Luke 11:34, “Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light, but when it is bad, your body is full of darkness.”
“Eye” here means something like “perspective” or “mindset” or “way of perceiving and assigning value to the world.” Jesus is not talking about the physical organ of the eye, but the spiritual faculty of perception. And in the context of this mini-parable, the health or sickness of our “eye” is determined by how we perceive and receive Jesus Himself.
In verses 29-32, Jesus rebukes those around Him for failing to recognize Him for who He is (that is to say, as the Son of God and Savior of the World). He then follows this rebuke with His teaching on the “eye.” The point is this: If we perceive the man Jesus of Nazareth to be God in the flesh who alone can save, our eye—our perspective on reality—is healthy and so our body (whole life) will be illumined by this light. However, if we fail to perceive Jesus in this way….if we think of Him as merely a teacher or philosopher or revolutionary etc., then our eye—our perspective on reality—is sickly and our entire life will be darkened. How we perceive Jesus makes all the difference.
If you imagine your perception of the world (“eye”) as an oil lamp, the crucified and risen Jesus might be considered as the wick and the Spirit as the oil who anoints—as well as the flame who ignites—the wick and causes it to become radiant…to burn and yet not be consumed. It is only when the Spirit has caused us to perceive the light of the glory of God radiant in the face of the crucified and risen Jesus that our “eye” (Perception of reality) becomes healthy…..and just as the light of a lamp colors all things that it reveals and is the means by which you see anything in a dark room….so too THIS light (the light of God in Christ by the Spirit) colors and imparts meaning to our entire reality and is the means by which we truly know anything that we know.
