To Fix One’s Gaze Upon (ἐπεῖδον)
To fix one’s gaze upon (ἐπεῖδον), emphasizes concern with something or someone.
When God looked upon Elizabeth, the wife of Zacharias the priest, He took away her reproach among the people by giving her a child in her old age (Luke 1:25).
After the healing of man who was lame from his mother’s womb, Peter and John faced the leaders of Israel, who vehemently demand they stop teaching in the name of Jesus (Acts 4:18). When they were released—because the leaders of Israel found no ground to punish them since they would have to deny the incredible miracle performed through them on a man over forty—Peter and John report what had happened to the disciples. Together, as they supplicated to God, they ask the Lord to gaze upon the leader’s threats and grant them boldness to speak (Acts 4:29).
ἐπεῖδον (epeidon) comes from a root word that means “to see with discernment” (οραω). Therefore, gazing upon someone expresses the act of seeing with discernment.
The more commonly used form, without the intensity, is expressed in εἶδον (eidon). It still expresses the concept of seeing with discernment but without the emphasis of gazing upon. The Magi of the East who saw the star that signified the birth of the King of the Jews, understood what the star meant (Matthew 2:2). After the Magi left the area without reporting back to Herod, he discerned that they had deceived him (Matthew 2:16).
Peter writes concerning those who desire to love life and see with discernment good days: they are to learn to refrain their tongue from wrong and their lips from speaking deceit (1 Peter 3:10). Those who lived before the dispensation of grace all died without receiving the promises, yet they discerned it from afar. This assurance led them to embrace the promises and verbally acknowledge that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth (Hebrews 11:13).
In 1 Timothy 6:16, Paul writes concerning God’s appearance: no man has seen God with discernment, for He dwells in an unapproachable light. We know from Ephesians 5:13 that light exposes all things for what they truly are. Therefore, let us who are in Christ not sleep but arise out from among the dead ones—those who do not believe—and walk in the light Christ has given us (Ephesians 5:14).
When God fixed His gaze upon the threats of the leaders of Israel against those testifying of the resurrection of Christ, the Holy Spirit mentally controlled them, enabling them to speak the word of God with boldness (Acts 4:31). Today, the Holy Spirit fills us where we lack so that we may manifest the life of Christ within us before our crooked and perverse generation, shining as luminaries of the truth (Philippians 2:15).