“I have made a covenant with my eyes. How then could I gaze at a virgin? What would be my portion from God above, and my heritage from the almighty on high?”
-Job 31:1–2
This is one of the more well-known phrases from the Book of Job. As Job is, throughout this chapter, and really, the chapters before this, defending his integrity, saying how he has sought to live righteously and holy before God.
And specifically in Job 31:1, he says, “I’ve made a covenant with my eyes.” What a phrase; like, I have made a commitment before God, a covenant like a marriage commitment before God with my eyes. That what I see, what I choose to look upon, will be pure and holy and righteous.
Job 31:1–2 Reminds Us What Holiness Looks Like
This is a really great phrase to lodge away in our hearts and minds; that we would be holy and righteous and pleasing to God with what we see. With what we gaze upon, with where we fix our attention.
I was just reading last night, again, the 10 Commandments, and God’s clear commands against things like adultery and lying and stealing.
But then Jesus commands in Matthew 5, that if you look at someone lustfully, then you have already committed adultery in your heart. If you have an angry thought towards someone, then you have already committed murder against them in your heart. The importance of what we do with our thoughts and our desires before God cannot, must not be underestimated.
Job 31:1–2 Fixes Our Attention on God
So I want to lead us to pray that God would be pleased with our eyes today, that God would be pleased with the desires of our hearts, with our thoughts, with what we fix our attention on, what we look at and see, and linger upon.
God help us, we pray, to live with holiness and righteousness today in all our ways, in all our thoughts, the things that nobody else sees. Even the things that we are tempted to gloss over as if they’re no big deal: what we think, what we look at, what we desire.
Led to Pray
God, purify us, we pray. Inside and out, make us more and more like Jesus, we pray. Jesus, we need your help to take captive our every thought in obedience to you. Our every desire toward that which is pleasing toward you. God, we pray that would be so in our lives.
Help us today to make a covenant with our eyes, to only look upon that which is pleasing and honoring and glorifying to you, and honoring to others. God, may it be so. With our eyes, our thoughts, our desires, our everything, help us to please you. And in this, to experience life before you, as you’ve designed us to live it.
O Jesus, this is only possible through your grace, through the power of your spirit living in us. May it be so, we pray, according to Job 31:1–2. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
