A Healthy Inner Eye
After referring to Himself as the light and life of men, our Lord goes on to say that, for the apprehension of light, a corresponding and appropriate organ is required. This organ is the eye. The eye that receives light for the whole body gives light to the whole body—the light in which all its activities are carried on—and may therefore be called the lamp or candle of the body. But the amount of light received and distributed depends on the power and accuracy of the eye that receives it. The organ may be diseased. It may prevent the access of the light or pervert it so that we do not see things as they are, or even in extreme cases do not see them at all. If this solitary candle is put out, how profound must be the darkness in which we walk! If it is obscured or distorted, how radical and misleading must be the errors into which it betrays us. It is of the utmost importance, therefore, that we should keep the one organ which receives and imparts light—the light of all our seeing, all our working, all our progress—in a healthy condition.
In all this we have been dealing only with the application of the passage of Luke 11:33–36. For while speaking of the eye of the body, it is obvious that it was the eye of the soul that our Lord had in mind. The spiritual part in us has its perceptive faculty as does the physical part, and it is even more important that the spiritual candle should be lifted to its due place and kept burning brightly than that the physical candle should be placed on the lampstand and not hidden in a cellar or under a bushel basket.
If then we turn from the physical to the spiritual application of the passage, what is it that our Lord is teaching us in these words? I believe He is saying that a healthy, trained, unprejudiced understanding is required for the due apprehension and appreciation of spiritual truth, and that the health and power of the understanding by which we receive and impart the truth depends mainly on the establishing of right attitudes toward the hearing and sifting of God’s Word as revealed in the Scriptures. A desire to know and follow the truth at whatever cost is a prerequisite to “seeing” the truth.
In all this we have been dealing only with the application of the passage of Luke 11:33–36. For while speaking of the eye of the body, it is obvious that it was the eye of the soul that our Lord had in mind. The spiritual part in us has its perceptive faculty as does the physical part, and it is even more important that the spiritual candle should be lifted to its due place and kept burning brightly than that the physical candle should be placed on the lampstand and not hidden in a cellar or under a bushel basket.
If then we turn from the physical to the spiritual application of the passage, what is it that our Lord is teaching us in these words? I believe He is saying that a healthy, trained, unprejudiced understanding is required for the due apprehension and appreciation of spiritual truth, and that the health and power of the understanding by which we receive and impart the truth depends mainly on the establishing of right attitudes toward the hearing and sifting of God’s Word as revealed in the Scriptures. A desire to know and follow the truth at whatever cost is a prerequisite to “seeing” the truth.