Expositor's Bible: The Gospel of St LukeBurton, Henry
Religion
Expositor's Bible: The Gospel of St Luke
Burton, Henry
Bible. Luke -- Commentaries
But while Jesus knew well the anatomy of the natural eye, and could and
did heal it of its disorders, putting within the sunken socket the
rounded ball, or restoring to the optic nerve its lost powers, this was
not the only sight He brought. To the companion clauses of this
prophecy, where Jesus proclaims deliverance to the captives, and sets at
liberty them that are bruised, we are compelled to give a spiritual
interpretation; and so "the recovering of sight to the blind" demands a
far wider horizon than the literalistic sense offers. It speaks of the
true Light which lighteth every man, that spiritual photosphere that
environs and enswathes the soul, and of the opening and adjusting of the
spiritual sense; for as sight without light is darkness, so light
without sight is darkness still. The two facts are thus related, each
useless apart from the other, but together producing what we call
vision. The recovering of sight to the blind is thus the universal
miracle. It is the "Let light be" of the new Genesis, or, as we prefer
to call it, the "regeneration." It is the dawn, which, breaking over the
soul, broadens unto the perfect day, the heavenly, the eternal noon.
Jesus Himself recognized this binoculism, this double vision. He says
(John xvi. 16), "A little while, and ye behold Me no more; and again a
little while, and ye shall see Me," using two altogether different
words--the one speaking of the vision of the sense, the other of the
deeper vision of the soul. And it was so. The disciples' vision of the
Christ, at least so long as the bodily presence was with them, was the
earthly, physical vision. The spiritual Christ was, in a sense, lost,
masked in the corporeal. The veil of His flesh hung dense and heavy
before their eyes, and not until it was uplifted on the cross, not until
it was rent in twain, did they see the mysterious Holy Presence that
dwelt within the veil. Nor was the clearer vision given them even now.
The dust of the sepulchre was in their eyes, blurring, and for a time
half-blinding them--the anointing with the clay. The emptied grave, the
Resurrection, was their "pool of Siloam," washing away the blinding
clay, the dust of their gross, materialistic thoughts. Henceforth they
saw Christ, not, as before, ever coming and going, but as the
ever-present, the abiding One. In the fuller light of the Pentecostal
flames the unseen Christ became more near and more real than the seen
Christ ever was. Seeing Him as visible, their minds were holden,
somewhat perplexed; they could neither accomplish much nor endure much;
but seeing Him who had become invisible, they were a company of
invincibles. They could do and they could endure anything; for was not
the I AM with them always?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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