The Gate of the Senses

In the midst of his defense of his own integrity, Job lets us see one of the quiet disciplines by which he kept it. I made a covenant with mine eyes, he says. Not a vague intention, not a hope to do better, but a covenant, a binding agreement with himself before God, concerning the use of his eyes. He had bound his sight. He had made a solemn compact to guard the gate of the eye, and he sees the connection at once, why then should I think upon a maid? Guard the eye, and the sinful thought is cut off at its root, for it had come in through the eye.

This is a wisdom we have largely lost, the understanding that the eye is a gate to the heart, and that what we let in through it does not stay at the eye but travels inward and lodges in the soul. Job knew that the look comes before the thought, and the thought before the deed, and that the surest place to stop the whole progress is at the beginning, at the gate of the eye. So he made his covenant there, at the entrance, guarding the look itself, knowing that if he let the gate stand open there would be no stopping what came through it.

THE EYE AND THE HEART

The Lord confirmed this deep connection between the eye and the heart in words that search us all. Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her, he said, hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. The look and the heart are joined; the sinful gaze is already the sinful deed in seed. This is why the guarding of the eye is no small or external matter, but reaches to the very heart, for the heart is fed and defiled through the eye, and the sin that ends in the body so often begins in the look. Guard the eye, and you guard the heart. Leave the eye ungoverned, and no guarding of the heart will avail, for the poison pours in faster than it can be cleared.

The Scriptures give us the warning in the flesh. David, who was a man after God’s own heart, fell, and his fall began with a look. He arose from his bed and walked upon the roof, and from the roof he saw a woman washing herself, and he did not turn his eyes away, and the look became a longing and the longing a deed and the deed a chain of ruin that scarred the rest of his life. It all began at the eye, with a look not turned away. Had he made Job’s covenant, had he governed the gate of the eye in that first moment, the whole terrible sequence might never have begun. The look unturned was the open gate.

TURNING THE EYE AWAY

The covenant with the eyes is therefore preemptive, not a battle fought after the enemy is inside but a gate kept shut before he enters. It is far easier to turn the eye than to unthink the thought once the image has entered and lodged. So the psalmist prays, turn away mine eyes from beholding vanity, and quicken thou me in thy way. He asks God to help him turn the eye, to look away, to refuse the second glance that fixes the image in the soul. This is the whole art of the covenant, the trained reflex of the averted gaze, the eye that will not linger where it should not, that turns away not in fear but in fidelity to the compact it has made.

And this discipline is not less needful in our age but far more, for we carry with us, at every hour, a window onto every enticement the world can devise, glowing and endless and always within reach. Never have the eyes been so continually assaulted, so easily fed with whatever they would look upon. Job made his covenant in a world of fields and tents; we must make ours in a world of screens that press upon the eye without ceasing. The covenant with the eyes, so far from being an ancient and outdated scruple, is one of the most urgent disciplines a soul can undertake in a time like ours.

THE LAMP OF THE BODY

For the Lord taught that the eye is nothing less than the lamp of the whole person. The light of the body is the eye, he said; if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light; but if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. Through the eye the whole soul is flooded with light or with darkness. What we habitually look upon fills us, and either lightens or darkens the whole inner man. The single eye, fixed on what is good and pure and on God himself, fills the soul with light; the evil eye, feeding on what defiles, fills it with a darkness that spreads into every part. We become, in a measure, what we behold.

And what is true of the eye is true of all the gates, for the eye is not the only entrance to the soul. There is the ear, through which words and sounds pour in to shape the heart; there is the taste and the touch and all the appetites, each a gate that may be kept or left open. The old counsel of the custody of the senses is simply the extending of Job’s covenant to all the gates, the guarding of everything by which the world enters and shapes the soul. To keep the heart, as we are commanded, is to keep the gates through which the heart is fed, all of them, with a wise and watchful vigilance.

FILL THE EYE WITH CHRIST

But guarding the eye is not only a turning away; it is also a turning toward, for the eye that is merely forbidden and given nothing better to look upon will drift back to what it was forbidden. The surest guard against beholding vanity is to fill the sight with something greater. Looking unto Jesus, the apostle says, the author and finisher of our faith. The eye fixed on Christ is an eye kept from a thousand lesser and defiling sights, not by force but by a greater attraction. What holds the gaze holds the heart, and the heart whose gaze is filled with Christ is not so easily drawn to the vanity it has been told to shun.

The psalmists knew this positive discipline of the eye. Mine eyes are ever toward the LORD, one says, for he shall pluck my feet out of the net. The eye turned Godward is the eye least likely to be snared. And another sets it as a resolve of the whole house. I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes, he says, deciding beforehand what he will and will not look upon, governing the gate of the eye by a settled purpose rather than by the mood of the moment. The covenant with the eyes is kept not only by turning from the evil but by deliberately setting the good before them.

And there is a promise in this beholding that lifts it above mere avoidance, for we are changed by what we gaze upon. Beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, the apostle says, we are changed into the same image. The eye fixed on Christ does not merely stay out of trouble; it is transformed, conformed little by little to the One it beholds. So the discipline of the eye is not finally a negative and joyless restraint but a glad fixing of the gaze on Christ, in whom the eye finds both its guard and its transformation.

So do not think of the covenant with the eyes only as a shutting out, a grim closing of the gate against the beautiful and the enticing. Think of it also as a filling, a setting of Christ and the things of God before the eye, so that the sight is satisfied with a glory that makes the vanities look poor. The eye that has learned to feast on Christ is not starved by turning from the world’s images. It is filled, and it is changed, by beholding him.

So make a covenant with your eyes, and with all your senses. Do not fight the sin only after it has entered, but guard the gate before it comes in, turning the eye away from what would defile, refusing the second look that fixes the image in the soul. Ask God, as the psalmist did, to turn away your eyes from beholding vanity. Keep the single eye, that your whole body may be full of light. And extend the covenant to every gate, the ear and the taste and the touch, for the heart is kept only when its gates are kept. I made a covenant with mine eyes, Job said; why then should I think upon a maid? Make the covenant, and cut the sin off at its gate.