March 15: The Good Eye

The Sermon on the Mount, part 2 

Matthew 6-7 

In Thursday’s blog I discussed Matthew 5:17, “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill.” Specifically, I dealt with the real meaning of the words destroy and fulfill as Jesus applied them in that statement. The Gospels are full of such statements – Jewish idioms and sayings that lose their meaning when a working knowledge of the first century Jew is not known and understood.

Jesus employed another Jewish idiom in Matthew 6:22-23 when he spoke of a good eye and a bad eye. For the Jew of Jesus’ day, if one had a good eye, he would have been considered a generous person; if one had a bad eye, it meant he was stingy.

This makes perfect sense when you consider the context of these two verses. Jesus had just finished speaking about laying up treasures in heaven, and in the verses that would follow he made the point that we cannot serve the two masters of God and money. This entire section (Matthew 6:19-24) deals with our money and financial resources, and these verses concerning the eye fit perfectly.

If you have a good eye – that is, you are generous – then your whole body will be filled with the light that is supplied by the lamp of that eye. But if you have a bad eye – that is, you are stingy – then your whole body will be filled with darkness. At the risk of being redundant I will repeat this point: If you are generous, then you will be filled with light; if you are stingy, then you will be filled with darkness.

Having a better understanding of these verses provides for us an interesting aspect of the FULLER LIFE. Jesus came so that we would have abundant life – life that is overflowing and more than what we need. Part of the purpose of giving to us more than what we need is to provide us the means to bless others. That will not happen if we are stingy, if our eye is bad. Make sure you are generous, that your eye is good; and as God blesses you with that FULLER LIFE, be ready to bless others.