed as light, absolutely free from everything material, impure, obscure or gloomy."[25] Light is a symbol of all that is lovely, beautiful, holy, good, desirable, righteous and lovable.  To the pagans, God was hatred, vengeance and fear; to the ignorant, God was a God of darkness, an unknown Being to be propitiated, not a Person to be loved; to the philosopher, God was an abstraction, an idea, having no connection at all with man; to the Jew, God was a God that hideth himself and a consuming fire.