The Apple of God's Eye
Keep me as the apple of Your eye; Hide me under the shadow of Your wings. (Psalm 17:8)
The expression “the apple of one’s eye” is very old. In the ancient world people believed the eye’s pupil looked like an apple, so they called the pupil the apple of the eye. To call something or someone the apple of your eye meant that person or thing was of utmost importance and loved dearly. The meaning persists to this day.
For God to call us the apple of His eye is astonishing. It is an identity that is difficult for us to grasp. We accept it in theory, but very few of us live life like it is so. We look at our faults and failures, and we wonder if we are worthy of the title. Perhaps we think our lives don’t line up with the Lord’s description. If I am the apple of God’s eye, why is my life such a mess? Shouldn’t my life be… you know… more blessed? These thoughts and others like them stand in the way of us embracing the identity God gives us. As these barriers fall, we will go from not seeing God’s love to seeing glimpses of it, and finally, it will become the only thing we see.
For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height — to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:14–19)
Failing to comprehend God’s love is a common problem. Apparently, lack of comprehension was a big issue for the church at Ephesus. They faced opponents such as the pagan worshippers of the goddess Diana, Judaizers (those who combined law and grace, Paul’s fiercest opponents), and even mighty Rome. Yet none of these get mentioned in Paul’s prayer. He only prays that they would perceive the vastness of the love of Christ so they could be filled with the fulness of God. If this is what they needed, it is what we need, too. Our greatest difficulty is rarely what we imagine it is. With God, it is most often our lack of seeing. To change our opinion on this matter is a stunning change of mindset, one that can change our perception of reality.
A significant barrier to comprehending the love of God is judging ourselves as unworthy of it. The story of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32) is really the story of two brothers. Both had trouble comprehending their father’s love. These two illustrate our relationship problems with God. One couldn’t grasp his father’s love because he thought he was unworthy. The older brother did not comprehend his father’s love because he thought he was worthy. Both were blinded by their own egos (the flesh). The flesh is all about self, and self is the only measure of worth it can comprehend. When we are at ego’s end, we can most easily grasp the infinite love of the Father. This is an end the younger brother reached, and it was there the glory of the father’s love was revealed.
We all know the story. The younger son demanded his inheritance, and against all the mores of the day, the father gave it to him. We wonder why the son left home. Perhaps he felt the world loved him more than his father. This is the epitome of blindness but an all-too-common condition. Many feel more at home among people whom they consider just as unworthy as they are. The fellowship of the unworthy is a refuge for many.
Perhaps his older brother was part of his misconception. Remember, the older son was the perfect son, the one who did nothing wrong. The older son’s goodness may have made the younger son feel he could never be worthy of his father’s love. If you had a sibling that was especially good at being good, you can relate. “Why can’t you be like your brother or sister?” These words are meant to shame, but shame is a poor motivator to stay home. Yet, the good ones are to be pitied, too. Often, they shut themselves out of the kingdom of God by glorying in their own worthiness, just like the older brother.
After the wayward son finished spending his father’s money, a famine hit the land. The young man grew so hungry, he went to work for a gentile. We know his new boss was a gentile because of the pig farm. The young man went to work for an unclean gentile feeding his unclean pigs. Any dignity he had left was gone. His shame was far worse than the filth he wallowed in.
It was there he had an epiphany. He could go home. He prepared a speech. Maybe if he shamed himself, his father would accept him. “I am unworthy to be your son. Please make me a hired hand!” The son probably rehearsed his speech all the way home.
When he was still far off, the father saw him and ran to greet him. The son should have seen that something unexpected was happening. He was supposed to approach his father and grovel at his feet. Yet, his father came to him not mad or vengeful but overjoyed. The father embraced his son and kissed him. Yet, the son’s shame still weighed heavy, so he broke into his speech. “Father, I am unworthy to….” Do you remember how the father responded to his son’s carefully prepared discourse? He ignored it! And instead broke into his own speech.
The son was expecting shame, but the father honored him. He called for a ring for his son’s finger and the best robe for his back. These were the attire an honored son wore. The father had a very different idea about the son’s identity than the son did. To the son, his deeds defined him. To the father, the father’s love defined his child. In the father’s mind, the son’s worth never diminished even when he was in the pigsty. His son was always the apple of his eye.
Take careful notice of when the great revelation of the father’s love came, not when the son had done everything right, but when he had done everything wrong. When the son’s ego had no finite measure of worth, infinite love was revealed.
Some argue that unwavering love is a license to sin. Yet do you suppose the son ever left home again? He left home because he did not comprehend his father’s love. It is the empty heart that strays. Knowing the infinite love of Christ leaves the heart full, and a full heart willingly gives itself to the beloved. No fear is necessary. Neither is reward.
And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him. (1 John 4:16)
God’s love is infinite. This means no one is beyond the love of Christ, but it also means God’s love is eternal in nature. Eternal things are, always have been, and always will be. We can say they are simply so. We cannot make them so and we cannot make them not so. They are the highest order of reality. We see a description of the eternal nature of Christ in the book of Revelation.
“I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End,” says the Lord, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.” (Revelation 1:7)
God also gave a glimpse of His eternal nature to Moses at the burning bush.
Then Moses said to God, “Indeed, when I come to the children of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they say to me, ‘What is His name?’ what shall I say to them?”
And God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” And He said, “Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’” (Exodus 3:13–14)
God is so… period. Such is the nature of eternal things and God’s eternal attributes. His love is, therefore, so. When the Lord gives us a revelation, He lets us peer into what is eternally so. It is an unveiling of the infinite. This is what Paul prayed for in Ephesians. He wanted the church at Ephesus to receive a glimpse of the divine and to know the eternal filled them. It had nothing to do with the ego’s worth or how difficult their lives were. In the chapter preceding Paul’s prayer, the apostle revealed God’s people are seated together with Christ in the eternal (Ephesians 2:1-7). The infinite was their home, not the world and its finite measures of worth and fulness, and it was only looking at the heavenly that they could comprehend God’s love.
Who God is defines who we are. When God said His name was I AM WHO I AM, Moses couldn’t comprehend that God was also revealing Moses’s identity. Have you ever looked at yourself in a mirror? Of course, you have, but have you ever looked closely at your eye? If you get near enough, you will see a reflection of yourself in your pupil. This is a wonderful illustration of how God sees us.
When God looks at you, He sees Himself. Who you are is wrapped up in who He is. In the beginning, God created us in His image, which means our identity is tied to His identity. This is the bond the serpent sought to break in the Garden. Ironically, he did so by telling Eve she could be like God! The rest of the Bible is the story of what the Lord did to restore union.
We say sin led to rejection, and Jesus came to remove our sins to restore relationship with God. Yet, if that alone was His work, it would still leave us in darkness. Humanity had a self problem. To the flesh, the love of God was as veiled just as the Holiest of Holies was veiled in the temple. In a sense Christ became the human ego (In Galatians 2:20, the “I” crucified with Christ was the ego or the flesh. See also Galatians 5:24) and it died with Him. Therefore, the fulness of redemption is not found in forgiveness alone but also in Paul’s words, “Not I but Christ.” These same words describe what death and resurrection is all about. The death and resurrection of Christ was the great redefinition. It compels us to let go of ego-based identities and partake of Christ’s identity.
The work of the cross is to remove the veil of the ego, that we might behold the love of God. And when we see, we become those defined by God’s love. We are transformed from endless becoming to the rest of being and from striving to having. So, when we look at ourselves, we perceive what our Father sees…. Christ, and we comprehend what it means to be the apple of God’s eye.
If we are to live as the apple of God’s eye, we must not only view ourselves as God does but also the moments of our lives. How would you complete this sentence: If God loved me, He would ______? The second grand reason we cannot comprehend Christ’s love is that we fill in the blank differently than God does. I have seen this difference of minds destroy relationships with the Lord. When bad things happen instead of the good things we ask for, we imagine God does not love us or we may wonder if He is real.
Popular sermons and books attempt to tell us how we can get God to fill in the blank the way we want. Some tell us to be good and God will bless us. And the reason things are not good is we have been bad. It is a throwback to the rewards and punishments of the Old Covenant. As a pastor, I get letters from people when times are hard explaining why things have gone wrong. They all have one thing in common. It is usually someone else’s sins. If we get rid of the bad, God will bring back the good.
Some try to mix the Old and the New Covenant with faith. We can have the life we want; we only need enough faith. By faith, we turn bad things into good things. Giving is part of the equation. It supposes giving something finite to God will make him give finite things back to us, only more. In the mind of many, this is the grand step of faith God requires in our journey from not having to having.
Others believe God fills in the blank only after this life is over. Heaven is the life we want, complete with mansions and streets of gold. In heaven, it is impossible to have a bad day. When many speak of heaven, they talk more about what a wonderful place it is than the presence of God. They describe it with a finite framework. It is just like this life only improved and minus all the bad. It is a place we get our reward, bodies that never grow old or suffer illness, mansions that make the rich blush. Yes, it is the place God fills in the blank like we want.
All these things have finite things at their core, and if we set our eye on the finite, we can never comprehend the love of Christ. We must look to the infinite, to the divine itself, to discern the depths of God’s love. The New Testament gives many images to help us understand love’s great gift.
The temple of Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 3:16-17, 1 Cor. 6:19-20, Ephesians 2:21-22)
The body of Christ (Ephesians 1:22-23)
The vine and the branches (John 15:1-9).
God’s new creation is not like the old, which only perceived finite measures of blessing (Deuteronomy 28). It knows God’s greatest gift… Himself. Life does not have to be good to peer into the height, length, and depth of the love of Christ. In fact, the view is often the most spectacular when life is awful.
We tend to define our lives through bad and good. If life is good, God is great, and He loves us. Yet, when life is bad, we wonder where God is. Yet, in the New Covenant, it is our togetherness with Christ that defines life, and that togetherness is always happening, in the good, the bad, and the ordinary. Christ defines the moments of our lives. They are all holy, just as we are holy.
We have no trouble accepting such words when life is pleasing, and we have a visible sign of God’s love. Yet, these visible signs are just that… signs. They point to the presence of the infinite, the unseen, a glory that cannot be seen with the eyes. This is the glory that is and always is. Blessed are those who see it, because only in doing so do we apprehend God’s love.
We may concede that God is in the ordinary, too. That is most of life. There are highs and lows in-between large stretches of the ordinary. But God is in the mundane, too. It is an extraordinary gift to discover the glory that is there. It raises the value of our lives to the heavens. When we see the infinite defines the finite, we know every moment of our lives is sacred. Our togetherness with Christ gives meaning to the moments of our lives. To realize this is to behold the glory of the ordinary.
Yet, what about the bad? God can’t be there, can He? The apostle Paul had a lot to say about suffering, and he was well acquainted with it. In the Old Covenant, if bad things were happening, people believed you had done bad things, or your parents did bad things. Suffering was associated with God’s wrath. Astonishingly, this paradigm changes dramatically in the New Testament. Instead, Paul associates suffering with glory!
For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. (2 Corinthians 4:17)
Finite suffering is the perfect place for God to reveal infinite glory. It is at the end of our finite measures of life that we often comprehend God’s infinite measure of life, which is Christ. The apple of God’s eye is the one to whom God has given Himself, and that gift not only defines us but every moment of our lives. The world says life is good, but it sometimes isn’t. I say life is glorious, and it always is.
We can see why Paul prayed God would help us comprehend Christ’s love. He knew the ego with its measure of self and the bad and good of life could never grasp it. It had to be revealed, and its unveiling is the ego’s end and the beginning of the new creation, the apple of God’s eye.
The apple of God’s eye is an identity that unfolds in our lives. That is why we should pray to comprehend it. As we do, God’s show begins, and it continues for all of eternity.
