A cross-canonical study of the theme of "seeing": from God declaring creation "very good" in Genesis, to humanity replacing God's perspective with their own in Eden, to the era of the Judges when "everyone did what was right in their own eyes," to Jesus restoring sight to the blind, to the final vision of Revelation where we will see him "face to face."
From "God saw that it was good" to "seeing him face to face"
Have you ever noticed how much of our everyday language for judgment and perspective is built around the idea of seeing?
We talk about our view, our viewpoint, our perspective, our insight, our vision, our worldview. This is no accident of language. The way a person sees the world shapes the way they live in it.
And from its first page to its last, the Bible traces a single thread about seeing. That thread asks one question: Whose eyes set the ultimate standard for what is good and what is evil?
Open the first chapter of the Bible and one phrase appears again and again—
God saw that it was good.
On the first day, God saw that the light was good (Gen 1:4). On the third day, God saw that the dry land and the vegetation were good (Gen 1:10, 12). On the fourth day, the fifth day, the sixth day, the same words ring out. And at the close of the sixth day, God surveyed everything he had made and gave his final verdict:
God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. (Gen 1:31)
Here is a fact that is easy to overlook, yet profoundly important: within the order of creation, it is God who uses his eyes to determine what is "good." What is beautiful, what has value, what is right—these foundational questions are answered, at the beginning, by the Creator himself.
This is not tyranny. It is order. Just as a symphony requires a composer to decide which notes belong where, the universe requires its Creator to define what is good and what is not.
God's perspective is the measure of all things.
Then Genesis 3 happened, and everything changed.
The serpent began by casting doubt on God's word: "Has God really said…?" (Gen 3:1). Then it flatly denied the authority of that word: "You won't surely die" (Gen 3:4). Finally it offered the ultimate temptation: "In the day you eat it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil" (Gen 3:5).
Notice how the text describes the woman's response:
When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. (Gen 3:6)
The words "saw" and "good" here directly echo the refrain of Genesis 1: "God saw that it was good."
The same "saw—good" structure. But the subject has changed.
In Genesis 1, it is God who sees, God who declares it good. In Genesis 3, it is the woman who sees, the human who declares it good.
When the subject shifts from God to humanity, the whole world turns upside down.
What follows is deeply ironic:
The eyes of both of them were opened. (Gen 3:7)
Were their eyes closed before? Of course not. They could see everything in the garden. So this "opening" is not a literal move from blindness to sight.
It is a bitter irony.
They believed they had gained a new pair of eyes, able to see what they had never seen before. But in reality, they had begun to see everything through a distorted lens.
The evidence is in the very next line—what is the first thing they do with these newly "opened" eyes?
They knew that they were naked. (Gen 3:7)
In God's eyes, they had been "very good." But through their own new vision, they saw themselves as something shameful.
The Fall is not only a moral event; it is a cognitive one. From this moment, humanity begins measuring everything with a broken ruler.
After the Fall, the conflict between human judgment and God's judgment intensified immediately.
In Genesis 4, both Cain and Abel brought offerings to God. The text says:
Yahweh respected Abel and his offering, but he didn't respect Cain and his offering. (Gen 4:4–5)
God had his judgment. Cain clearly had a different one.
The text does not record Cain seeking to understand God's perspective—"Lord, why did you not accept my offering? Where did I go wrong?" He never asked. Instead:
Cain was very angry, and the expression on his face fell. (Gen 4:5)
This was not grief. It was self-righteous anger—"I did nothing wrong; you are being unfair!" He held fast to his own judgment and refused God's. God even came to him in grace: "If you do well, won't it be lifted up?" (Gen 4:7)—but Cain chose his own path.
The result: he killed his brother.
From Eden to Cain is only one chapter. But the pattern is already set: humanity replaces God's eyes with their own, insists they are right, and walks toward destruction.
This pattern is not merely personal. When it spreads across an entire society, it becomes the defining portrait of a world in rebellion.
Moses had already foreseen this danger. In the wilderness he told Israel:
Every man does whatever is right in his own eyes. You shall not do so in the future. (Deut 12:8)
Yet after Israel entered Canaan, they walked precisely the path Moses had warned against.
Proverbs returns again and again to the trap of "one's own eyes":
The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but he who is wise listens to counsel. (Prov 12:15)
Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but Yahweh weighs the hearts. (Prov 21:2)
Don't be wise in your own eyes. (Prov 3:7)
The Hebrew of that last line reads literally, "Do not be wise in your own eyes"—again, eyes.
Isaiah is even more severe:
Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight! (Isa 5:21)
The original again reads "wise in their own eyes."
The book of Judges sums up Israel's most chaotic period in a single sentence:
In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did that which was right in his own eyes. (Judg 21:25)
"No king" does not simply mean no political ruler. It means no one was willing to let God be king. Every person used their own eyes to define right and wrong, fair and unfair.
The result: moral collapse, with violence, betrayal, and idolatry filling every chapter.
Notice the remedy Proverbs 12:15 offers: the wise person listens to counsel. The fool sees only the world through their own eyes; the wise person knows their own vision is limited and is willing to hear others—and, above all, willing to hear God.
Does any of this sound familiar?
Humanity stopped looking to God. But God never stopped looking at humanity.
Yahweh looks down from heaven on the children of men, to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God. (Ps 14:2)
In Noah's day:
Yahweh saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. (Gen 6:5)
God saw clearly. And his way of seeing is utterly unlike ours:
For man looks at the outward appearance, but Yahweh looks at the heart. (1 Sam 16:7)
Human eyes see only the surface—appearance, credentials, wealth, status. God's gaze pierces through every outward layer and reaches the depths of the heart.
Throughout Kings, every ruler of Israel and Judah is evaluated by the same standard: this king "did what was right in the eyes of Yahweh," or "did what was evil in the eyes of Yahweh."
Not what the people thought of him. Not how history would remember him. The only evaluation that ultimately mattered was always God's.
The whole Old Testament waits for one thing: a Messiah who would come and give sight to the blind.
Then the eyes of the blind will be opened. (Isa 35:5)
To open blind eyes, to bring the prisoners out of the dungeon. (Isa 42:7)
Then Jesus came. He stood in the synagogue in Nazareth and read from Isaiah:
The Spirit of the Lord is on me… to give recovery of sight to the blind. (Luke 4:18)
He declared:
I am the light of the world. He who follows me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the light of life. (John 8:12)
Yet John's Gospel opens with a heartbreaking line:
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness hasn't overcome it. (John 1:5)
The light had come. But human eyes had grown so accustomed to darkness that the light felt blinding.
John 9 is the most searching chapter in all of Scripture on the theme of blindness.
Jesus healed a man who had been blind from birth. The Pharisees not only refused to believe; they interrogated the man and finally drove him out of the synagogue. When Jesus found him afterward, he said something that cuts to the heart:
I came into this world for judgment, that those who don't see may see; and that those who see may become blind. (John 9:39)
The Pharisees nearby heard this and asked, "Are we also blind?"
Jesus' answer is razor-sharp:
If you were blind, you would have no sin; but now you say, 'We see.' Therefore your sin remains. (John 9:41)
To be convinced you can see is the deepest blindness of all.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus used a vivid image to expose this same problem:
Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but don't consider the beam that is in your own eye? Or how will you tell your brother, 'Let me remove the speck from your eye;' and behold, the beam is in your own eye? You hypocrite! First remove the beam out of your own eye, and then you can see clearly to remove the speck out of your brother's eye. (Matt 7:3–5)
A speck and a plank—both in the eye. We walk around with a plank lodged in our eye, convinced we see everything perfectly, and set about correcting the tiny speck in someone else's. Jesus says: first acknowledge the plank in your own eye, remove it, and then you will see clearly.
This is entirely consistent with John 9. Cain was certain he could see who was right and who was wrong. The Pharisees were certain they could see what was holy and what was unclean. And each of us, too, is often convinced we can see clearly what is right and what is wrong.
Paul reveals a still deeper dimension:
The god of this age has blinded the minds of the unbelieving, that the light of the Good News of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should not dawn on them. (2 Cor 4:4)
Blindness is not only a human choice. There is a spiritual power at work, veiling the eyes of the heart.
Jesus himself wove together the themes of "eyes" and "light":
The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is sound, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is evil, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness! (Matt 6:22–23)
God's remedy for human blindness comes not only through Jesus Christ arriving in the world as the true Light, but also through the Holy Spirit working within every person who trusts in him.
Jesus said:
When he, the Spirit of truth, has come, he will guide you into all truth. (John 16:13)
Paul prayed for the church in Ephesus:
That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him; having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope of his calling, and what are the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints. (Eph 1:17–18)
"Having the eyes of your hearts enlightened"—the work of the Holy Spirit is to relight the eyes that were darkened in the Fall.
Not to give you a new set of ideas. Not to make you more intellectually capable. But to enable you to see yourself, others, and the world through God's eyes once again.
This is why Paul writes:
For we walk by faith, not by sight. (2 Cor 5:7)
What is faith? Faith is laying down our own supposedly clear-sighted eyes and choosing to trust God's perspective instead.
In Revelation 3, the risen Christ speaks with striking severity to the church in Laodicea:
Because you say, 'I am rich, and have gotten riches, and have need of nothing;' and don't know that you are the wretched one, miserable, poor, blind, and naked. I counsel you to… buy eye salve to anoint your eyes, that you may see. (Rev 3:17–18)
Notice: "blind" and "naked" appear here together.
What does that bring to mind?
Genesis 3. The human eyes were "opened," and they discovered they were "naked."
The disease of Laodicea and the disease of Eden are the same disease—convinced you can see clearly, yet actually blind; convinced you are clothed, yet actually bare.
Thousands of years separate Eden from Laodicea. Countless things have changed. But this sickness has never changed.
And Christ's prescription has never changed either: buy eye salve to anoint your eyes—acknowledge that you are blind, come into the light, and let him open your eyes again.
The Bible's great narrative of seeing has an ultimate destination.
Paul writes:
For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully, even as I was also fully known. (1 Cor 13:12)
John writes:
We will be like him; for we will see him just as he is. (1 John 3:2)
And the final chapter of Revelation says:
They will see his face. (Rev 22:4)
In Genesis 3, humanity hid among the trees, unable to face God. In the last chapter of Revelation, humanity finally sees him face to face.
The whole arc of Scripture moves from "hiding in shame" to "at last, we see him."
From eyes that were "opened" in the wrong direction, to eyes that are truly opened. From humanity defining good and evil by their own sight, to humanity finally beholding the face of the One who defines good and evil.
Every day, in countless homes, ordinary conflicts play out—arguments over who is right and who is wrong. Husbands and wives dispute whose standard counts. Parents and children clash over whose perspective is authoritative. Colleagues, friends, brothers and sisters in the church—all of us are constantly asking: Whose view is correct? Whose eyes carry authority?
The root of these conflicts is rarely that one party is simply wicked. More often, it is that each person is seeing the world through their own narrow, partial lens and trying to impose that lens on everyone else.
This is the Eden scene, played out in our homes.
Jesus said, "Don't judge, so that you won't be judged" (Matt 7:1). At its core, "judging" means using your own standard of good and evil to put others on trial. We cling stubbornly to our own framework—what I think is right is right, what I think is wrong is wrong—and then measure everyone around us with that ruler. Husbands measure wives, wives measure husbands, parents measure children, children measure parents. And by that measuring, everyone falls short.
The gospel does not offer us the path of "try harder to see more clearly"—that only deepens our self-righteousness. The gospel's path is this: acknowledge that your eyes are broken, come before the true Light, and ask the Holy Spirit to enlighten the eyes of your heart.
What does that look like in practice? Regularly close your physical eyes—come often before God in prayer and quiet reflection. When we close our physical eyes, we are confessing: my own vision is not enough. Then ask the Holy Spirit to illuminate us from within, to open the eyes of our hearts, so that we can begin to see—how God sees our brothers and sisters, how he sees our families, how he sees this world, and how he sees the opportunities and temptations right in front of us.
Open my eyes, that I may see wondrous things out of your law. (Ps 119:18)
This is a lifelong journey. From being convinced we can see, to admitting we are blind; from blindness, to being gradually illuminated by the Light; from seeing dimly, to one day seeing him face to face.
On that day, we will finally see all things as they truly are—just as God saw everything he had made and said "it was very good."
💬 After reading this article, if you have any thoughts or questions, you are warmly invited to ask Pastor Bond:
- "Do I often replace God's perspective with my own?"
- "Does 'everyone doing what is right in their own eyes' describe me?"
- "Is there a connection between Jesus opening the eyes of the blind and my own spiritual 'seeing'?"