Desires of the eye……

“Guard me as if I were the pupil in your eye.
Hide me in the shadow of your wings”.   Psalms 17:8 GW

Scriptures use our eyes as indicators of our relationship with the Lord---whether we are believers or not and whether or not we are living our lives for the Lord.

Unbelievers have “undiscerning” eyes toward the Lord and are unable to “see” Him (Jer. 5:21).  

Believers on the other hand have eyes that can “see” God---because He has opened their eyes by grace to understand their need of Jesus Christ as their Savior. 

In his trial before Agrippa, Paul reports that the Lord sent him to the Gentiles in order to open their eyes so that they would turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins ….”          (Acts 26:18).

Faith is likened to open eyes, unbelief to blind eyes.   The gospel is likened to the light that shines in open eyes, and unbelief to the darkness produced by the power of Satan.  

Eyes symbolize our spiritual condition before the Lord.

“The haughty eyes of man have been humbled, and bowed down hath been the loftiness of men, and set on high hath Jehovah alone been in that day”.                 Isa. 2:11 YLT

Eyes can be used to sin or to glorify the Lord.   We choose where we look, and where we look indicates the attitude of our hearts.   The psalmist chooses not to be tempted and says so in the image of the eyes: “I will not set before my eyes a worthless thing” (Ps. 101:3).   

Sin is a choice.   If we choose to “look” in its direction, we should not be surprised when we succumb to the temptation.

One sin that is often associated with eyesight is the sin of idolatry.

Idolatry is a deliberate sin, a turning of the eyes away from God to something else.   There is an irony in the OT when the writers used the eyes as an image of idolatry, for the idols themselves cannot see.   “Their idols are made of silver and gold, they are man-made.  They have mouths but cannot speak, eyes, but cannot see”            (Ps. 115:4-5, 135:16). 

It is with the eyes that we commit the sin of lust.   Christ warns men not to look lustfully after women (Matt. 5:28), but even a woman can fall into the sin of lust, as Potiphar’s wife demonstrates (Gen. 39:7).   Lust is not restricted merely to wrongful sexual desire, however; rather it includes an inordinate desire for anything that is not rightfully ours.

“As Death and Destruction are never satisfied, so the eyes of a person are never satisfied…” (Prov. 27:20).   It is as if death is not satisfied until everyone has died; so too our eyes look to sin all the time. 

John speaks of the “desire of the eyes,” along with “the desire of the flesh” and “the arrogance produced by material possessions,” as the sources of our sin (I Jn 2:16).  We can choose whether we let our “eyes” look to lust or not.

Perhaps the root sin is pride.   As we might expect, the Bible associates pride with our eyes.   The Word is full of warnings against pride.  “Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight” (Isa. 5:21).  

In Proverbs 3:7 we are warned against pride: “Do not be wise in your own estimation, fear the Lord and turn away from evil”.    Being “wise in our own eyes” amounts to pride, for we set ourselves up against others and even God. 

C.S. Lewis said, “Pride leads to every other vice; it is the complete anti-God state of mind”.