Luke 11:34-35 Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eyes are healthy, your whole body also is full of light. But when they are unhealthy, your body also is full of darkness. See to it, then, that the light within you is not darkness.

You had to be on your toes around Jesus, because His teaching sometimes took completely unexpected turns. Here, after talking about physical vision, He suddenly changes gears to talk about spiritual perception. This is one reason He repeatedly talked about “ears to hear.” If we just consider the words at face value, we might not get very much out of them, and sometimes they don’t seem to make much sense, as here. How can our light be darkness? However, He was talking at the time to Pharisees, who thought they had a monopoly on spirituality. Immediately after this a Pharisee invited Him to dinner. We don’t know the motive. He may have genuinely wanted to hear more of what Jesus had to say, or he may have been thinking to get Him into a situation where he could trip Him up. Considering what Jesus said in the Pharisee’s house, the latter seems more likely. And Jesus was hardly politically correct in the things He said about the Pharisees! We read this and think, “Yeah, those were really bad guys,” without realizing we may be exactly in their shoes. That’s what Jesus is talking about here. When we are convinced we are right, without God’s Word and His Spirit confirming it, our “light” is all too prone to be darkness! We see examples of this all around us, but have a hard time recognizing when we are the guilty party. It is tragic that different interpretations of the same passage of Scripture can drive wedges, even build walls, between people who should all be children of God together. We need to remember that “God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.” (1 John 1:5) John follows that up with, “If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.” (1 John 1:7) Anything less, and the light in us is darkness.

I have been troubled most of my life by the barriers I have seen between Christians. The simple fact of the matter is, sometimes we love our opinions more than we love the Lord. I’m prone to that too. If I were to go around holier-than-thou, I would be no better than one of the Pharisees Jesus chews out in this chapter! Raised in a missionary home, reading the Bible through for the first time before I was 10, I had lots of light in me, but I let pride darken that light. After all, I hadn’t chosen my parents or my home environment, so what did I have to be proud of? Nevertheless, I got to the point that I felt that any church I walked into was blessed by my mere presence. And I wasn’t even going by the rules the way the Pharisees did! My light had indeed turned to darkness, and I didn’t know it. When I was 24, already a married father, the Lord in His amazing grace tapped me on the shoulder, and, when I turned, had a mirror to show me my soul, just for an instant. I literally collapsed on the floor, crying out, “My Lord and my God!” I saw how dark it all was, and I repented. In the 52 years since then I have grown, not always at an even pace, and I know I have plenty of room yet to grow. I want the light in me to be light indeed, shining out to draw others to the Lord who is the light, for their salvation and His glory.

Father, thank You for this reminder. Thank You for the privilege of sharing Your light with others. May I always do it in full humility and gratitude, so that it won’t turn to darkness. Thank You. Praise God!