Seeing Darkness

Meditation June 7, 2020

Matthew 6

22“The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, ^c your whole body will be full of light. 23But if your eyes are unhealthy, ^d your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!

24“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.

We are naturally given to understanding things from our experience and perspective. There is nothing wrong with that…unless you are reading something that was said to a group of people 2000 years ago. When that is the case, if you wish to rightly understand what was being said to them, you must seek to understand it from the point of their experience and perspective. Here, in these verses, we have a text book case of the need for doing just that.

Jesus begins, “the eye is the lamp of the body.” We all understand that. If you have difficulty grasping his point, the next time you go grocery shopping, try doing so with you eyes closed. I say that only to get the mind going in the right direction. Jesus is not talking about blindness but double vision, diplopia and to be precise spiritual diplopia.

We have to keep the Sermon on the Mount all together. The division of the Bible into chapters and verses is a once a boon and a bane. If you have ever tried reading a Greek or Hebrew text you understand how it is a boon. You can get something of the same effect if you will copy and paste a chapter from an English bible and then delete all the verse numbers, punctuation and any extra spaces that divide the end of one sentence from the beginning of the next together with all the capitalizations at the beginning of sentences. . Thank God He has given us men with patience to study the original languages and provide punctuation and verse division for us. At the same time, we must be careful for the division of the text into verses. That can quickly become a bane when it lends itself to approaching and understanding what is being said apart from the context in which it is found and that is a sure formula for misunderstanding.

When we come to verse 22, Jesus is still talking about, fleshing out, applying to life the characteristics of the new creature in Christ that he detailed in the beatitudes. He has explained them in relation to that which we are in the world, in relation to the law, to our civil and religious duties under the two great tables of the law and now he is explaining them in relation to our attitude toward things of this world. He has told us not to set our hearts on the thing of this world, to set our hearts upon and treasure up for ourselves those things that perish; now He is continuing this thought by explaining that we can’t have both; that we can’t both set our hearts on treasuring up treasures on earth and at the same time storing up treasures in heaven. He knows the human heart well enough to know exactly where it is going to run unless He corrects it. Our fallen hearts are going to grab for both.

To head that off at the pass, so to speak, Jesus says “The eye is the lamp of the body…” Lamp is a better translation than ‘light’ as several versions translate. The eye is a lamp in the same way lamp is used when David said “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.” As the word of God shows us the way so that we don’t go about spiritually and always in peril of wandering into things spiritually harmful, just so the eye shows the way to go physically so that we are not constantly bumping into things harmful or wandering about aimlessly arriving at our intended destination only by the most extreme smile of providence. Jesus is not talking about a spiritual or moral eye per se as some explain. He is talking about the physical eye and using that as a metaphor for a spiritual truth. “If you eye is healthy”, if you can see well, then you can get on safely in life, doing the things necessary for life, without harming yourself for others. You can imagine the results you would get if you awaken in the morning and rather than opening your eyes you wandered about blindly dressing and preparing you morning meal – assuming you could get that far before needing to call for medical help. Or worse yet, if you should somehow make it to the car, driving yourself to work still blind. Well that is exactly His point with regard to our spiritual life.

Thus, Jesus says, “If your eye is single…” or, in other words, if you see well. The Greek word is haplous, The NIV and some translate that as healthy while the KJV and others translate it as single. Both are correct. Jesus is talking about the difference between seeing well and not seeing well but he has a particular point in mind and translating it as single is a better translation that leads naturally not his next point about serving both God and mammon. Haplous is the Greek antonym for diplous which means double from which we get our term diplopia or double vision. If you have double vision, you may, in fact, be in more danger than you would be if blind. If blind you know just don’t unless you have help. With double vision you are tempted to carry on. There is always the chance you will pick the correct vision. I remember my brother when he had a brain tumor that caused him double vision, and more interestingly phantom vision, bumping into walls and saying, “I always pick the wrong one.”    Such is the danger of the physical eye that is not single. If is possible that Jesus is speaking less in metaphor and more to an understanding that the Jews would have had. Haplous in the Septuagint is used to translate the Hebrew barakah which means generous (Proverbs 22:9). And other Jewish literature, e.g., the Mishnah and Talmud speak of the good eye, middle eye and evil eye. And Jewish commentators on the Mishnah say the good eye is the generous eye, it sees need and attends to that need whereas the evil eye is contrary. Either way, whether the intent is to use a metaphor or Jesus is speaking to a spiritual understanding the Jews would have had, the point is the same.  If you see well, if your eye is healthy and you sight is good, you know where to go and where not to go, your whole body is full of light. You are not bumping into things, falling over things, injuring yourself or dressing in who knows what combination of clothing and colors. You get the absurd spectacle you could soon make of yourself attempting to go through life blind and unassisted.

Meyer thinks haplous as single because it is contrasted to evil rather than double (diplous).He may have a technical point but I think he is overlooking the fact that Jesus is leading to the point of attempting to serve two masters, to successfully have double vision, if you will, which He is going to say is not possible.

The point Jesus is in the midst of making is that you can distinguish between believers and unbelievers by observing in yourself and other the things that are most valued, those that command your attention and those to which you most devote your time, energy and thought. That is the single eye, or in the spiritual realm, the good, generous or healthy eye. Not only does single fit better with what Jesus is going to say regarding serving two masters but if Meyer had stayed with singleness of eye on his technical grammatical route he could have avoided what I think is his misunderstanding for poneros, which he, translates as evil, just as haplous that has a primitive meaning of single, has as its primitive meaning pain-ridden.

The point of it all is this: The single eye is a healthy eye with which one can see clearly the way in which he should go; on the contrary the evil eye is an unhealthy eye leaving one in the darkness unable to make out the path he should follow. Jesus is clearly saying this in regard to laying up treasures in heaven as opposed to laying up treasures on earth. And His point, it seems to me is not that an evil eye will lead you astray, that hardly need be said, but that as He will continue, double vision, attempting to serve to masters, seeing two different direction simultaneously, leaves you in darkness and worse for being blind with double vision you think you see and continue on whereas if you were just in darkness you would wisely proceed with caution if at all. Thus, practically, the darkness is greater.

May God grant us the singleness of vision and the wisdom to keep our eye on those things which are not seen for the things seen are temporal, but the things not see are eternal. (2Cor. 4:18)