Charles Ellicott Commentary Luke 11:34

Charles Ellicott Commentary

Luke 11:34

1819–1905
Anglican
Charles Ellicott
Charles Ellicott

Charles Ellicott Commentary

Luke 11:34

1819–1905
Anglican
SCRIPTURE

"The lamp of thy body is thine eye: when thine eye is single, thy whole body also is full of light; but when it is evil, thy body also is full of darkness." — Luke 11:34 (ASV)

The light of the body is the eye.—See Note on Matthew 6:22. In some respects the sequence of thought in St. Luke differs from that in St. Matthew, and seems somewhat closer. In the Sermon on the Mount, the company of Christ’s disciples are the light, and each of them is as the lamp on its proper stand, and the teaching as to the light of the body, and the corresponding eye of the soul, is separated from that illustration by our Lord’s comment on the corrupt traditional interpretations of the scribes.

Here the two thoughts are brought into close proximity. The moral sense, the “vision and the faculty divine” that has its intuitions of eternal truths, this is the light which is so set that those who are entering in (this feature, as in Luke 8:16, is peculiar to St. Luke)—the seekers and inquirers who are drawn to look in, as it were, upon the house of Christ’s Church, the unlearned or unbelievers of 1 Corinthians 14:23—may see the light and turn to it.