The Light of the Body

 The Light of the Body The eye is more sophisticated than any human device on earth. Even mankind's most advanced technologies cannot come close to the eye's intricate craftsmanship. For example, beyond its beauty, compact size, and precision musculature, around twomillion nerve endings wire the eyes to the brain. The existence and complexity of the eye just scream divine creation. In addition, the eye does so much more than just see the physical world around us, doing such added things as helping turn full-spectrum sunlight into vitamin D and enhancing the health of the pituitary gland, thyroid, adrenal glands, ovaries,testes, pancreas, liver, kidneys, and teeth. The body's need to absorb natural sunlight in moderation through the eyes and skin is another of God's beneficial creations that modern society reacts to radically, using the fear of skin cancer to scare the publicinto avoiding exposure and protecting themselves with high-SPF sunscreen or by wearing a hat and full-length clothing. They also advocate using sunglasses to block sunlight from the eyes. Why does humanity always seem to get things backward? Eyes are among God's greatest gifts. The Hebrew word for eye, ayin, indicates the physical body part but also appears many times metaphorically to mean "understanding" or "spiritual insight." Hebrew also uses ayin idiomatically to suggest seeing, looking up, or being in front of or in the presence of something. The Bible contains hundreds of references to sight. In fact, in the fourth verse of Genesis 1, the Bible opens with, "And God saw the light, that it was good." Scripture frequently describes God as One who sees, understands, or watches over His people. Conversely, in his first appearance, the Serpent uses Eve's lust of the eyes to entice her and Adam to disobey God (Genesis3:4-7). He plays on their desire to understand—to see—things as God does to persuade them to ignore the divine warning against eating the forbidden fruit. The dark and deadly results are apparent throughout history and present-day cultures. The scenario in the Garden of Eden paints an insightful picture: Satan led Eve to sin through what she saw physically, resulting in spiritual darkness. Taken to an extreme over a lifetime, added layers of spiritual darkness would completely blind a person to God and His way. Put another way, that person would lose all sense of actualtruth and reality. Overall, this story teaches that pursuing what one sees with the eyes easily leads to sin and rejection of and separation from God. Our proverbial saying, "Love is blind," is incorrect. Perhaps we should rephrase it as, "Lust is blinding." Theevents in the Garden show that the combination of "open" eyes and selfishness is a sure recipe for blindness to what is right and good and, in time, wholesale spiritual disaster. Jesussays in Matthew 6:22-23: The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness! He instructs us that the eye is the body's lamp or light (KJV), and if it is clear, healthy, and spiritually perceptive, the whole body will be full of light. Light is a frequent symbol of good things but especially spiritual goodness. Jesus calls Himself "the light of the world" (John8:12; 9:5; see John 1:4; 12:35), and He tells us we are to be shining lights too (Matthew5:14-16). Light illuminates and reveals, helping us to understand and walk in wisdom and safety (Psalm119:105; Proverbs 6:23). But He teaches in verse 23 that there is a darker, destructive flipside to the good eye. He says the light a bad eye draws inside a person can be darkness. What a paradox! How can light be darkness? Physically, the eye takes in the light and the sights before us. By the light, the way before us is illuminated, allowing us to guide our bodies wherever we want to go. In this way, we choose our path, how we conduct our lives. In the preceding paragraph, Matthew 6:19-21, Jesus had instructed His disciples about laying up treasures on earth as opposed to laying them up in heaven. Earthly treasures are temporary—soon used, destroyed, or stolen—but heavenly treasures are eternal. Christians must understandthe distinction because what we choose to do exposes whether our hearts are physically or spiritually oriented. Christ advises us to put all our effort into seeking heavenly things: the Kingdom of God and His righteousness (Matthew6:33). That is our path. Jesus' warning about a bad eye illustrates what happens to those who choose to concentrate on earthly things. Such people have an inordinate desire for worldly objects, events, goals, and ideas. These desires grab a person's attention and blurhis focus, leading ultimately to blindness. Such people think they are doing good and right for themselves, but that light becomes darkness when it interacts with the carnal nature. Just as happened to Adam and Eve, the result is separation from God, leadingto further blindness and darkness. What makes this darkness so terrible is that those who think they are in the light may actually be in dreadful darkness. They are blind to their own condition! Remember, Jesus is speaking to His disciples in the Sermon on the Mount, indicating that this condition can exist in the church. Further, if some or many in the church have this darkness in them, how does it affect the rest of the Body? Jesus says, ". . . the whole body will be full of darkness"! It is paramountthat everyone in the Body of Christ be working to bring only light and not darkness into the Body. How does God turn a person from darkness to light? One of the outstanding examples is the calling of Saul, who is soon renamed Paul. In Hebrew, Saul means "[one] asked for or requested" (the Israelite king of the same name had been "asked for" by the people, a human choice), and Paul means "little, small; humble." In his carnality, Saul chose to attack and persecute the young church, and he did it as vigorously as anyone, fully believing he was serving God. In reality, he lived in total darkness about the will and way of God.His interior darkness led him to fight against the very God he thought he was glorifying! How did God get his attention? "[S]uddenly a light shone around him from heaven" (Acts9:3). God revealed light, which blinded him for three days (Acts9:8-9). He forced Saul to consider that light and his blindness for those three days, and to his credit, he repented. When he did, God, through Ananias, removed the scales from his eyes and the spiritual blindness of his heart (Acts9:18). At this point, he became Paul, "small and humble." His epistles remind us that Paul never forgot how dark he had been (see Romans 7:14-25; I Corinthians 15:9-10; etc.). He gave all the glory to Christ for revealing the light to him by His grace. Helen Keller once said, "Of all the senses, sight must be the most delightful." However, the actual most delightful of human experiences is when the light that comes from above opens our eyes to see God and His plan for all humanity, a gift very few in this world have received. Like Paul, "you were once darkness, but now you are light in the world. Walk as children of light . . ., finding out what is acceptable to the Lord" (Ephesians5:8, 10). - Ronny H. Graham