Spiritual Sight

The Man Whose Eye Is Opened

Numbers 22;31; Numbers 24:3, 4; Mark 10:46, 51, 52; Mark 8:23-25; John 9:1, 7, 25; Ephesians 1:17-19; Revelation 3:18; Acts 26:18.

I think the phrase used by Balaam might very well stand at the head of our present meditation - "The man whose eye is opened."

The Root Malady of Our Time

As we contemplate the state of things in the world today, we are very deeply impressed and oppressed with the prevailing malady of spiritual blindness. It is the root malady of the time. We should not be far wrong if we said that most, if not all, of the troubles from which the world is suffering, are traceable to that root, namely, blindness. The masses are blind; there is no doubt about that. In a day which is supposed to be a day of unequaled enlightenment, the masses are blind. The leaders are blind, blind leaders of the blind. But in a very large measure, the same is true of the Lord's people. Speaking quite generally, Christians are today very blind!

A General Survey of the Ground of Spiritual Blindness

The passages which we have just read cover in a general way a great deal, if not all, of the ground of spiritual blindness. They begin with those who never have seen, those born blind.

Then there are those who have been given vision, but are not seeing very much, nor very clearly - "men as trees, walking" - but who come to see yet more perfectly under a further work of grace.

Then there are those who have true and clear sight  as far as it goes, but for whom a vast realm of Divine thought and purpose still waits upon a fuller work of the Holy Spirit. "That He would grant unto you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him; having the eyes of your heart enlightened, that ye may know what is the hope of His calling, what the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what the exceeding greatness of His power to us-ward who believe." Those words are addressed to people who have sight, but for whom this great realm of Divine meaning still waits upon their knowing a fuller work of the Holy Spirit in the matter of spiritual sight.

Then, again, there are those who have seen and have followed, but who have lost spiritual sight, of which they were once possessed, and are now blind, but with the most fatal additional factor; they think they see and they are blind to their own blindness. That was the tragedy of Laodicea.

~T. Austin-Sparks~

(continued with # 2)