“Your eye is a lamp that provides light for your body. When your eye is good, your whole body is filled with light. But when your eye is bad, your whole body is filled with darkness. And if the light you think you have is actually darkness, how deep that darkness is!” (Matthew 6:22-23 NLT)
The eye of your heart is illuminated by the life of the Lord Jesus who lives there in the person of His Holy Spirit. When your “eye” is good, in other words, when the Lord Jesus is reigning supreme in your heart, there is no darkness that can defeat you. However, if you think the Lord lives in your heart when in fact He doesn’t, there’s no greater darkness.
Darkness is essentially a state of mind. Our mind feeds our heart, in the sense that what fills our mind will fill our heart. What we think about comes about. Feed your mind filth and the light in your heart will be extinguished. Your effectiveness for the Lord will be null and void. That’s why repentance begins in the mind.
When we’re driving, we turn on our turn signal to indicate we’re anticipating a change of direction. In conversion to Christ, when we’re ready to change our direction, or in other words, when we’re ready to allow the Lord to remove the darkness in our heart and life, we must first change our mind, allowing our thoughts to be conformed to the likeness of Jesus. What does that look like? It looks like confessing our sin, our inability to forgive ourselves. To confess means to agree with God’s estimation of something.
For example, Jesus taught that to lust after a woman is to commit adultery with her in our heart; to think the act is to perform the act. So, to confess is to agree that God said it was wrong; therefore, it IS wrong and needs to be forgiven. To believe we can ignore the clear teaching of the Bible and have a right relationship with God is like driving 90 mph on the freeway in rush hour traffic believing we won’t have or cause an accident.
Repentance is not our attempt to clean up our own act. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” Removing the darkness from our life requires an act of God, not a new determination to be a good person.
If we could be good enough to get to heaven on our own, then Jesus didn’t need to die. If we had the capacity to remove the darkness from our own lives, we wouldn’t need to be cleansed by the life-giving blood of our Savior. That’s why Jesus used such strong language when He said in Mark 3:28: “I tell you the truth, all sin and blasphemy can be forgiven, but anyone who blasphemes the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven. This is a sin with eternal consequences.”
The role of the Holy Spirit is to reveal God’s Truth, then, secondly, to enable a person to recognize God’s truth when He enters their lives. The reason this sin can’t be forgiven is essentially because its origin isn’t human, but satanic. It’s following the ways of Satan so long that his lies become truth to a person. I believe that’s what Jesus was referring to in Matthew 7:6 when He said: “Don’t waste what is holy on people who are unholy. Don’t throw your pearls to pigs!”
Before a person’s darkness can be removed, they first must recognize that it is indeed darkness.
Food for thought.
Blessings, Ed 😊
Walking With Jesus 