Why Must We Fix Our Eyes on the Lord?

　　The pleasureful and awful of this world alike can obstruct our vision of God. If the pleasureful areas of life lose the necessary intake of the Lord Himself, they inevitably become dull shadows of what could be. The awful areas of this life can overwhelm our sights if we forget to look to God such that we step forward with endurance and joy. The Lord is exalted above all—high and lifted up (Isaiah 6:1); all of this life is rubbish compared to the excellencies of Him (Philippians 3:8). Where will we look?

　　Our eyes — we control how we use our sight. Scripture takes up this interest of our eyes, helping us know what to do with them and the Subject on whom they are to be set.

Fixed on Jesus and His Ways

　　Specifically, the author commends that Jesus be remembered for starting and completing the faith. That is, He endured the cross, and He was raised to the right hand of the Father. Thus, we know that after we endure, we who believe will also be raised to God in Christ. Considering Christ’s endurance of God’s wrath on the cross for the glory ahead — and, knowing His power within us by the Holy Spirit — we are able to find inward strength. Renewed resolve from the foundation of Christ’s endurance finds the places of the soul where weariness can collect, where faintheartedness can otherwise slow a run into meandering steps.

　　Psalm 119:15 pronounces, “I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways.” When we consider Christ’s good ways anew in the various times and seasons of our lives, we who are in Him grow in love for Him. And, what we love, we display, or employ, in our days.

His Sight Becomes Our Sight

　　“So Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise” (John 5:19).

　　The Son tells us that His eyes were set on the Father, doing the things of the Father — demonstrating a unity in the Godhead. Through the despised shame of the cross, the Father and Son would ultimately be set with the Son at the Father’s right hand. Jesus would endure, and He would accomplish God’s purposes on the cross for our salvation and His glory. With this, He would be lifted to the Father’s side — His joy.

　　Through sight akin to Jesus’ and as our eyes counsel our will, joy can likewise prompt our actions. Jesus looked to the Father, and we are commanded to look to Jesus, the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15). With eyes there, from Him and through Him and to Him we move forward (Romans 11:36).