Gouging out your eye, cutting off your hands and feet! Your Question : In Matthew 18 Jesus recommends cutting off your hands and feet, gouging out your eyes if these things cause you to stumble what did he mean? Jesus is teaching his disciples in Matthew 18 and suggests some radical action for those who cause a child to sin, and then Jesus goes on to make the statements in the title of this question. Jesus says it is better to enter life crippled or with one eye than to have hands and feet and two eyes but be thrown into hell. If your feet cause you to sin, by leading you into places that cause you to sin, or your hands are involved in things you know to be sinful, or your eye looks upon something, and causes you to lust, covet etc. Then it can be seen that not having feet, hands and eyes - if they were cut off and gouged out would mean you wouldn’t be led into sin in these ways. Romans 6 gives us some light on this subject. V1- 2 Paul says, “what shall we say then? Shall we go on sinning ............ by no means. We died to sin, how can we live in it any longer? Later on v11 - 12 “count yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer the parts of your body to sin as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life.......” From these verses Paul is answering the question being asked. Count yourself dead to sin. It is just as if our hands, feet, eyes are dead to sin, cut off, gouged out, they will no longer respond to the temptation that will lead us into sin. This doesn’t just happen overnight, this is a lifetime commitment to overcoming temptation. When we realise that we are being tempted, “count yourself dead indeed to sin”, act as if you really have cut off your hands and feet, and gouged your eyes out. The result is the same, but probably not as painful!
Posted on: Tue, 03 Dec 2013 05:00:01 +0000
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