Bible Study series: Matthew 6:22-23. Make sure you look at the light (= truth = Christ’s message) of the gospel.
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In the next link to the original chapter, I comment more and offer the Greek text. At the bottom you will find a “Summary and Conclusion” section geared toward discipleship. Check it out!
In this post, links are provided for further study.
Let’s begin.
Scripture: Matthews 6:22-23
22 The lamp of the body is the eye. Therefore, if your eye is sound, your whole body will be light. 23 If your eye is bad, your whole body is darkness. If therefore ‘the light’ in you is darkness, how great is the darkness! (Matt. 6:22-23)
Comments:
Some interpretations say that in a Jewish context, the good eye = generosity, while the bad eye = stingy or parsimonious.
Another interpretation says that this is an illustration about truth (light) v. falsehood (darkness) and true perception (light) v. self-deception (darkness), impacting (or infecting) your inner being. Here, as usual, Jesus’s teaching does not emphasize philosophical thinking, but moral living and one’s relationship with God. In their context, vv. 14-23, in which Jesus’s critics believed he had expelled demons by the prince of demons, he here explains by metaphors how wrong and deceived they were. Their minds were so darkened that that actually believed that his authority came from Satan, so that Satan’s kingdom would be effective if it were divided against itself! Their “light” really was darkness. Further, in vv. 24-26 Jesus taught that a swept and ordered person can undergo further, stronger attacks. Here he expands on the idea with moral truths through the images of light and darkness.
In my view, this is how the images can be transposed:
Light = truth = Christ’s message
Darkness = falsehood = Satan’s message
Eye = gateway to or perception of the mind
Whole body = whole inner being
One could also add that Jesus himself is the light of the world (Luke 2:32; John 1:9; 3:19; 8:12).
Now what about your mind and total inner being? Do they receive light or darkness?
22:
In this verse the eye takes in the light, just as the mind takes in truths or falsehoods. In your initial intake of truth or falsehood, the mind can become light or dark, which in turn impacts your entire inner being. When your perception and mind take in moral truths and relational knowledge of God, your whole being is light (an adjective, not in the nominative). When your perception and mind take in moral falsehoods and false beliefs about moral truths and relational knowledge of God, then your whole being will become dark.
“In short, the reader thinks of the physiological first and then is drawn by the context to the moral aspect” (Osborne, comment on 6:22).
23:
People can be so self-deluded that the “light” in them is actually dark, but they do not perceive their self-deception. That is self-deception to the furthest degree. It is tough to break. To break self-deception, follow the basic foundations listed in. v. 26.
I put the word light in quotation marks because Jesus is stating an odd phenomenon. Literally, a light cannot be darkness, but morally one’s ‘light’ can appear to the person to be bright, but it is really dark. Self-deception is powerful.
GrowApp for Matt. 6:22-23
1. What can you do to prevent self-deception and darkness from entering your whole being?
2. What can you do to allow true perception and light to enter your whole being?
RELATED
9. Authoritative Testimony in Matthew’s Gospel
1. Church Fathers and Matthew’s Gospel
2. Archaeology and the Synoptic Gospels
14. Similarities among John’s Gospel and the Synoptic Gospels
1. The Historical Reliability of the Gospels: Introduction to Series
SOURCES
To see the bibliography, please click on this link and scroll down to the bottom.
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