I like to drink my coffee at a heat slightly above room temperature. This is mainly driven by my inability to eat or drink anything hot. I wish I had some medical or manly excuse for this weakness, but the truth is, I just can’t handle the heat. After pouring coffee into my thermos, I typically put it in the freezer for about an hour to make it drinkable.
Imagine my surprise earlier this week when I absent-mindedly reached for my thermos and took a very confident gulp of scalding-hot coffee. I resisted my initial impulse to spew the coffee all over my desk and instead chose to painfully swallow the boiling brew. After collecting myself, I asked the obvious question: how did this happen?
A brief jog in my memory brought to mind the unfortunate series of events leading to the incident. While preparing my coffee, I was listening to an audio book and was at a rather engrossing point in the narrative. Needless to say, the coffee missed my typical “freezer phase” due to my absent-mindedness…
So, how did I find myself pouring steaming hot coffee into my ill-prepared mouth? The answer is just as obvious as it may seem: I had filled the thermos with steaming hot coffee.
In Matthew 6, Jesus uses a different illustration to make a similar point:
Matthew 6:22-23 – The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness! (ESV)
The eyes are a member of our body that take in information—the same can be said of all our senses (vision, hearing, smell, taste, and touch). Each sense correlates to a specific part of our body that acts as a receptor to this information (with the exception of touch, which most of our body is able to perceive). What we expose to these information-ingesting members determines what it receives. I shouldn’t be shocked when my nose takes in a foul smell if I’ve volunteered to change my baby’s diaper. When I go to a concert without my earplugs (yes, I’m an old man in that way), I should expect my ears to be ringing for the rest of the evening.
Jesus is using one of those “information receptors”—our eyes—to illustrate a concept that goes well beyond the idea of literal sight. What we expose ourselves to will inevitably be the very thing that fills us. Jesus is not as concerned about what we smell, taste, or touch (Mark 7:14-23). He’s far more concerned about how we’re being filled, spiritually…
A healthy eye, like a good lamp, will project light, because light is what fills it. But if someone is allowing darkness to enter and abide, then it will project the darkness within. This conclusion is as obvious and inevitable as finding steaming hot coffee in a thermos recently filled with a freshly brewed pot.
So far, the premise has been rather obvious: you’re full of whatever fills you. It’s not until we get into the implications of that truth when matters can become confused—though unnecessarily. Why is my teenager depressed? Where is my anxiety coming from? How could my friend be jealous? Or, to state each of them in the form of the question I asked after my unfortunate coffee incident: how did this (depressed/anxiety/jealousy) happen? For some reason, we have a tendency to abandon the logic of Matthew 6:22-23 when facing such scenarios. “My teenager is depressed because of the season,” “I’m anxious because of a chemical imbalance,” and “my friend is jealous because she’s underprivileged.”
While circumstances and our own physical nature certainly affect us, we ought not abandon the superseding truth of Christ’s illustration to explain or even excuse what our receptors are ingesting (or the “light” our lamps are projecting). The most helpful example to bring us back to the prevailing truth is found in the gospel narrative, itself.
Jesus was not the only person crucified on that darkest of days. Two others were being executed on either side of him. Matthew 27:44, Mark 15:32, and Luke 23:39-42 each recount the response of the other two recipients of that day’s capital punishment. Matthew and Mark simply say, “…the robbers who were crucified with [Jesus] also reviled him…” Luke gives a more detailed account of the two, showing one of them to turn a drastic corner and embrace Christ in the end. Regardless, the initial response of both men was to allow vitriol to pour out. Though He, too, was enduring the torture of crucifixion, was the response of Christ the same?
His response couldn’t be further from their behavior. From the cross, “Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do’” (Luke 23:34). The two thieves emitted bile, and Jesus poured forth forgiveness. Getting back to our question: how did this happen? The answer is the same: the two men were filled with indignant wrath, so that’s the darkness their “lamp” revealed. Conversely, Jesus was filled with immeasurable love, so forgiveness and consideration of others were the rays of light emanating from His glory.
Getting back to our three illustrations, prolonged seasons of sadness will follow great loss. If our aforementioned teenager just lost his mother, “depression” is the logical result as he remembers his mother, recalls sweet memories, and mourns the loss of her in his life. Sorrow has filled him because his circumstances are sorrowful. So long as this sadness doesn’t descend into sin (e.g., bitterness, anger, etc.), his response is appropriate to his setting. But a teenager who has not experienced any justifiable loss and who sinks into a well of depression ought to be questioned with a higher level of scrutiny. What is filling him, and what is he full of? The same question applies to our struggle with anxiety or our friend’s bout of jealousy.
When the apostle Paul was considering his unbelieving Jewish counterparts, he exclaims, “I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers…” (Romans 9:2-3a). That same Paul, while unjustly detained in a bleak Roman prison, writes to his beloved Philippian church: “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:4-7)
The former statement is dripping with sadness. The latter is shockingly hopeful. The differentiating factor is this: Paul sought to be filled with Christ. Therefore, his appropriate response when considering those destined for an eternity of hell is one of intense aguish. Because above all else, Paul valued Christ (Philippians 3:7-11). Likewise, he was unphased by his own circumstances when writing to the Philippians, because he was suffering for the gospel (Philippians 1:12). In fact, he was able to rejoice amidst the suffering.
Jesus, being the light of the world (John 8:12), emanated light from His very nature regardless of His circumstances. Paul showed through the “lamp” of his eyes to be filled with Jesus by how he responded to what he endured. Brothers and sisters: we are full of whatever fills us… If we ingest darkness (i.e., listen to gossip, look at vile images, succumb to intoxication, etc.), and digest darkness (i.e., think about or delight in sin), we ought not be surprised when our “lamp” emits a great darkness. Fill up on Christ, and call one another to do the same, and we will be the light Jesus calls us to be (Matthew 5:14-16).
Photo by Sixteen Miles Out on Unsplash