“Turn away my eyes from looking at vanity!” Psalm 119:37
Dear friends, do not gaze upon any sin…
for looking breeds longing,
and longing begets lusting,
and lusting brings sinning!
Keep your eyes right — and you may keep your heart right.
If that first woman had not looked upon the forbidden tree and seen “that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise,” she would not have plucked and eaten the forbidden fruit — and we would not have been the children of sin and sorrow!
O friends, if we begin to look upon iniquity, we shall almost certainly fall! There are some sins that we poor, frail creatures cannot endure to look at.
We are as moths near a burning candle — the only safety for us is to get out of the room and fly into the open air. But if we go near the candle — we shall certainly burn our wings and, perhaps, even destroy ourselves!
Just so, we must take care that we do not get used to sin. I believe that even the common reading in the newspapers of accounts of evil things is defiling to us. If we habitually read such things, we shall come, at last, to think less and less of the coarser forms of vice than we ought to do.
Nothing can keep us away from the fangs of sin, like falling into the embraces of Christ. Looking unto Jesus, is the great remedy against looking unto sin!
Turn away my eyes from vanity, my Lord, by filling them full with a vision of Yourself and holding me spellbound with that grandest spectacle that eyes of men, or angels, or even of God, Himself ever saw — the spectacle of God Incarnate bearing our sin in His own body on the Cross!
Keep your eyes fixed there — and all will be well.
(Charles Spurgeon: 1834–1892)