If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness! (Matt. 6:23)
I have always been extremely nearsighted, to the point where I’m essentially helpless without contacts or glasses. Bumps in the night scare me sometimes because my eyesight simply would not permit me to see an intruder immediately or make sense of an emergency situation. Because my eyes do not work properly, I cannot trust the information I get from my eyes.
Imagine if I were to insist that my perception was the healthy perception, and those with normal sight were the unhealthy ones. What blindness that would be! If I want to truly see, I need to accept that my vision needs correction. If I insist that I see already, then how great my blindness is!
It is tempting to believe that we already see, that our biases are automatically biblical, that our political preferences are God-ordained, that our sense of right and wrong is automatically God’s sense of right and wrong. If this is what we believe sanctification is, we are mistaken. Instead, a heart truly made perfect in love is a heart that gratefully accepts more light when it is offered, a heart that has perfectly learned to quit resisting correction and instead recognize it for the gift it is. How foolish we are when we believe that nothing in our vision needs to be corrected! How foolish to believe our darkness is already light!
Joyfully open your heart to God’s correction.
Michael Jordan is the dean of the chapel at Houghton College (New York), where he also serves as chair of the department of biblical studies, theology, and philosophy.
© 2020 Wesleyan Publishing House. Reprinted from Light from the Word. Used by permission. Scriptures taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®.
