Beware of What the Eye Sees and of Serving Two Masters

“The eye is the lamp of the body.  So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light.  But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!  No man can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.  You cannot serve God and money.” – Matthew 6:22-24 (ESV).

Jesus continues to teach in these verses about the futility of divided loyalties for the Christian. “You cannot serve God and mammon” from the familiar King James Version is translated “money” in the New English and other versions.  And how are we gradually tempted to have an inordinate and greedy love for money?  How do we allow the pursuit of riches to become our master?  How do we become slaves to what we sometimes term “the almighty dollar”?  Jesus said, “The eye is the lamp of the body.”  In Jewish literature and thought, “the eye” was similar to “the heart” with both meaning the center of one’s inner life.  Still in the context of the subject Jesus had just treated of “laying up treasures in heaven,” He turns to this instruction using the eye as the instrument of our body whereby we observe, then covet, then turn to the darkness of greed and idolizing what wealth can bring.  Making money our chief pursuit amounts to making it an idol in our life, and nothing should be placed above God.  He demands our supreme devotion.  And where does the temptation begin?  With the eye, with seeing first and wanting next.  We so often hear, and even tend to follow this adage:  “Let your conscience be your guide.”  But conscience first must be trained to be pure and focused on what is right and good before we can trust it to be our guide.  Likewise, the eye which is the organ of sight and therefore becomes a symbol of the insight we receive to live by, must be trained and controlled not to go astray and lead us into temptation.  Conscience is like the eye.  When the eye is in a healthy state, the whole body is full of light.  But when diseases of the eye such as we know in modern ophthalmology as cataracts or macular degeneration afflict the eye, vision becomes greatly impaired.  When the eye is unhealthy, it is like darkness enters the body.  When we focus on the things of the world and allow them to take our allegiance instead of our love for and service to God, we have a bad case of spiritual impaired vision.  Our focus is taken off the Lord Jesus and placed on the things of the world.  “Beware!”  Jesus warned.

Virtue can so easily shade off into vice almost imperceptibly.  First we see; then we want.  First we wade a little into the world’s way and before we know it we are swimming in its deep waters of separation from God.  Jesus knew where that temptation lay for so many people.  It is all bound up in our desire to gain more of this world’s treasures—or “worldliness” called “mammon” in the Aramaic language and translated into a term we can well understand—money. Jesus saw the two major allegiances of man as to God or to mammon, to God or to the ungodly pursuit of wealth.  “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (6:21).  Jesus concludes with a statement we must take to heart and apply to our lives.  It is a matter of undivided loyalty:  It amounts to believing and acting upon this strong admonition: “You cannot serve (be a slave to) God and money.”  This is Jesus speaking.  We should heed and follow.