I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints…

    Ephesians 1:18

We’ve all seen the cartoon depiction of someone thinking, in which the illustrator draws a lightbulb over the character’s head indicating that the individual has just had an idea. Similarly, teachers often experience this same phenomenon. Working with a student and suddenly seeing the proverbial “lightbulb” come on indicating that what the student once could not comprehend is now a part of their understanding. Spiritual understanding is much the same. Before our conversion, we did not have spiritual eyes and could only operate with physical understanding, as with the rest of the world. But once we are saved, we move from spiritual death to spiritual life. And with our conversion comes the gift of the presence of God to come and live within. As believers in Jesus, we now have spiritual understanding and can come to realizations that were previously not available to us.

The Eyes Of Your Heart

Paul is praying that the eyes of the believer’s hearts in the 1st century would be “enlightened.” Just like the cartoon character that just had an epiphany, Paul’s desire for these Christians is that they possess spiritual knowledge, allowing them to see beyond the here and now into eternity. 

It is with these spiritual eyes that we are able to see beyond what is in our physical world to see the spiritual realm. A person with spiritual understanding has the ability to see through the outward and assess the motives, integrity, and honesty of those around them. The word often used for this reality is “discernment.” To have the eyes of our heart enlightened is to know things that the unbelieving world cannot see or understand. When we pray for God to illuminate His word and to give us spiritual eyes to see, our entire world changes. A word of warning however, having spiritual eyes comes with additional burden. An unbeliever, moving through life, apparently without a care in the world, is missing out on what life is really about yet that individual can often avoid some of the concern than we as believers carry. For example, an unbeliever will not carry the burden of concern for family members who are not saved since they themselves are not saved. But for the Christian parent, grandparent, or any other concerned relative, seeing unsaved family members comes with a certain amount of burden. But this realization is worth it because it not only affirms our standing in Christ but also allows us the opportunity to speak life into those in whom we love. 

So, it’s important for us to understand that with salvation comes an opening of our eyes and this spiritual vision can be referred to as the “eyes of our heart.” Specifically, Paul wants the believers to know “the hope of His (God’s) calling” and “the riches of the glory of His (God’s) inheritance” for those who belong to HIm. This is indeed how born again believers view life since we have had our spiritual eyes opened. Consider the following passage dealing with how a saved person views life: 

Therefore, being always of good courage, and knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord— for we walk by faith, not by sight— we are of good courage, I say, and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord. Therefore we also have as our ambition, whether at home or absent, to be pleasing to Him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.

      2 Corinthians 5:6-10

Notice that Paul, in this passage, mentions twice that Christians are to be “of good courage.” This is because we have every reason in the world to be optimistic. While we are here on earth, we enjoy fellowship with God through faith in Jesus Christ by the power of God’s Spirit at work within us and we have the ultimate purpose, which is to do kingdom work. And as long as we are “at home in the body”, we enjoy this existence. But should we pass from this life, it gets even better. To be absent from our physical bodies is to be at home with Christ, which is our eternal home. The unbelieving world cannot claim this until they reach the point of conversion for themselves. Without Christ, this life is reduced to working and acquiring things that we simply cannot keep or take with us. That’s why pursuing the temporal alone is futility. But when we surrender our lives to Christ, we receive salvation of our souls and a spiritual, eternal view of life, which is the reality for all of mankind whether people are on their way to heaven or eternal separation from God (Matthew 7:13-14). This is our view of life after conversion, looking at things through the “eyes of our heart.” 

So its our ambition, Paul says, to be pleasing to God. That’s the ultimate life! When we know that we are pleasing to God and that we belong to Him and are fellow heirs of His kingdom, life takes on a whole new meaning and dimension. Paul reminds us that we will all stand before the judgment seat of Christ. For the unbeliever, this will be a dreadful day of judgment and condemnation (something not always preached in our modern church), but for those who belong to Christ, this judgment will not be a determination of our eternal destiny, for that was secured on the cross the moment we were saved, rather this judgment will be an answering of how we used our new life in Christ and how we used the gift or gifts that He has given us to further the kingdom. When you compare that to merely living life to acquire things (money, power, position), there simply is no comparison. But only those who look at life through spiritual eyes can understand this reality (1 Corinthians 2:14-16). To live in Christ is to look forward to the day in which He will say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” This is what should be driving everyone of us who belong to Christ. 

A good reminder of the future, one that the unbelieving world may reject but that which is music to the ears of the saved, we can find in the following passage:

For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

        Philippians 2:9-11

Life is all about following Jesus and having a relationship with the God who created us. This eternal perspective is only understood when we see life through the “eyes of our heart.” Yes, we can pray, as Paul, God’s word over our lives and in the case of today’s passage, we can pray that God would enlighten the eyes of our heart so that we can “know” and clearly see our existence in Christ, abundant life here on earth and eternal with Him!

Father, thank you for the salvation that I enjoy in Jesus. Open the eyes of my heart that I can know my standing in Christ and become effective for the kingdom of God as I live out my days. Thank you for your provision of salvation and spiritual enlightenment. In Jesus’ name, Amen!