Minding Our Eyes
Matthew 6:22
The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light.
C.H. Spurgeon on Matthew 6:22 (KJV) ...if thine eye be single...
If thou hast only the master motive of glorifying God, thy eye be single. When a man’s highest motive is himself, what a dark and selfish nature he has; but when his highest motive is his God, what brightness of light will shine upon all.
J. H. Rogers The King’s Palace, “Fifteenth Day”, 1885
(The “single eye”)…is an eye which has but one purpose and one object in every glance; one which looks to see God in everything, and looks at everything for God; an eye which searches to find God’s revelation of himself in everything that comes before it, and which seeks to glorify him with every exercise of sight.
O Lord, you alone can make my eye single. Grant that I may have but one purpose in every glance: that I may see what you show me, and see everything in your light, for Jesus Christ’s sake.
Harry Ironside
What we need to be concerned about is a single eye for the glory of God, an eye that discerns His will in order that we may walk in it. If we turn away to paths of self-will, we go into willful darkness and will soon lose our way.
Psalm 101:3
I will set nothing wicked [worthless] before my eyes...
Psalm 119:37a (ESV)
Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things...
Proverbs 4:25-27
Let your eyes look straight ahead;
fix your gaze directly before you.
Give careful thought to the paths for your feet
and be steadfast in all your ways.
Do not turn to the right or the left;
keep your foot from evil.
William Gurnall The Christian in Complete Armour
Live up to thy hopes, Christian. Let there be a decorum kept between thy principles and thy practices, thy hope of heaven and walk on earth. The eye should direct the foot. Thou lookest for salvation; walk the same way thy eye looks.
Proverbs 23:26
My son, give me your heart and let your eyes keep to my ways...
Job 31:1a
I made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully...
William Mason A Spiritual Treasury for the Children of God
The eye, though a little member of the body, is perhaps of all others the greatest inlet to temptation. The first motion to sin entered by seeing. Eve saw that the fruit was good and pleasant to the eye. Looking brought into being longing. In this way lust was conceived and brought forth sin. (James 1:15) Sin, when it was finished, brought forth death...
A.B. Simpson
There must be a constant looking unto Jesus, or, as the German Bible states it, an offlooking upon Jesus-that is, looking off from the evil, refusing to see it, not letting the mind dwell upon it for a second. We should have mental eyelids as well as physical ones, which can be used like shields to keep out evil.
Many do not seem to know that they have spiritual eyes. They go through the world as if somebody had cut off their eyelids. The devil comes along with his evil pictures and bids them look, and they stare away at the good and evil alike.
We cannot look upon evil without being defiled. Sometimes, as we walk along the streets, the sight of some of the pictures will cast their filth upon our souls so that we feel the need of being cleansed in Jesus' blood. There has been no consent unto sin, but the sight of it has defiled us. The only remedy is in the resolute, steady, inner view of Christ.
F.B. Meyer
Since the heart is educated through the eye, we become more and more assimilated to that which we admire.
Covenant Eyes http://www.covenanteyes.com/