“Light and Darkness, Part XII”
Posted: Thu Nov 14, 2019 3:11 pm
“Light and Darkness, Part XII” by Romans
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7k_6nt6eUM ("Marvelous Light")
Tonight, we are continuing in our Series, “Light and Darkness.” This Evening will be our Twelfth Installment. Light and Darkness is continually referred to and contrasted in Scripture. It is not enough, however, to merely review and examine the words, Light and Darkness. Tonight, we going to return to the New Testament, reviewing and examining those significant occurrances of the words “light” and “darkness,” which, tonight, speak of our personal relationship with Christ.
So... let's begin: Our first “hit,” tonight, is found in Matthew 6:22-23: “The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!”
The Sermon Bible tells us, “The idea conveyed by a "single eye" appears to be, from its etymology, threefold. First, it means clear, with no film; secondly, it means in opposition to double, seeing one object at a time; and thirdly, it means concentration, centred upon a focus. These three thoughts mainly go to make up the word "single,"—distinctness, oneness, fixedness.
I. Many things may give a dulness to the moral sight. (1) If it be impaired by disuse—if you do not exercise the spiritual perception which God has given you, by meditation, by prayer, and religious thought—then the perception must grow weak. (2) Things coming in between veil and darken that higher vision. A worldly life is sure to do it. Much care will do it. Luxury will do it. But, still more, any wilful unbelief or any strong prejudice.
II. A clear eye must be often cleared. It is the great secret of a happy, holy life—to have made up your mind, once and for all, to live for one thing—to do what is right, and to live to the glory of God. And then upon that one object you must concentrate yourself. Your whole mind, affections, hopes, interests, must meet there. You converge your eternity upon God.
III. There are two worlds around us—a seen world and an unseen world; and we move equally in the midst of both. And the unseen system is far more beautiful, and far grander, and more important than the system that we see. The seen is mainly the type and the shadow of the unseen. It is the unseen which is the real, for that unseen is for ever and ever. But it is not all of us who see the unseen.
Few of us are seeing the unseen very distinctly, and none of us are seeing it as we might; and the reason is the state of the eye of the soul, which is as really an eye to see the unseen as that natural eye by which you gaze upon a star or by which you admire a flower.
J. Vaughan, Sermons, 11th series, p. 197.
Our responsibility for the light given us includes two things, distinct in themselves, though closely connected—viz., our responsibility for living and acting according to that light; and our responsibility for having and seeing the light itself—that is, our responsibility for acting consistently with our belief and opinions, and our responsibility for our belief and opinions, for their formation and hold upon our minds. The two run into each other. But I wish at present to keep in view mainly the latter.
I. On the whole, the government of our minds is in our own hands. That great instrument of reason given to us, we can play on it much as we will, well or ill, wisely or foolishly; and the result is the complex fabric of habitual thought, opinion, conviction, faith, on which we have to live. Who can reasonably say that for this we are not responsible? It is, then, a matter of supreme importance how we hear, how we reach our conclusions and build up our beliefs.
We cannot remind ourselves too often or too seriously that the questions which are so freely discussed among us now are questions of life or death to human hope; not in one particular form and under one set of conditions only, but in any form intelligible to our minds. Our time is a time to be watchful over both life and intellect, watchful over the way we handle the grave questions we may be called upon to handle, and over the way in which we prepare ourselves to handle them.
II. A great conflict is going on between Christianity and ideas and beliefs which would destroy or supplant it. We remark on the improved character of the discussion; the times of Voltaire, we observe with satisfaction, are past. But with all the literary power, and all the real and often pathetic earnestness shown in it, there is wanting often an adequate sense of the full issues raised by it, a sense of what in fact depends on it.
If we must lose Christianity, let us be alive to what we are doing, and face with open eyes the consequences. Let us have the seriousness which befits the surrender of such a hope, with which a vanquished state surrenders territory or independence to the necessities of defeat, with which, in the old strife of parties, a beaten statesman surrendered his life and fate to the law. Let us recognize the thinker’s duties, his temptations, and his safeguards.
Remember what an element time is in all growth. By simply waiting our horizon widens—widens almost without our knowing it. Those who undertake to woo truth by their own courage must not stumble at her conditions. They must not think it strange if for that Divine Bride they have to serve the seven years, and then the seven years again.
Dean Church, Oxford and Cambridge Undergraduates’ Journal, Nov. 15th, 1877
I. Conscience is the organ that stands between the intelligence of man and the spiritual world, just as the eye stands between the intelligence of man and the world of physical nature, and brings the two together. It is the opened and unopened window through which flows the glorious knowledge of God and heaven; or outside of which that knowledge waits, as the sun with its glory or the flower with its beauty waits outside the closed eye of a blind or sleeping man.
II. When one declares this, that through the conscience man arrives at the knowledge of unseen things, and conceptions of God and spiritual force and immortality reveal themselves to his intelligence, at once the suggestion comes from some one who is listening, Can we be sure of the reality of what thus seems to be made known? How can we be sure that what the conscience sends in to the understanding are not mere creations of its own?
These are the same questions which have always haunted man’s whole thought about his vision of the world of nature. The questions which haunt the conscience are the same as those which haunt the eye. And as the eye deals with its questions, so will the conscience always deal with its.
III. There is an openness of conscience, a desire and struggle to do right, which is distinctly turned away from God and the world of spiritual things, so that, even if they were there, it would not see them. On the other hand, there is an openness of conscience, a desire and struggle to do right, which is turned towards God and the supernatural, which is expectant of spiritual revelation; and to that conscience the spiritual revelation comes.
IV. We are led thus to that which Jesus teaches in the text—the critical importance of a pure, true conscience, of a steady, self-sacrificing struggle to do right Godward. So only can the channel be kept open through which the knowledge of God, and of the spiritual things which belong to Him, can enter into our souls.
As long as man is able to do right Godward, to keep his conscience pure and true and reverent, set upon doing the best things on the highest grounds, he carries with him an eye through which the everlasting light may, and assuredly will, shine into his soul.
Phillips Brooks, The Candle of the Lord, p. 74.
Observe:— I. What is here meant by singleness of eye. It is being wholly decided for Christ; that is, having an eye to Christ alone. II. The consequences of having the eye single: (1) there will be light, first of all, in regard to God and His dealings; (2) there is light in regard to our own position and character; (3) there is light in regard to revelation; (4) there is light in regard to our own experience.
W. Park, Penny Pulpit, New Series, No. 596.
References: Mat_6:22.—Preacher’s Monthly, vol. viii., p. 79. Mat_6:22, Mat_6:23.—Spurgeon,
Sermons, vol. vi., No. 335; W. Hubbard, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xiv., p. 392; Preacher’s Monthly, vol. iv., p. 186; C. C. Bartholomew, Sermons chiefly Practical, p. 15; S. Cox, Expositor, 2nd series, vol. i., p. 259; J. Martineau, Endeavours after the Christian Life, p. 463.
The illustration of the text has a twofold reference. It bears on what went before, and also on what follows. If we lay up treasures on earth, that will produce an evil eye; if we try to serve God and mammon, that will destroy the single eye. Look at the passage in both these aspects.
I. If the light within you be true, if it be your real heart’s desire to see what is right, if your affections are set on those things which are just and pure and lovely, the things heavenly and eternal, then shall your eye be single, and as ye look forth on the world ye shall be able to estimate its treasures at their proper value, for they will have lost to you the glamour and the fascination which they exercise over others. Their inherent emptiness, their essential vanity, their utter precariousness, their certain brevity will be all naked and open to the clear vision of faith, which sees them in their true character and values them at their proper worth.
II. Consider next the evil eye, as it is produced by the effort to serve both God and mammon. The influence of utter and unmitigated worldliness, when a man gives himself to it heartily and without scruple or drawback; that is, as we have seen, to blind his mind altogether to the higher concerns of the spiritual world. Therefore he never troubles himself about them; can see no need of them, and no value in them.
That is a sad state of darkness; but it is a sort of honest darkness, and is consistent with a certain genuineness of character. But the effort to serve both God and mammon produces a kind of self-deception, which is to my mind greatly more pernicious and worse to overcome than the former. The thorough worldling knows himself to be so, and his evil eye sees nothing else worth troubling himself about.
The other, however, fondly persuades himself that he is not a worldling, that he is, indeed, far superior to the worldling; his evil eye sees, in a measure, what is right and good, but only regards it so far as may be necessary to keep his mind easy in its worldliness. Thus the light which is in him serves more effectually the purpose of darkness.
W. C. Smith, The Sermon on the Mount, p. 224.
Reference: Mat_6:22, Mat_6:23.—Preacher’s Monthly, vol. vii., p. 378.
Matthew Henry adds, “We must take heed of hypocrisy and worldly-mindedness in choosing the end we look at. Our concern as to this is represented by two sorts of eyes which men have, a single eye and an evil eye. The expressions here are somewhat dark because concise; we shall therefore take them in some variety of interpretation. The light of the body is the eye, that is plain; the eye is discovering and directing; the light of the world would avail us little without this light of the body; it is the light of the eye that rejoiceth the heart (see Proverbs 15:30), but what is that which is here compared to the eye in the body.
1. The eye, that is, the heart (so some) if that be single, free and bountiful. We read of a bountiful eye in Proverbs 22:9. If the heart be liberally affected and stand inclined to goodness and charity, it will direct the man to Christian actions, the whole conversation will be full of light, full of evidences and instances of true Christianity, that pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father (see James 1:27), full of light, of good works, which are our light shining before men; but if the heart be evil, covetous, and hard, and envious, griping and grudging (such a temper of mind is often expressed by an evil eye, see Matthew 20:15 and Mark 7:22), the body will be full of darkness, the whole conversation will be heathenish and unchristian. The instruments of the churl are and always will be evil, but the liberal deviseth liberal things.
If the light that is in us, those affections which should guide us to that which is good, be darkness, if these be corrupt and worldly, if there be not so much as good nature in a man, not so much as a kind disposition, how great is the corruption of a man, and the darkness in which he sits!
This sense seems to agree with the context; we must lay up treasure in heaven by liberality in giving alms, and that not grudgingly but with cheerfulness, (see Luke 12:33 and 2 Corinthians 9:7). But these words in the parallel place do not come in upon any such occasion, and therefore the coherence here does not determine that to be the sense of them.
2. The eye, that is, the understanding (so some); the practical judgment, the conscience, which is to the other faculties of the soul, as the eye is to the body, to guide and direct their motions; now if this eye be single, if it make a true and right judgment, and discern things that differ, especially in the great concern of laying up the treasure so as to choose aright in that, it will rightly guide the affections and actions, which will all be full of the light of grace and comfort;
but if this be evil and corrupt, and instead of leading the inferior powers, is led, and bribed, and biassed by them, if this be erroneous and misinformed, the heart and life must needs be full of darkness, and the whole conversation corrupt. They that will not understand, are said to walk on in darkness, (See Psalms 82:5).
It is sad when the spirit of a man, that should be the candle of the Lord, is an ignis fatuus (i.e., something deceptive or deluding): when the leaders of the people, the leaders of the faculties, cause them to err, for then they that are led of them are destroyed, see Isaiah 9:16. An error in the practical judgment is fatal, it is that which calls evil good and good evil (as we read in Isaiah 5:20); therefore it concerns us to understand things aright, to get our eyes anointed with eye-salve.
3. The eye, that is, the aims and intentions; by the eye we set our end before us, the mark we shoot at, the place we go to, we keep that in view, and direct our motion accordingly; in every thing we do in religion; there is something or other that we have in our eye; now if our eye be single, if we aim honestly, fix right ends, and move rightly towards them, if we aim purely and only at the glory of God, seek his honor and favour, and direct all entirely to him, then the eye is single; Paul's was so when he said, To me to live is Christ; and if we be right here, the whole body will be full of light, all the actions will be regular and gracious, pleasing to God and comfortable to ourselves; but if this eye be evil, if, instead of aiming only at the glory of God, and our acceptance with him, we look aside at the applause of men, and while we profess to honour God, contrive to honour ourselves, and seek our own things under colour of seeking the things of Christ...
This spoils all, the whole conversation will be perverse and unsteady, and the foundations being thus out of course, there can be nothing but confusion and every evil work in the superstructure. Draw the lines from the circumference to any other point but the centre, and they will cross. If the light that is in thee be not only dim, but darkness itself, it is a fundamental error, and destructive to all that follows.
The end specifies the action. It is of the last importance in religion, that we be right in our aims, and make eternal things, not temporal, our scope, (see 2 Corinthians 4:18). The hypocrite is like the waterman, that looks one way and rows another; the true Christian like the traveller, that has his journey's end in his eye. The hypocrite soars like the kite, with his eye upon the prey below; the true Christian soars like the lark, higher and higher, forgetting the things that are beneath.”
Our next “hit” is found in 1 John 2:8-9: “Again, a new commandment I write unto you, which thing is true in him and in you: because the darkness is past, and the true light now shineth. He that saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother, is in darkness even until now.”
Albert Barnes tells us, “Again, a new commandment I write unto you - “And yet, that which I write to you, and particularly enjoin on you, deserves in another sense to be called a new commandment, though it has been also inculcated from the beginning, for it was called new by the Saviour himself.” Or the meaning may be, “In addition to the general precepts, I do now call your attention to the new commandment of the Saviour, that which he himself called new.”
There can be no doubt here that John refers to the commandment to “love one another,” and that it is here called new, not in the sense that John inculcated it as a novel doctrine, but in the sense that the Saviour called it such. Which thing is true in him - In the Lord Jesus. That is, which commandment or law of love was illustrated in him, or was manifested by him in his contact with his disciples. That which was most prominent in him was this very love which he enjoined on all his followers.
And in you - Among you. That is, you have manifested it in your contact with each other. It is not new in the sense that you have never heard of it, and have never evinced it, but in the sense only that he called it new. Because the darkness is past, and the true light now shineth - The ancient systems of error, under which people hated each other, have passed away, and you are brought into the light of the true religion. Once you were in darkness, like others; now the light of the pure gospel shines around you, and that requires, as its distinguishing characteristic, love. Religion is often represented as light; and Christ spoke of himself, and was spoken of, as the Light of the world.
He that saith he is in the light - That he has true religion, or is a Christian. And hateth his brother - The word “brother” seems here to refer to those who professed the same religion. The word is indeed sometimes used in a larger sense, but the reference here appears to be to that which is properly brotherly love among Christians. Compare Lucke, in loc.
Is in darkness even until now - That is, he cannot have true religion unless he has love to the brethren. The command to love one another was one of the most solemn and earnest which Christ ever enjoined; he made it the special badge of discipleship, or that by which his followers were to be everywhere known; and it is, therefore, impossible to have any true religion without love to those who are sincerely and truly his followers. If a man has not that, he is in deep darkness, whatever else he may have, on the whole subject of religion.
The Heritage of Great Evangelical Teaching adds, “We should see that that grace or virtue which was true in Christ be true also in us; we should be conformable to our head. The more our darkness is past, and gospel light shines unto us, the deeper should our subjection be to the commandments of our Lord, whether considered as old or new. Light should produce a suitable heat. Accordingly, here is another trial of our Christian light; before, it was to be approved by obedience to God; here by Christian love. 1. He who wants such love in vain pretends his light: He that saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother, is in darkness even unto now, v. 9. It is proper for sincere Christians to acknowledge what God has done for their souls; but in the visible church there are often those who assume to themselves more than is true, there are those who say they are in the light, the divine revelation has made its impression upon their minds and spirits, and yet they walk in hatred and enmity towards their Christian brethren; these cannot be swayed by the sense of the love of Christ to their brethren, and therefore remain in their dark state, notwithstanding their pretended conversion to the Christian religion. 2. He who is governed by such love approves his light to be good and genuine: He that loveth his brother (as his brother in Christ) abideth in the light, v. 10.
He sees the foundation and reason of Christian love; he discerns the weight and value of the Christian redemption; he sees how meet it is that we should love those whom Christ hath loved; and then the consequence will be that there is no occasion of stumbling in him (v. 10); he will be no scandal, no stumbling-block, to his brother; he will conscientiously beware that he neither induce his brother to sin nor turn him out of the way of religion. Christian love teaches us highly to value our brother’s soul, and to dread every thing that will be injurious to his innocence and peace. 3. Hatred is a sign of spiritual darkness: But he that hateth his brother is in darkness, v. 11. Spiritual light is instilled by the Spirit of grace, and one of the first-fruits of that Spirit is love; he then who is possessed with malignity towards a Christian brother must needs be destitute of spiritual light;
consequently he walks in darkness (v. 11); his life is agreeable to a dark mind and conscience, and he knows not whither he goes; he sees not whither this dark spirit carries him, and particularly that it will carry him to the world of utter darkness, because darkness hath blinded his eyes, v. 11. The darkness of regeneracy, evidenced by a malignant spirit, is contrary to the light of life; where that darkness dwells, the mind, the judgment, and the conscience will be darkened. Here we may observe how effectually our apostle is now cured of his once hot and flaming spirit. Time was when he was for calling for fire from heaven upon poor ignorant Samaritans who received them not, (in Luke 9:54). But his Lord had shown him that he knew not his own spirit, nor whither it led him. Having now imbibed more of the Spirit of Christ, he breathes out good-will to man, and love to all the brethren.
It is the Lord Jesus that is the great Master of love: it is His school (His own church) that is the school of love. His disciples are the disciples of love, and his family must be the family of love.”
This concludes this evening's Discussion, “Light and Darkness, Part XII.”
This Discussion was originally conducted “live” on November 13th, 2019.
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