MEDITATIONS OF J. N. DARBY ON LUKE 11
How many things the Lord Jesus had to go through in His pathway of love in the world!
Verse 54 of our chapter shows what He found there. No one could grapple like Him with all the difficulties of faith which Satan arouses. That is encouraging for us, feeble beings that we are, for He who won the victory did it for us. Life in Jesus has aroused from all sides the most terrible opposition of the flesh and of darkness, for light cannot be reconciled with darkness, and the result has been a testing manifestation of what is in the heart of man. For
those who walk according to the. Lord, there is an abundant provision of light and grace, but at the same time the character of darkness is uncovered.
When there are no real needs, one is put off by the first difficulty that presents itself, but where there exists a sincere desire, a simple eye, a need produced by grace, one finds an answer from God. Daniel prays and fasts three weeks; the answer was ready from the beginning, but God thus tested the sincerity of his desire and answered him at the end of these three weeks of exercise. We must have the Holy Spirit to be led through the world; His presence foils all natural ideas. God has not come down into the world to leave man’s heart where it finds itself. Christ is come, because the course of the world is the broad way which leads to destruction; His presence has demonstrated the irremediable evil in which the world is plunged, and His way is wisdom according to God, a way which the eagle’s eye could not discern.
The manifestation of the power of God in Jesus has for result that man attributes it to Beelzebub (Luke 11: 15) and, on the other hand, he demands a sign (Luke 11: 16), but Jesus gives none, for those who have the simple eye have only need of God’s word, and of a guide, the power of the Holy Spirit. Happiness consists in that. In this world which prefers to renounce reason in attributing to the devil the goodness of God, rather than to open their eyes to this good, the presence of Christ brings out the evil which Satan would like to hide. Jesus says—“Blessed are they who hear the word of God and keep it” (Luke 11: 28). He refuses to give them a sign. Jonah was a figure of His death—the death and the rejection of the Messiah, sign accorded to this generation, demonstrated the total iniquity of this latter. It is also the same sign which God gives today to convince the world. Jonah did not do miracles—he preached, and conscience was put to the test. The Lord insists on this action on the conscience. John the baptist did not do miracles either.
Jesus, in asking them if his testimony was of heaven or of men, appealed to their conscience.
The light was there, in His Person; the light of the body is not this light which was there, but the eye. It was a question of the intention of the heart, of the clearness of the eye. If the eye is clear, the whole body is illuminated. I have only one question to ask myself—Is my eye simple? From the moment that the purpose of the heart is set on Christ alone, there is no uncertainty. When I see clearly, I know where to put my foot, or place my hand. Would one dare to say that Christ has not given light, that the fault is with Him? If one does not see clearly, one is looking at something other than Christ.
We have a promise attached to this state of soul. God does not wish to lead it if it is in a bad state, because the evil would remain. It is a great privilege to have Christ as light. If there were nothing but Christ in the world, and if we had to do this or that, we would never hesitate, and it will be the same if we have only Christ in the heart.
Would you dare to say that Christ will lead you in a path which would have bad consequences for you? I have no need of anything other than to see Christ—can I say that the light is lacking? No, light is not lacking, it is the eye which is lacking. “See therefore that the light which is in thee be not darkness” (Luke 11: 35). When the light of the body is darkness, when the eye is not clear, your inward parts are full of plunder and wickedness (Luke 11: 39), while, in the same proportion, the outside takes on importance. One attaches great value to forms, to ceremonial, to what there is exteriorly respectable in religion; one holds to the first place, to salutations, to marks of deference in public. But Jesus considers the eye, that is to say the motives of the heart. In the wicked eye there is no appearance of evil—one professes a very great respect for the testimony rendered in centuries past and one rejects the present testimony. It is that the past testimony on which one prides oneself
does not reach the conscience and one does not receive him whom God sends today.
At the end of the chapter, the Lord points out the darkness which reigns there where Christ is not. It is not a question of exterior relations with Christ—the whole question turns on this point, “If your eye is simple, all your body also is full of light”.
Faith looks at Christ, as if it had only Him in the world.
16 June 1844