"But if thine eye be wicked, thy whole body will be dark,"
"This is man's condition unless renewed by grace. In this all important respect the Jew, judged by the light in our Lord Jesus, was no better off than the Gentile. They loved not the disciples whom they saw, still less the God whom they saw not. Had they really loved Him that begot, they had also loved him that was begotten by Him. The Lord made this certain and manifest; for in Him was no sin, yet they reviled Him. Grace and truth came through Him, yet they cast Him out as an eater and winebibber, a friend of tax-gatherers and sinners, instead of recognising the Son of man come to seek and to save that which was lost.
Hence said He to His disciples when nearing the end of His earthly course,
"If the world hate you, ye know that it hath hated me before you. If ye were of the world, the world would love its own; but because ye are not of the world, and I chose you out of the world, on this account the world hath hated you. Remember the word that I said to you, A bondman is not greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they kept my word, they will keep your's also. But they will do all these things to you on account of my name, because they know not him that sent me. If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin. He that hateth me, hateth my Father also. If I had not done among them the works which no other did, they had not had sin; but now they have both seen and hated both me and my Father. But that the word written in their law might be glorified. They hated me without a cause" (John 15:18-25).
What comment could be more direct and simple on the wicked eye, and the whole body dark? It is the awful and unremoved evil of the natural man; the mind of the flesh, which is not only death morally, but enmity against God, whose grace is unintelligible to it, no less than His righteousness by virtue of Christ's atoning death to justify the ungodly, if he believe on Him. The natural man's faith, if faith it is to be called, is to believe in himself, utterly blind to his iniquity and lawlessness and his total ruin before God.
The very fact that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, not reckoning to them their offences, adds, as the words of the Lord Himself prove, immeasurably to man's guilt.
Who so pitiful to failure, who so ready to forgive sins, if they be felt and confessed to Him? But the demonstration of the world's irremediable evil lies in the undeniable truth that, when God was in Christ reconciling it, it refused all reconciliation; when God rose above all offences, it scorned the boon, buffeted the one who proffered and pressed it on their acceptance, spit in His face and crucified Him.
It was no use to make overtures to man. Who could conceive any so great as God had made in Christ. Man was irretrievably ruined. If the Jew boasted that he only was a light of those in darkness, could he deny that he was leader of the blind against the true light, and did his utmost to extinguish what condemned himself no less than the despised Gentile? If therefore the light that was in Israel was thus proved to be darkness, "how great the darkness"!
The only hope for lost man lay in the rejected and crucified Christ; and such was the unfailing grace of God, that His best came out when man did his worst. For Him who knew no sin He made sin for us (who believe), that we might become God's righteousness in Him. It is solely a question of the second man, the last Adam, who once for all — it was enough — suffered for sins, just for unjust, that He might bring us to God, cleansed from every sin by the blood of Jesus Christ His Son. It is God that justifies the believer, as He made Christ sin for us, that we might become His righteousness. What grace! what a salvation!"
From The Eye Wicked
