Sight practically monopolizes our senses. More than any other sense, we rely on sight to guide us through the day. On any given morning, we do not smell our way to the shower, taste our way to the toothbrush, touch our way to our vehicle, or hear our way to work. In all these things and more we depend on sight to lead us.

Our lives would be drastically different if we lost our sight. It would be hard to maintain our current level of independence. We would have to trust people more. Clear communication would become increasingly important. We would evaluate things differently. Our perception of beauty would be completely changed. Our whole way of living would need renovation.

Why? Because we are people at the mercy of sight.

However, sight is not always reliable. Appearances can be deceiving. Our eyes are tricked by optical illusions. Our point of view can block us from fully taking in our surroundings. Our clear vision of one object can completely obstruct our view of another object. Our judgment is often clouded by sight. A person’s good looks can blind us to his or her bad character. A person’s disordered appearance can blind us to his or her good qualities.

Because of the limitations of sight, it is no surprise that “[f]rom a biblical viewpoint, sight is not necessarily at the top of the sensory ladder.”[1] In contrast to being dominated by the sense of sight, we are called to “walk by faith and not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7). In spite of its incessant desire to rule our lives, we must put sight into its proper place.

Sight in the Bible

One of the dominant themes in the Hebrew Bible (what we often call the Old Testament) is that God cannot be seen in the ordinary sense. When Moses desires to see God’s glory, God responds by offering to give Moses a glimpse of his “back.” Moses is forbidden from seeing God’s face. God does this for Moses’ protection: “You cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live” (Exodus 33:20). God’s glory must be mediated.[2] It cannot be directly experienced without dire consequences.

This does not forbid the possibility of a “face to face” encounter with God. This experience is not a direct, unmediated vision of God’s essence, but rather, is an intimate and personal encounter with God – an experience of tender closeness: “the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend” (Exodus 33:11; cf. Deuteronomy 34:10).[3]

In the New Testament, the coming of Jesus changes everything. The reason: Jesus is God with a human face. In the Old Testament, no one could see God and live. Now, Jesus makes God visible. John puts it like this:

And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth… For of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace. For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ. No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him. (John 1:14, 16-18)

Jesus is “the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15). He makes visible the invisible. He allows us to see God in and through his humanity. It is this wondrous truth that overwhelmed and overjoyed the apostles: “We heard it with our own ears, saw it with our own eyes, verified it with our own hands. The Word of Life appeared right before our eyes, we saw it happen! And now we’re telling you… The infinite Life of God himself took shape before us” (1 John 1:1-2, The Message).

Though the apostles directly saw and touched, the same does not hold true for us. We have never actually seen Jesus. Our experience of Jesus has been mediated to us through the apostolic witness. We believe what we believe about Jesus because we trust that the apostles faithfully communicated their experience of Jesus – an experience open to all through faith. It is for this reason that the faith we possess is classically labeled “apostolic.”

The apostles were quite aware of the tension that we would inhabit. For example, Peter writes, “Although you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy” (1 Peter 1:8). Jesus pronounces a special blessing on those of us who believe through the apostolic witness. Speaking to Thomas he says, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe” (John 20:29).

The Holy Spirit – also called the Spirit of Christ – mediates the presence of Christ to us. Because Christ comes to us through the Spirit, our experience of Christ remains partial and incomplete in this life. We truly, but not fully, engage with the living Christ. Along the way, we patiently await the full consummation of our faith – seeing Jesus not just with the eyes of faith, but with our very own eyes: “We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is” (1 John 3:2). This transforming vision – the Beatific vision which is the culmination of our faith – is the goal toward which we strive. [4]

Until this glorious day, we recognize that our spiritual vision is limited. It is spotty, cloudy, sometimes unreliable, never fully formed. The apostle Paul put it like this: “We know only in part” (1 Corinthians 13:9). He continues, “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known” (1 Corinthians 13:12).

Spiritual Sight

Because of the inherent limitations of sight, the Bible calls us to spiritual sight – to “walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7). Physical sight is one of the least reliable aids to our spiritual progress. Indeed, sight can be an obstacle that hinders true knowledge of God.

Jesus warns that living by sight alone is spiritually dangerous. He challenges his disciples in Mark 8:18: “Do you have eyes, and fail to see?” He speaks of the sighted Pharisees as “the blind leading the blind” (Matthew 15:14). According to Jesus, the simple possession of eyes and ears is no guarantee of spiritual awareness.

Even worse, it is possible to “close our eyes” to spiritual truth. We need to daily pray that our eyes would be opened by God’s Spirit. The spiritual realm of reality eludes and evades those who rely exclusively on their sight to navigate their way in the world.

When our eyes are open, we begin to perceive a new emerging spiritual reality – a new creation arising from the old (see 2 Corinthians 5:17). The old world, which is fading – the reality accessed by sight alone – is not ultimate. The spiritual realm is the place where we are truly integrated as whole beings. What we lack in our senses is made complete in God’s Spirit. This is behind Paul’s admonition in 2 Corinthians 4:16-18:

So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:16-18)

The first step of faith is to realize that there is more to this world and our lives than meets the eye. Sight alone can be deceptive. This truth is behind Ferlo’s statement that “[f]rom a biblical viewpoint, sight is not necessarily at the top of the sensory ladder.”[5]

Perhaps one of the reasons that sight does not hold a prominent place in spiritual formation is because it allows us to keep our distance. Every other sense demands that we approach the object we desire to experience. Touch and taste especially require that we be unnervingly close. However, we can observe something without participating, acting, or even caring. We can even close our eyes if we choose! For this reason, sight holds the potential to give us the illusion that we are engaged with something without actually participating in it. God desires that we participate in a real relationship with him and our world. Maybe it is because of this that our other senses are more reliable in establishing a true spiritual connection with God.

Ways to Set Christ before Our Eyes

“Whenever a person turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away… But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:16, 18).

Spiritual sight is not perfect or complete. It is something we develop over time. We are able to do this because the veil that obscures our vision has been removed in Christ by the Spirit (2 Corinthians 3:16).

In light of this, Paul calls us to spiritual transformation through a greater glimpse of Jesus’ glory. He recognizes that our vision remains clouded. We “behold as in a mirror.” In ancient times, mirrors were made of brass or some other metal, and thus did not provide a crystal-clear reflection. Paul assumes that we see the glory of Jesus in this way – in a cloudy, distorted, somewhat-true and somewhat-false way. In other words, we are able to partially, yet truly, glimpse God’s glory in Christ.

With this in mind, there are a number of ways to seek a greater glimpse of Christ’s glory through the sense of sight.

First, the apostolic witness recorded in the four Gospels provides us with four thematic portraits of the glories of Christ. By reading these accounts, we see Christ’s holiness, beauty, compassion, grace, wisdom, kindness, and love. We learn of Jesus in order to follow him more closely. We see his beautiful and attractive character. He becomes altogether lovely in our sight.

Second, although largely forgotten by the Western Church (and especially the Protestant Church), holy icons provide us with a means to see the beauty of Christ. Icons are more than a teaching device for the illiterate. They are “windows of heaven” which give us insight into spiritual realities. When presenting Jesus, icons picture his humanity as soaked through with the divine life. Jesus is pictured in such a way as to reveal his full humanity and his full divinity. The physical world is spiritualized.

We need not shy away from the use of icons in private or public worship. Though they are primarily used in Eastern Orthodox Churches, they are the possession of the entire church. In the Ninth Century, before the Great Schism between the Eastern and Western Church in 1054 A.D., the Fourth General Council of Constantinople (869-870) argued that icons are to be given the same honor as “the book of the Holy Gospels.” The great tradition of the universal Church is that icons can and should be used in worship.[6]

Third, the Eucharist provides us with an opportunity to see Christ and his sacrificial and self-giving love. The elements of bread and wine communicate the real presence of Christ to us. We are reminded that Christ is just as real as the elements we hold in our hands and ingest into our bodies. This tangible reminder allows us to incorporate every sense – including sight – in our participation in God’s saving purpose.

Thomas Acquinas’ Pange Lingua beautifully expresses how we see Christ in the Eucharist:

On the night before he suffered,
Seated with his chosen band,
Jesus, when they all had feasted,
Faithful to the law's command,
Far more precious food provided:
Gave himself with his own hand.

Word made flesh, true bread of heaven,
By his word made flesh to be,
From the wine his blood is taken,
Though our senses cannot see,
Faith alone which is unshaken
Shows pure hearts the mystery.

Therefore we, before him falling,
This great sacrament revere;
Ancient forms are now departed,
For new acts of grace are here,
Faith our feeble senses aiding
Makes the Savior's presence clear.

Fourth, human beings allow us to see Christ. Each local church is called the “body of Christ.” Every member manifests Christ to the others. Through eyes of faith, we see one another as participating in transformation into the glorious image of Christ. Furthermore, we understand that all people are made in the image of God. In them, we see God. This is especially true for the suffering, needy, broken, sick and unattractive of the world. Because we see glory in the cross, we are able to see beauty where it seems absent. Indeed, our preconceived ideas of beauty are radically revised in light of our reflections on the beauty of Christ.

This leads us to an important transition point. Because of the limitations of physical sight, our perception of beauty as primarily a physical phenomenon must be completely rethought. Certainly, physical beauty is celebrated in the Bible. The Song of Songs is a perfect example of this. But, our perception of beauty must transcend mere sight. We must learn to see beauty in a whole new way. Our next chapter will take us in this direction.

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© Richard J. Vincent, 2007