“But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness.
If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!”
(Matt 6:23, NKJV)
In the previous teaching we employed linguistics to explain that all people are caught up in a world which promotes a perspective on people, lives and the reality which is based on the notion of self-enhancement. From Adam’s time man has been unable to live and judge things on a spiritual basis. According to 1 Cor 15:47 God intended man to have a “life-giving spirit” but after sinning became merely a “living soul”. This notion of soul has three components – the will, the intellect, and the emotions. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil of which man partook positioned him as a being reliant on his senses to navigate his own path within the world, and throught the senses judge which is the right way to follow. From James 3:15 (EMTV) we know that such judgement is rooted in that which is “earthly, sensual, demonic”, the sensual element linked to the five senses.
All individuals who are not born again look at themselves and their environment as existing in this state, “having no hope and [being] without God in the world” (Eph 2:12), an inevitable offshoot of secularization.
Webster’s definition of secular clearly defines the term – “Pertaining to the present world, or to things not spiritual or holy; relating to things not immediately or primarily respecting the soul, but the body; worldly. The secular concerns of life respect making provision for the support of life, the preservation of health, the temporal prosperity of men, of states, etc. Secular power is that which superintends and governs the temporal affairs of men, the civil or political power; and is contradistinguished from spiritual power.”
We are all caught up within this secularization – “But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!” (Matt 6:23).
Scripture tells us that Cain was a “tiller of the ground” (Gen 4:2). He becomes the prototype of natural man who never manages to escape his secular environment. Zech 13:5 (ASV) considers the manifesto of the secular man as being: “I am no prophet, I am a tiller of the ground; for I have been made a bondman from my youth”. The world view of the secular individual is spelled out in Amos 5:16 (MKJV): “And they shall call the tiller to mourning, and those who are skillful in mourning to wailing.” According to Heb 12:17 this mourning and wailing is termed as diligently seeking with tears, without receiving any blessing or salvation, which can be seen as the extensive, dramatic forms the prevailing unrest and search for meaning of the secular individual takes on.
- Sela: Explain the concept of secularization to someone.
- Read: 1 Kings 10; Ecc 6; 2 Tim 1
- Memorise: 2 Tim 1:7
