22"The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. 23But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!
There are so many different ways to consider this text that I have a tough time trying to decide what Jesus meant.
By speaking of the eye as good, does He mean what you see or does He mean what you look at? There is a subtle difference here. He could mean what you see. It is often amazing how two different people can look at the exact same thing and get totally different reactions or impressions of what they see. If you have such an eye that when you look around you, you see good in everything, your whole body will be filled with light, you will feel goodness. But if your eye does not see goodness around you, your whole body will be full of darkness, you will not feel goodness. Darkness is a lack of light. In this sense a great darkness is a depression. Jesus wants us to look for the goodness that is around us.
Or is Jesus talking about what you look at? Jesus said earlier that if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. If you look for good things to absorb into your heart and mind, your body will be full of light. But if you look for sinful things, your body will be full of darkness.
Or when Jesus talks about the eye being good or bad, is he talking about your ability to see, in a sense, how good your vision is. Darkness is really a lack of light. If your eye is bad that it won't let the light in very well, there is no light to overcome the darkness. Are you able to understand what you see? If you understand, your body will be full of light.
In Matthew 4:12-17 it talks of Jesus being the great light that came to Galilee. Jesus said we are the light of the world. We need to let the light of Jesus in, in order for us to shine our light. Otherwise there will only be darkness.
I've heard the phrase before that the eyes are the window to the soul. Could today's verse be referring to what someone else sees when they look into your eyes? If they look into your eyes and see goodness, they can trust that you are good. If they see badness, they will know that you are bad. For light does not hide darkness, but overcomes it. So if they see good, they will know that there will not be badness hidden somewhere.
It is interesting to me that though the discussion talks of how your body could be full of either light or darkness, Jesus emphasized how great the darkness is rather than how great the light is. I think it is to emphasize how overwhelming the darkness can be to us, and how undesirable it should be. I think Jesus is trying to tell us that there is no such thing as a little bit bad. Bad is bad and affects the whole body.
Yes there are so many ways to consider today's text, but when you really think about it, there is a common lesson that applies to any of these interpretations. This lesson and the previous lesson both express how a little affects a lot. Something little like the things you treasure indicate where your whole heart is. Something little, like a little good or bad indicates where your whole body is. There is no in between. But the good news is these are things under your control. You can change either of these. You can change what you treasure. And light always overcomes darkness. If you but let light in, your whole body will be full of light! You do not have to remain in the darkness!