What Are You Looking At?
“The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!”
Matthew 6:22-23
Some passages cause you to scratch your head and wonder what God is trying to say. His words were clear to Jesus’ original audience, but time and living in a different culture obscure the meaning for us. He gives an extended metaphor. Let’s consider some of the ideas regarding his example of the eye and body.
The eye is the vehicle in our bodies that lets light in. With our eyes we see what reality is and what is around us. Based on what we see we literally navigate through life. But if we have bad eyesight, it affects our whole body. I was at an installation service recently and the violinist played beautifully. She was already on stage, so I did not notice that she was completely blind until the music had ended as she grasped her cane and was helped down the stairs. Because light and images could not get in properly, she needed help to see obstacles, or she could easily get hurt. Imagine if a person’s vision is obscured or he is blind and doesn’t even know it! He will go through life thinking he can see and will continuously put himself in harm’s way.
The “eye” here is analogous to the heart. Our heart is either made alive and transformed by God or else we are still spiritually blind whether we recognize it or not. Further, it is God’s word applied by the Holy Spirit that gives us insight into life and direction in the way we should go. God enables us to see and know spiritual reality. By “seeing” we can navigate through life and honor God. If we are spiritually blind, we will live in darkness and nothing we do in life is pleasing to God. It is a sad situation if a person is spiritually blind and doesn’t even realize it! Even worse is someone who has good eyesight and then willfully chooses to be blind or obscure his vision!
The word “healthy,” carries the idea of “single” or “clear.” The word “bad” means, “degenerate, diseased, or wicked.” Uses as an idiom the “evil eye,” can mean, “miserly or selfish.”[1] The meaning of these verses is either, a person with divided interest will not go in the right direction (confirming v. 24) or that a self-centered, stingy person is morally corrupt and blind (pointing back to vs. 19-21). It is very rare that the context doesn’t clarify the meaning of the text, but this is one of those situation where either interpretation makes complete sense in context once we understand the historic idioms.
Fortunately, either interpretation makes the same ultimate point. If your vision is not singularly on God, you will be morally corrupt and will not live in a way that pleases him. Whether that is by being selfish and self-focused or in having desires for contradictory things, your heart will be corrupted, and you will become spiritually blind. This will affect your entire life. We cannot live a compartmented life where we are fully committed to Christ in some areas and living for ourselves in others. Our choices affect the entirety of our lives. How you view life will affect the direction of your life and ultimately your destiny.
[1] R.T. France, The Tyndale New Testament Commentaries: Matthew. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1985.
