The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness! Matthew 6:22-23 NIV
Light vs. darkness is a recurrent theme in the Bible. Those who know God and are enjoying a satisfying relationship with Him are likened to those walking in the light and those who are spiritually blind and struggling to understand truth are like those stumbling in the dark. Light is associated with the things of God and darkness is associated with evil. Jesus indicates in this passage that there is a direct correlation between walking in light and those things we allow to pass before our eyes, those things we focus our attention on.
I will set no worthless thing before my eyes; I hate the work of those who fall away; It shall not fasten its grip on me. Psalm 101:3 NASB
Satan is always trying to trip us up so we will fall away from the Lord. He want’s nothing more than to pull us out of the light and make us stumble in the darkness! In this psalm, David commits to guard what he allows to come before his eyes because he does not want to give sin an opportunity to get a grip on his life. I have to wonder if David was thinking about the night his eyes landed on Bathsheba bathing on the rooftop when he penned this psalm? If anyone understood that the eye is the lamp of the body, it was David. Once he allowed his eyes to focus on Bathsheba, sin got a grip on David that, for a season, led him to a very dark place. David could have learned a lot from Job.
I made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at a young woman. Job 31:1 NIV
The connection between our eyes and the grip of sin was clear from the beginning of time.
When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate. Genesis 3:6 NASB
How did Satan lure Eve into sin? He placed something before her eyes that he knew she would desire. So what are you allowing to pass before your eyes? Are you careful about the images you view online? In movies? Television? Magazines? Do you take a second glance when you see a “Bathsheba?” When Satan throws something desirable, but sinful before your eyes, do you turn away, or focus your attention on it? There is a real spiritual danger in compromising in this area!
It’s so dangerous that Jesus made this extreme statement.
And if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It’s better to enter eternal life with only one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell. Matthew 18:9 NLT
Will you make a covenant with your eyes today not to look at anything that will trip you up and lead you into sin? Learn from David that you cannot just look then walk away. The longer you focus on it, the more time you give Satan to fasten his grip on you! Let’s be sure to guard our eyes, the lamp of our body, so we can always walk in light.