The Single Eye

The Lord sets before us a choice between two conditions of the inner eye, and the whole state of the soul hangs on which it is. The light of the body is the eye, he says; if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light; but if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. The eye here is the inner eye, the aim and intention of the heart, and it is either single or evil, either fixed on one thing or divided between two, and the whole person is flooded with light or with darkness according to which it is.

The word single means simple, undivided, sincere, looking to one thing only. The single eye is the heart with one aim, one love, one master, fixed and focused and whole. The evil eye, its opposite, is the divided eye, the heart that looks two ways at once, that would serve God and also serve itself, that is double and torn. And the Lord places this teaching exactly where he does for a reason, in the midst of his words about treasure, between the treasure in heaven and the impossibility of serving two masters, for the single eye is the heart set on one treasure, and the evil eye is the heart divided between two.

NO MAN CAN SERVE TWO MASTERS

For the Lord says it plainly in the very next breath. No man can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one, and love the other, or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. This is the impossibility the divided eye attempts, to serve two masters at once, God and self, God and money, God and the world, and it cannot be done. The two masters pull in opposite directions, and the soul that tries to follow both is torn in two, serving neither well, at peace in neither, faithful to neither. The single eye has settled the question, choosing one master and being wholly his; the evil eye has not, and is divided forever between claims it cannot both meet.

And the divided soul is an unstable soul. A double minded man, the apostle James says, is unstable in all his ways. The instability runs through everything, for a heart divided at its center cannot be steady at its edges. It is blown about, first this way and then that, now toward God and now toward the world, never settled, never sure, because it has never chosen. Their heart is divided, the prophet says of such a people; now shall they be found faulty. The fault is not in some outward failure but at the root, in the divided heart, and it works its way out into every part of the life, making the whole body, as the Lord says, full of darkness.

TO WILL ONE THING

The single eye, by contrast, is the power and the peace of a life with one aim. One thing have I desired of the LORD, the psalmist says, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life. One thing. Not a hundred competing desires, but one, gathering the whole soul into a single pursuit. This one thing I do, the apostle says, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark. This one thing. The saint is not the one with the most desires but the one with a single desire, the one who has narrowed the scattered wants of the heart to a single aim, and so brought all his strength to bear on one thing.

For there is a great power in singleness that the divided life never knows. The divided soul spends itself in a dozen directions and accomplishes little in any, its strength dissipated among competing aims. The single soul gathers all its strength into one channel and drives deep, like a river pressed into a narrow bed. Purity of heart, it has been well said, is to will one thing, and the single eye is exactly this, the willing of one thing, the fixing of the whole soul on God, so that all its scattered desires are gathered up into the one great desire, and the whole body is filled with the light of a life that knows what it is for.

UNITING THE DIVIDED HEART

But we cannot make our own hearts single by mere effort, for the heart is divided by nature, pulled a hundred ways, and no amount of striving fully unites it. So the psalmist prays for what he cannot produce. Unite my heart, he says, to fear thy name. Unite my heart. He asks God to do the gathering that he cannot do himself, to draw the scattered pieces of his divided heart into one, to make single what is double. The single eye is thus both a discipline we pursue and a gift we ask for, and the soul that would have it must both press toward the one thing and pray to be given the united heart it cannot manufacture.

And the way the heart is united is by the setting of the eye on a single treasure, for where the treasure is one, the eye grows single. The Lord joined the single eye to the single treasure on purpose. Lay up treasure in heaven, he said, for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also; and if the treasure is one, in heaven, in God, then the heart follows it there, and the eye is single. The scattered heart is the heart with scattered treasures; the single heart is the heart with one treasure. Fix the treasure, and the eye is fixed; make God your single treasure, and your eye grows single, and your whole body is full of light.

LOOKING UNTO JESUS

The single eye finds its one object in Christ, and the whole of the Christian life may be gathered into a single command, to keep the eye fixed on him. Looking unto Jesus, the apostle says, the author and finisher of our faith. Looking unto Jesus. There is the single eye in action, the gaze fixed on one, the whole attention of the soul gathered onto Christ and held there. The race is run, the apostle says, by looking unto Jesus, not by looking at the track, or the other runners, or our own feet, or the distance yet to go, but by keeping the eye single, fixed on him, and running toward the one we behold.

Peter learned the difference between the single eye and the divided one in a single dramatic moment. He stepped out of the boat onto the water, and while his eye was single, fixed on Christ, he walked, doing the impossible by the power of the single gaze. But when he saw the wind boisterous, when his eye left Christ and divided between the Lord and the waves, he was afraid, and beginning to sink, he cried, Lord, save me. The single eye on Christ held him up on the water; the divided eye, glancing at the storm, sank him. It is a parable of the whole life. Fixed on Christ, we walk through the impossible; divided between Christ and the trouble, we sink.

So the psalmist made it his settled practice to keep the Lord always before his eye. I have set the LORD always before me, he says; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved. He set the Lord always before him, kept the single eye fixed on God continually, and the fruit of it was steadiness, I shall not be moved. The soul whose eye is single, fixed always on the Lord, is not shaken by the storms that topple the divided, for it is looking not at the storm but at the God who stands above it, and the fixed gaze steadies the whole life.

This is the practical shape of the single eye, not an abstract singleness of purpose in general, but the concrete fixing of the gaze on Christ, again and again, through the day, in the trouble, in the temptation, in the ordinary hours. When the eye wanders to the waves, as Peter’s did, we bring it back to Christ; when the divided heart pulls two ways, we set the Lord again before us. The single eye is kept single by this constant returning of the gaze to its one object, until looking unto Jesus becomes the fixed habit of the soul, and the whole body is full of his light.

So examine the eye of your heart, whether it is single or divided. Have you chosen your one master, or are you still torn between two, trying to serve God and something else, and unstable in all your ways for the trying? Seek the single eye. Will one thing. Narrow the scattered desires of your heart to the single desire for God, and bring all your strength to bear on that. Ask God to unite your divided heart, which you cannot unite yourself. And fix your treasure in one place, in him, that your eye may follow it and grow single. For if thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.