THE MARKS OF MORAL BLINDNESS
[p. 73] THE MARKS OF MORAL BLINDNESS
As light is only from God, and it makes manifest, so darkness is unable to comprehend the light and loves concealment.
The word of God is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. It is by His word that every believing soul is enlightened; and as he walks in it with integrity of heart, he finds it is a path of shining light which shines more and more unto the perfect day. As we walk in the light we advance in it; but if we accept it, and then grow insensible as to God’s claims upon us because of it, and end by refusing it, we become blinded. Concerning faith we have put away conscience and we are wrecked. It is to be noted the readiness there is to receive truth, while there is no purpose of being controlled by it. Thus we see in each of the first three examples of the effects of the word in Mark 4, that even when it was received with joy there was no real work in the conscience. The reason of this is that the truth has been received as mere information and as human learning, instead of as light from God to direct one how to walk and behave oneself on the earth according to God. If the word of God is accepted, ignorance cannot be pleaded; and if it does not act on the conscience and walk, there must be either dullness, perverseness, or blindness. When there is dullness, it is because the word has not been received in power. It is in the hearing that the dullness really is, as the apostle says, “dull of hearing”. Consequently he expounds the word more fully to them. But when it is blindness, it is marked by stumbling, like a man losing his way in a fog. The cause of this necessarily is that when one accepts truth in any measure, it leads him into a new path, in which he endures only for a time; he loses his way, like the man who began to build the tower and had not sufficient to finish. Lot accepted the path of faith for a little time, but when he was diverted from it by seeking a present advantage, he became blind, and he [p. 74] never recovered his former position. Abraham was weak in faith when he went down to Egypt, but when he returned to the land, he was proved to be truly restored, because he was more in faith than ever. When I am truly restored I am morally stronger than before my fall. Lot surely returned with Abraham to the land, but present advantage, the course of this world, was too strong for him, as it was for Demas in another day; and he pitches his tent toward Sodom. A believer is not morally blinded because of a fall. A just man falleth seven times, but he riseth again, whereas in the case of moral blindness there is a deliberate surrender of what has been accepted as the truth of God. I have known instances when one has, when challenged as to the truth of the church and its heavenly position, answered that he had given it up as untenable; that man was morally blinded. It is of very solemn interest to us at this moment. Now why is it that many who had accepted the truth as to the church’s union with Christ in heaven are now, if not avowedly, indirectly teaching that it is impracticable and impossible? And be it noted that every one who refuses or is satisfied with his ignorance as to this side of truth is incapable or unwilling to be set right as to any question of importance before the minds of the Lord’s people.
The intention of light is to give light; hence the candle of the body is the eye, and if the eye be single the whole body is light itself; when there is not light from a man’s walk and ways there is not a single eye there. The true place of every christian here is to be a light of the world, and in order to be a light there must be a conformity to the mind of the Lord with relation to everything, for wherever there is not, the body is not light. Light is at first sweet, the eye delights in it; but it is the path indicated by the light which tests the measure of faith in the soul. The one who sees delights in seeing; but when I see as it were too much, when what I see imposes on me a path of abnegation and suffering, and when I find [p. 75] that another is open to me which offers present ease without the forfeiture of any christian standing then, if my faith is weak and my heart not fully devoted, I choose the latter; but in doing so, I allow a dark part, and there is no bright shining of a candle in consequence of it. Such a person has not forfeited the place and portion which grace had conferred on him, and which his heart enjoys, but there is an end to his progress and usefulness as an example. If the light I have received does not correct and dispel the dark spot in myself, surely I cannot be a witness of it, for it is not morally effective in myself. He that hath, to him shall be given; but when I see a truth and do not set myself to act in keeping with it, but rather shrink from it because it would disturb and disarrange any cherished or preconcerted course, surely no more light will be given to me. I do not necessarily lose all I have had, but there is no advance, and if I persist I become blinded, I begin before very long not even to see what once I had accepted.
Lot does not cease to be a righteous soul in Sodom, but he seems entirely to have lost the light in which he first started from Mesopotamia. The ten spies had seen and had eaten of the grapes of Eshcol as fully as Caleb and Joshua, but because of men and their works, the giants and the cities walled up to heaven, they despised the pleasant land, and led the whole congregation of Israel into their apostasy. They had the clearest and fullest evidence of the good of the land, and they testified, “surely it floweth with milk and honey”; and yet they promoted the rejection of the light of which they were the best expositors, and in doing so, they became blind, for they end in saying it is “a land that eateth up the inhabitants thereof”. Caleb and Joshua were faithful to the light; and they became a light, though, alas! an unheeded one, to all at that time in Israel.
Mark, in a moment of fear, and from want of faith, departed from Pamphylia, but most probably he had not in faith accepted the course which was only then [p. 76] opening out to the apostle Paul. But he repented, and returned to aid the apostle in a darker and more difficult hour (2 Timothy 4: 11). Barnabas dropped out of the light because led by his natural feelings; but in neither of these cases do we find that they reject the light they have received, by advocating — like Lot, or the spies, or Demas — a course entirely outside and apart from what they once held. It is one thing to be afraid of the path which light opens out to me, and another, after accepting it, to embrace and advocate one quite opposed to it.
The two and a half tribes saw full well the path of testimony, but they were drawn aside by the things which suited them on this side Jordan. They exonerated themselves by offering to send over their armed men. They would, as it were, preach the truth and write about it and be known as defenders of it, but practically in their own lives and homes they determined to renounce it, and, as is always the case, they suffered sooner from the enemy than the dwellers in the land.
Jonah, Samson, and David were each, in a distinct way, perverse, and fell grievously; but they were not blinded, they yielded to their own passions; it was not to go contrary to the truth, but to please themselves. They had not been reproved like Lot to no purpose. “He, that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy”. The perverse one is bent on something distinctly selfish. The blinded one always keeps up the name or position which morally he has abandoned, like Israel in Ezekiel 33: 31, 32. “They come unto thee as the people cometh, and they sit before thee as my people, and they hear thy words, but they will not do them: for with their mouth they shew much love, but their heart goeth after their covetousness. And, lo, thou art unto them as a very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice, and can play well on an instrument: for they hear thy words, but they do them not”. The conscience retains the form long after the heart has departed from the truth.
One is ‘dull’ when inattentive, which ends in sleeping, complete inactivity. Such an one requires to be awaked: “Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light”. This state is quite distinct from blindness, because while there is no activity in the dull, there is plenty of it in a wrong direction in the one blinded.
One mark more. The one morally blinded knows not at what he stumbles. He does not seem to have a sound judgment about anything. Everything he undertakes generally proves a failure, and he takes the wrong side of everything, as the scribes and Pharisees had done in our Lord’s day. And as in the Laodicean state, there is a boastfulness, when “thou ... knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked”.
The Lord in His rich mercy preserve His people from moral blindness.