“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, ESV)
I was meeting with a group of men for a Friday morning time of Bible reading and prayer. We all would take a turn reading a few verses of Scripture around the table. At the end of the reading, we would take time to pray for various situations.
However, when it came for my time to read a couple verses, I just could not focus well enough to see the words. I tried to hold the Bible out further, thinking that it would help, but my arms were too short. My fellow believer on the other side of the table took my Bible from me and held it further away, poking a bit of fun at me.
There were only two possibilities. Either my arms were shrinking or my eyes were getting weaker. Of course, the problem was the later.
In the Sermon on the Mount, in the context of priorities regarding where a person will store up treasure, Jesus stated the following.
“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, ESV)
The problem people have is one of vision or more correctly focus. However, Jesus was not speaking of physical vision. He was speaking of spiritual vision.
Many people have good earthly vision but poor spiritual vision. They are not able to focus on heavenly things. It would be better and more profitable to be blind to earthly things and sharply focused on the spiritual. Yet a proper spiritual vision will see how the material and the spiritual realms are not truly separate. While men often separate them, these are truly inseparable. It is a matter of understanding the will of God and properly establishing His priorities as we live in this earthly domain.
Thus, we must focus our spiritual eyes correctly. Healthy spiritual eyes will take in the glorious light. John wrote that “God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5, ESV). Furthermore, John wrote that Jesus is the “true light, which gives light to everyone” (John 1:9, ESV).
We as children of the kingdom have been healed from our spiritual blindness. We have vision, spiritual vision. Yet we must keep our spiritual focus on the true light, the Lord our God. We do so by keeping in His word, by focusing on Him and His will, and participating in true biblical community with others who are walking in the light.
Renewing the Heart 