Ephesians 1:18 The eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints,

Today I would like to relate life and spirit. It centers around my recent cataract surgery. I had the worst eye done first. It was the eye that posed me the most problems. My other eyes still has cataracts and remains damaged by that condition.

When I went to the ophthalmologist I did not know I had cataracts. They formed slowly, impairing my vision a little at a time. It was not obvious that it was forming. Now that I have had my right eye done, what is left in the other eye is obvious. I can see the effects of the cataracts by closing my right eye.

I cannot wait to have the other eye done.

What Ephesians 1:18 does say is that just because your understanding is enlightened, it does not mean you don’t still see sin in your life. Sin creeps into life like cataracts, hiding the truth of its effect little by little until the Holy Spirit points it out. Then is confession and conversion, the most dangerous sin is removed.

But sin, like the cataracts in my left eye still is part of our lives until it is finally removed. It remains until we are perfected into our resurrected form. Until then, we have to deal with it. We have to see it for what it is and believe the truth over that part of us that can still see sin.

1 John 1:7-10 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

See it, deal with it, be done with it, until that day when we are transfigured into His likeness.

Psalm 23:3 He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.

Do not be mislead to think that the plural paths here means more than one path. There is only one path to righteousness and that is found in faith in Jesus Christ.

The Hebrew words used here translated as plural is because of its origin, referring to wagon wheels. The entrenchment or ruts formed by the use of a road produces two tracks.

Even if you were to see God’s will as being one of three options, good, acceptable, or perfect, you would still be in His will and not opposed to it.

Just because we walk outside God’s will, that still does not change our righteousness. We will lose our peace, have our conscience prick, might even go so far as to receive chastening and correction. That does not mean we have lost our righteousness.

Righteousness is a right standing with God. It is not based on who we are and what we do. It is based on who Christ is and what Christ has done.

Romans 5:21 That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.

Also, ruts help keep our wheels on track.