Matthew 5:27-30 "You have heard that it was said, 'Do not commit adultery.' 28 But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 29 If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. 30 And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.
Introduction
Imagine you are exploring a dark and dangerous cave. It is so dangerous that most of the people who have tried to go through it were killed in the process and never made it out. So you were already pretty nervous, but then the unthinkable happens – your lights go out. Now you have to try to make your way in pitch blackness. You are tense and on edge, and every time a little drip of water drops on you, you just about freak out, because you don’t know if it is a black widow or some poisonous spider or what. And as you are feeling your way along, suddenly your whole being is filled with terror. Something dropped down on you and it is a lot bigger than a spider. It is biting you – hard. And in that split second you don’t know if it is a large rat or something more deadly – like a wolverine. And in a fit of panic you grab whatever it is and fling it away from you as hard as you possibly can.
That kind of throwing – taking something you are utterly repulsed by and throwing it as hard as you can to get it as far away from you as possible –is exactly what is meant by the word in Matthew.5:29 where Jesus says, “Throw it away.” That word throw is at the heart of this whole passage. I just told you a scary story that ended with some deadly thing threatening your life and you grabbing it and flinging it away as hard as you can. Jesus tells the same story in this text. He is going to warn us about something that is on you, that is biting you, and that will kill you if you don’t fling it away from you.
We have been studying through the Sermon on the Mount. And ever since verse 20 Jesus has been talking about why the righteousness of the Pharisees and Scribes is so inadequate. Right off the bat He shows that they are guilty of both murder and adultery. Even though they had not killed anyone or slept with anyone outside of marriage, they were still guilty because they committed both sins in their hearts by being angry and by looking in order to lust.
Matthew 5:28 But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman in order to lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
Modesty
Last week we explored what that means – that looking in a way that results in desire being awakened or stimulated is adultery. (Or if you are single it is fornication.) That kind of looking belongs within marriage alone, and outside of marriage it is a very serious sin – so serious that Jesus says it places your soul in danger of hell. So once again we stand indicted right alongside the Pharisees.
But Jesus does not just indict. He does not just point out the problem; He also gives a solution. However before we get to the solution there is one more thing we need to cover. We talked last time from the perspective of the man doing the looking, but there are also some things we need to know about the woman who is being looked at.
You might think at first that eye adultery is a one-sided kind of sexual sin. But that often is not the case. If a woman dresses immodestly, she is guilty as well.
1 Timothy 2:9 I also want women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety
The command about not looking in order to lust is directed mainly at men, and the command to dress modestly is directed mainly at women, because men and women are different. One writer said men are mainly tempted to use pornography; women are mainly tempted to commit pornography. They commit pornography by dressing immodestly – by dressing in a way that makes it especially hard for the men.
And given the seriousness of this sin for men, it is not hard to understand why it is such an unloving thing for women to dress that way. If there is a man in this church who is struggling to remain faithful with his eyes, how do you think God would feel about a woman who made herself a temptation by the way she dresses so that it is now harder for that man to control his eyes? And as a result of the way she dresses, the men fall into sin more often?
If a woman thinks, “That’s not my responsibility – I can’t help was some guy does with his heart and eyes” – yes, it is your responsibility. Any time you do something that you do not have to do that makes it more likely that someone will stumble into sin, you are sinning. The person who caves in to the temptation is responsible before God for his sin (when you sin you are not absolved of guilt just because someone tempted you), but the person who puts the temptation in your path is also guilty.
If you are wondering about what God thinks of women who allow themselves to be the tool Satan uses to draw men into sin, the answer is in Matthew 18.
Matthew 18:6-7 But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. 7 "Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to sin! Such things must come, but woe to the man through whom they come!
If you are the stumbling stone that brings about someone stumbling into sin – woe to you, you would be better off drowned.
So immodesty is a very serious matter. And there are two kinds - intentional and unintentional. There are some women who intentionally dress in a way to call attention to their body, and they would be happy to discover that men were filled with desire when they walk into the room. But very often in the church it is not so intentional. Women are simply naïve about what is likely to cause a man to stumble.
And a lot of that is due to our culture. Our culture drills it into young girls – “You have two options: ugly or cute. And here is the definition of cute and it is dress that draws attention to the body. So you have so many girls and women who have no idea that certain things create a problem for men. They are not trying to be sleazy – they just want to wear cute things. And they do not realize that those things are not cute – they are seductive and tempting.
We have a culture full of women who do not understand the difference between being pretty and being seductive. Girls in middle and high school think that anything that gets them a lot of looks must be pretty. But that is not the case at all. What will get you the most looks of all is if you come to school completely naked – even if you are ugly you will get a lot of looks. But there are different kinds of looks. There are lustful looks and there are the looks of attraction to beauty. The first kind are easy to get, the second kind much harder. The culture tells girls they have to wear clothes that draw attention to their body in order to be beautiful. But that is not beauty; it is just exhibitionism.
So thanks to our pornographic culture we have a situation now where there are many women in the church who are perfectly willing and eager to be modest, but they have no idea that some things they wear cause a problem. And it is hard also because you never know what is going to be a temptation for a particular man. What is tempting to some men is no problem for other men. So sometimes a woman will throw up her hands and say, “How can I possibly dress in a way that won’t be a temptation to anybody?”
I doubt it is even possible to dress in a way that won’t be a temptation to anyone. However, there are some things that are fairly common stumblers for a fair percentage of men. I think the goal of each woman at church should be to dress in a way that is not likely to cause any male at church to stumble or struggle. Obviously the word “likely” is subject to interpretation. However there are some fairly basic things that are a problem for enough men that you would do well to avoid dressing that way around men. I checked the dress code at a nearby public high school and found that they do not allow girls to wear spaghetti straps or anything with bare shoulders, anything that exposes the stomach, short skirts, or low cut shirts, and all underclothing has to be completely covered up. Now that is a secular public school. That is the world saying those things are too immodest. And that same list is fairly common. I worked at a camp, and they had a very similar code. I think at the very least we should agree that in a culture like ours, if the world agrees that those things are immodest, we can be fairly confident that a large enough percentage of men are tempted by that sort of thing and that we should avoid them. And when I give you specific examples like that, please do not take that as a legalistic dress code that I am going to enforce on everybody. I am just letting you know – these are some very common stumblers. I am a man, I know what catches my eye, and I have counseled a lot of men who have told me what makes them struggle, so I am just passing the information along. When there is a lot of skin exposed – of any part of the body – that catches the eye. When clothes are tight to your body, that draws attention to your figure.
Just in the short existence of this church I have had men tell me more than once that they struggle in the worship service because they are trying to fix their attention on God, but they have to fight their eyes because of the way some are dressed. And I do not have any doubt that most of the women at Agape would be horrified if they discovered someone has had to struggle to worship because of them. And they would happily change the way they dress to show love to their brothers in the Lord. Everywhere we go in this culture we have to fight and struggle and work to look women in the eye because so much is exposed. And it seems like if there is one place we could get a rest from that struggle it should be the church – a place where our sisters in Christ will actually help us in the battle. If we love one another we should do everything possible to help one another remain pure.
One problem is most women think they are not very attractive, and so they cannot imagine any man would look at them in order to lust. But the fact is, if you have a female body, that is pretty much all you need. If you are a female and you have a body, it is important that you dress and act modestly, because the language of Matthew 18 is severe. I don’t think very many women who err on the side of modesty will get to the end of their life and be full of regret because they did not dress a little more seductively. But I can tell you for sure that women who knowingly cause their brothers in Christ to stumble in this area will really regret it on Judgment Day.
And if this is an annoyance to you – you think, “Other women get to wear such cute things, and I have to be all covered up” – and you feel yourself kind of resenting that – just think of it as a ministry. You make all kinds of sacrifices for ministry, don’t you? Think of all the work you put into things like teaching Sunday school. Why do you do all that? You do it to help some younger fellow-believers in the process of sanctification. This is the same thing. But instead of having to spend a bunch of time in preparation, and do a whole bunch of work week after week after week for years – in this case all you have to do is wear certain kinds of clothes – and you will be rewarded in heaven for that many fewer sins being committed. If you come to paint you wear clothes suitable for that, if you come to work on the landscaping outside you wear clothes suitable for that, so if you come to church why not wear clothes suitable for the purpose of church – the sanctification of the sons and daughters of God?
It is such a small price to pay for such a huge benefit! I do not like wearing suits. They are incredibly uncomfortable – not to mention expensive and time consuming to put on. But I want to do everything possible to help people in their spiritual growth, and I think, at the margin, it is a little easier for people to think of the message coming from the pulpit as being authoritative if I am dressed formally. So if it will help in the reception of the message – even if it is only a tiny bit, I am not only willing to do it, but I am happy to do it. A Christian woman should not only be willing to help her brothers by dressing modestly, but should delight in doing that ministry to them. It is a great privilege to have an opportunity to set aside a freedom or preference for the sake of someone’s spiritual benefit.
So women should dress modestly for the sake of their brothers, and if we take Jesus’ words here seriously – married women should dress modestly out of faithfulness to their husbands. Just as it is wrong for your husband to give this kind of looking to another woman because it belongs to you alone as his wife, in the same way it is wrong for you to make yourself the object of that kind of looking from any man but your husband. Just as it is wrong for your husband to enjoy looking at another woman sexually, so it is wrong for you to enjoy being looked at sexually by another man. Your body belongs to your husband alone to look at in that way, and not to anyone else.
The Visual Part of Intimacy
One the other hand, it does belong to your husband, and 1 Corinthians 7 is very clear about not depriving him. That includes the visual part. The whole point of 1 Corinthians 7:1-5 is that whatever you deprive your spouse of, that makes your spouse more vulnerable to temptation in that area. And since the visual appetite is an area of so much temptation, that is really not a good part to withhold. So everything I am saying about modesty is outside the home – not when you are alone with your husband. As we found last week – you know intuitively that looking is part of marital intimacy – you know that by how it makes you feel when you catch your husband looking that way at another woman. So just remember that in the bedroom. If that is a part of marital intimacy then let it be a part of your marital intimacy.
Those three times in the Song of Songs when the man describes the woman’s body part by part – what do you think the context was? I don’t think that happened when she was in a pair of sweats doing laundry or something. She is clearly going out of her way to be the fulfillment of his God-given visual appetites. I think every wife should periodically ask her husband what kinds of things she could do or wear to improve in this area.
The Solution: Kill Sin
OK, so now we know the problem – visual adultery (verses 27-28). And now in the next two verses Jesus gives us the solution.
Matthew 5:29-30 If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. 30 And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.
The problem: adultery. The solution: gouge out your right eye and cut off your right hand. I asked the question last time – Why do we all still have two hands and two eyes? Is it because none of us are guilty of looking in a way that stirs up forbidden desire? None of us struggle with that sin and so there is no need to do what Jesus said to do here? Or is it our practice to just write off something Jesus said as a figure of speech or non-literal just because it is too hard? Usually the figure of speech people point to here is hyperbole – purposeful exaggeration to make a strong point. “Jesus did not mean it’s actually literally worth decapitating and mutilating yourself – that’s an exaggeration.”
I can assure you this is not exaggeration. In fact, it is just the opposite. Exaggeration is overstatement; what we have here is actually understatement. It is better to lose one part of your body than to have all your body parts and be thrown into hell. Is that not literally true? Wouldn’t you agree that it is literally better to go limping into heaven than to go leaping into hell? That is true, it is obviously true, and it is literally true. It is no exaggeration. It would be the epitome of insanity if someone said, “No, I think it would actually be better to go to hell with all my body parts than to lose a body part and then go to heaven.” There actually is a good reason why we have not destroyed our eyes and hands. It is not because this is exaggeration, but there is a reason. And understanding that reason is the key to understanding how this passage will help us in our daily struggle against sin.
The meaning of right eye and right hand
Does your eye cause you to sin?
No doubt we all agree that if your eye were the culprit, it would be more than worth it to gouge it out. That would hurt – especially back in those days without the kinds of painkillers we have today, but it would still be easily worth it if it meant the difference between going to hell or heaven. It is literally true that it is worth removing your hand and eye if they are the cause of the problem. The reason we do not do it is because they are not the cause of the problem.
Could you look with lust if you only had one hand? I know I could. And when Jesus repeats this in Matthew 18 He includes the foot. Could you look at a woman in a sinful way if you only had one foot? It is hard to imagine that cutting off a hand or foot could do anything about the problem of lustful looking.
And even gouging out the eye – Jesus specifies the right eye. Have you ever looked lustfully at a woman with only one eye? And why the right eye – is that the only one that can look with lust? You look at a woman and your left eye is pure as the wind driven snow, but your right eye is looking with lust, so that if you gouged out that one eye the problem solved?
The thing that is causing the problem needs to be violently removed – but it is not your physical hand and eye. So what is it? The context is pretty clear – Jesus is talking not about a physical eye, but about a certain kind of looking that is adulterous. What places the stumbling block in our path is not our eyeballs – it is that thing in us that wants to look in the wrong way. It is not the lens and retina and iris and optic nerve – it is something in the soul. It is that part of your soul that is in charge of looking – and that has visual appetites. It is that part of your inner man that decides what you are going to look at and how you are going to look. That is what causes the stumbling.
So Jesus is using the word “eye” here as a figure of speech to refer to that part of you – that part of your soul – that does the sinful looking. That is what needs to be amputated. That is what needs to be gouged out and thrown from you.
Wrong looking throws gas on the flame
I want to reiterate something here so there is no misunderstanding – when a woman dresses in a seductive way around you she is not the cause of your sin. The sin itself comes from the heart – not from the thing you look at.
Matthew 15:19-20 For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. 20 These are what make a man 'unclean’
That is why we can never blame someone else for our sin – it originates inside our own hearts. However, when the little flame of lust or covetousness appears in the heart, looking has the effect of throwing gasoline on that little flame. That is why companies spend billions of dollars on television advertising. It is when you see it that you have got to have it.
Joshua 7:21 I saw in the plunder a beautiful robe … two hundred shekels of silver and a wedge of gold … I coveted them and took them.
“I saw … I coveted … I took.” The sin started out small in his heart, but then he looked at that stuff in a certain way. He did the exact thing Jesus is talking about in this text - he looked in a way that resulted in coveting.
When a sinful flame of desire arises in your heart you can snuff it out, or you can throw gasoline on it. Throwing gasoline on it is looking in a way that results in covetousness. (Or sometimes just thinking in a way that results in covetousness. You can do this kind of looking with your physical eyes and you can do it with your mind’s eye.) You can fix your attention on it in a way that throws gasoline on the fire, or you can snuff the little flame out immediately. Snuffing it out is what Jesus means by gouge it out and throw it away.
Nothing is too extreme
Jesus is using language to describe urgent, aggressive, and thorough elimination of the problem. He does not just say gouge it out – He then adds, and throw away (lit “cast it from you”). If the point were just that you need to blind that eye, the throwing would not be necessary. You could just drop it on the ground and you would be blind as a bat. But Jesus is not content with that – He wants you to hurl it away from you – like that animal that dropped down on you in the cave. That is the picture. Gouge it out, cut it off, kill it, destroy it, hurl it away from you – deal decisively and quickly and thoroughly with the problem.
And the reason it is the right eye and the right hand is to make the point that no sacrifice is too great when it comes to killing sin. The point is not that your right side is lustful and your left side is pure. The point is that it is worth it, even if you have to lose your strong hand and your dominant eye. Most people are right handed. Your strong hand is especially valuable, and Jesus is saying, “Even if it costs you the most valuable, important, precious things you have, that’s still a small price to pay to stay out of hell.” So nothing is too extreme.
In our struggle against sin, what we consider reasonable measures are usually nowhere near extreme enough. Jesus wants us to take unheard of actions when it comes to fighting sin. That is the point of the right hand and right eye – and it is the point of the understatement. The reason we use understatement when we speak is to emphasize the magnitude of the truth. If I were preaching a sermon and said something like, “Look, if you lost everything – if your spouse died, and your children died, and you lost your job and your home and your friends and your health – you might be a little unhappy” – why would I say “a little unhappy”? That is a purposeful understatement designed to draw attention to the extreme in the other direction. The idea is for you to hear that and for your heart to react and say, “A little unhappy? I would be devastated!” That is the purpose of understatement, and I think that is what Jesus is doing here. It would be worth losing a limb to avoid hell? Good grief – it would be worth losing anything to avoid going to hell!
Be Aggressive
In fact, Jesus’ language of amputation is actually a little soft compared to other places in the New Testament. They just say to kill it.
Colossians 3:5-6 Kill, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. 6 Because of these, the wrath of God is coming.
Kill the part of you that sins or face God’s wrath on Judgment Day.
Romans 8:13 if you live according to the flesh, you are about to die; but if by the Spirit you kill the deeds of the body, you will live.
That is exactly the same point Jesus is making here. It is life and death - kill sin in your life or it will kill you. Mutilate, amputate, cut off the problem and throw it as far away from you as you can throw. Declare all out war on it and do not let up until it is dead.
And if that sounds a little scary – if the idea of killing some part of your own self sounds like it might be hard; might be painful – you are right. If you are going to do this it is going to involve your body taking a beating.
1 Corinthians 9:27 I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be rejected.
Part of the reason why the Lord used such extreme language, I think, was to wake us up to the fact that this is a war.
1 Peter 2:11 Dear friends, I urge you … to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul.
Sin in your life is not just some little weakness that you kind of want to shore up here and there. You have a list of things – you would like to do this and that and lose a little weight and learn the piano… oh, and overcome this sin… Overcoming sin is not something that can be put on a back burner or on some list of things you would like to someday do. It is a war – a war that you will win or you will lose. It is a war we must fight every day from now until the day you go to be with the Lord.
Never Stop
Do not be misled by the imagery of killing or crucifying your flesh. We fight against it with the intent to kill, but it will never be one hundred percent dead in this life. If you ever think you have won, and now you are on top and there is no real need to fight so hard anymore – think again. Nobody is without sin.
1 John 1:8 If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.
All of us are in the war of Galatians 5:17.
Galatians 5:17 For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want.
That verse is true of every Christian. Even the best Christian in the world has a sinful flesh that fights against the Spirit resulting in that person doing things that he wishes he wouldn’t do. Even the Apostle Paul had to keep fighting.
Philippians 3:12 Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.
Not even Paul could rest. He had to beat his body and make it his slave continually.
In fact, get this – not even Jesus could let up in this war. “I thought Jesus was sinless.” He was, but He was not automatically sinless. He had to fight the same war we fight. He did not have a sin nature but He did have the same enemy we have. All you have to do is read the Gospels and you will see that Jesus fought hard against the temptations of Satan. He cried out to God with loud cries and tears. So even if we did somehow get to the point of being without sin altogether, we would still have to fight.
So this is a war. And if you stop fighting before the enemy is dead, then you are AWOL. Sin never rests. Sometimes Satan is making a full, frontal assault with temptation; other times he is plotting and spying and working through the back door to weaken your defenses, but he never stops. Nor does the flesh. Your sinful flesh and the devil are a unified team and they are always acting, always conceiving, always seducing, always deceiving – sometimes loudly and sometimes quietly, but they never stop – they never let up.
The Christian who stands still and allows these two enemies to exert constant blows on him without fighting back will, in the end, be defeated. And even if he does fight back, if his efforts are half-hearted, he will ultimately be defeated. In fact, even wholehearted fighting will not be enough to survive the war if you fail to use powerful enough weapons. This is a fight to the death – either sin will die or you will die. Imagine you are here at church and the Lord came to you and said, “There is an assassin who was hired to kill you. He is hiding right now somewhere on the church grounds. Here’s a gun. You need to kill him before he kills you. I assure you, only one of you will walk away from this place today – the other will be carried out in a body bag. Don’t worry about the legality – this is pure self-defense, because it is one hundred percent certain that if you don’t kill him, he will kill you. But if you do kill him, you will survive, and you can go home and be safe.” That is what Jesus is saying to us here.
Listen to the warning of Hebrews 3:12, and remember that this is addressed to brothers.
Hebrews 3:12 See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. 13 But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness.
Sin begins with a small rationalization or compromise, and gets a little bigger bit by bit, until its deceitfulness starts to have a hardening effect on your heart. And if that goes on for an extended time the end result is that someone who was a brother ends up with a sinful, unbelieving heart that has turned away from the living God. John Owen: “If sin is subtle, watchful, strong, and always at work in the business of killing our souls, and we are slothful, negligent, and foolish in this battle, can we expect a favorable outcome? There is not a day but sin foils or is foiled, prevails or is prevailed upon. It will always be so while we live in this world. Sin will not spare for one day. There is no safety but in a constant warfare…” That is true. Every day either sin will have victory or you will have victory, but the war never stops.
Motives
Think back to the cave. That creature has dropped down on you; it is biting you – hard. And you grab it to tear it off and fling it away, but as soon as you grab it you realize it is not an animal that dropped down. It is… your own right hand. It is a part of your own body. It is hurting you, and it is going to kill you if you don’t hurry up and get rid of it – but it is going to hurt, because it is a part of you that needs to be ripped away.
I don’t know what the Holy Spirit might be convicting you about this morning. There is a sin in your life, and you are all for getting rid of it – but you now realize you have not been making every effort. You have made some efforts, but there is one thing you know would help, but you just cannot bring yourself to take that step. It is going to hurt – it is going to feel like hacking off your hand or gouging out your eye. There are parts of your soul wrapped around that sin so tightly, that tearing it loose is going to cause some bleeding.
Maybe some of you are realizing you need to cut off some relationship, or give up something in your life that you just really love. Or you realize you need to go to the extreme, unheard of measure of getting help from others instead of just trying to handle it on your own because that is just not working. You are going to have to confess some sin that is going to be absolutely humiliating, and it might cost you your reputation, or a friendship, or maybe even your marriage. Maybe your heart is just fighting and resisting what the Holy Spirit is doing in your heart right now. You do not even want to think about giving that thing up – but the Spirit just won’t let you go now. How do you drum up enough motivation to go through with the amputation? Jesus gives us two motivations.
Motive #1 – Avoid hell
Hell is on the table
The first one is the threat of hell. Jesus just goes right to the extreme. He does not warn us about potential loss of reward, or some temporal consequences, or any of that – the issue is hell.
That is jolt to the system, because Jesus is talking to believers here. How can that be? Doesn’t Romans 8:1 assure us that there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ? Doesn’t 1 John 1:9 promise that if we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness? Aren’t we saved by grace alone through faith alone and not by works? The answer to all those questions is an unequivocal, “Yes!” So how can hell even be on the table? We can talk more about that next time, but for now let me just assure you – it is on the table. And if there is no room in your theological system for that, you need to make room – otherwise Jesus’ logic in this passage becomes worthless. He is saying we should take drastic action against our sin because it is better to do that than to be thrown into hell. That logic only makes sense if there are only two options: amputation or hell. Throw that sin away from you or be thrown into hell. There is no third option. Jesus does not add, “Or – you could just be lethargic about fighting sin and still go to heaven.” If that is an option then the whole passage becomes meaningless.
This is serious, serious business. The real threat of hell should shake us to the core.
Motive #2: Heaven
So the first motive Jesus gives us is the avoidance of hell. And I told you the second motive is not as obvious – but it is there. To see it you have to zero in on that one word, better, and think about the implications. Jesus says it is better to lose a limb then to have that limb and go to hell – what does that imply about where you will go if you lose the limb? Obviously Jesus is not saying it is better to lose a limb and go to hell than to keep your limbs and go to hell. The implication is if you do what He is suggesting and take these radical, immediate, decisive steps in fighting sin, your eternal home will be heaven. And what is implied here is actually stated in Matthew 18.
Matthew 18:8 If your hand or your foot causes you to sin cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life maimed or crippled than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire.
Entering life means going to be with Him and enjoying eternal life forever. That is the thing Jesus is talking about here that is better.
Avoidance of punishment usually is not enough motivation to fight against sin with the kind of intensity that is required to win. We also need a positive motivation, so the Lord offers us life. One of the reasons why we fight so hard against sin is because of the promise of life. Just as continuing in a sin leads down a path toward apostasy, so fighting against sin leads down a path toward life.
And life in Christ is not just something we enjoy in heaven. We can enjoy it now. And eternal life is not just living forever – it is life as it should be – life at its best. It is life full of hope and joy and strength and satisfaction and fullness and peace and courage and comfort and confidence and all the other benefits that come from nearness to God’s presence. The more we sin the more those things are forfeited. One of the most significant signs of spiritual maturity is when our craving for the nearness of God’s presence becomes one of the most powerful forces to motivate us to fight against sin.
Whatever causes you to sin – rip it off and hurl it away. No matter how painful it is, it is worth it to avoid hell, and it is more than worth it to enjoy the fullness of abundant life in Jesus Christ.
The Threat of Hell
The Tension
Nobody could possibly argue with Jesus’ logic in this passage. Nothing could be more obvious than the fact that it is better to lose a limb than to go to hell. So, if that is so obvious, why do we tend to be so hesitant to take more drastic action against our sin? Why aren’t we more motivated by that threat? Isn’t it mainly because deep down we do not really believe there is any real risk of going to hell? Will a lustful look imperil my soul in some way? Sure. But eternal hell? I am a Christian. I might lose some reward, I might face some tough consequences or chastisement, I could lose my health or my marriage – but damnation? For a lustful look? I thought Scripture says there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ.
So why doesn’t Jesus say, “It is better for you to lose an eye than for you to have two eyes and be chastised by God?” Or “It is better to lose a hand than to have two hands and suffer the hard consequences of adultery in this life.” How is it that the threat of hell can even be on the table? And not just a subtle threat of hell either. Did you notice the world Jesus used? He does not just say you will slide into hell or drop into hell or descend into hell – He says you will be thrown into hell.
He uses the same word He used to describe flinging your severed hand or gouged out eye away from you. Just as violently as you throw something off that threatens your life, in that same way those who fail to fight against sin will be thrown away from God into the fire of hell.
Resolution of the Tension
So how do we resolve this tension in Scripture between God’s promise not to throw us into hell and passages like this that do threaten the possibility of hell? This is one of the tensions in Scripture that are not easy to resolve, but that must be taken seriously. People with different theological perspectives have answered this question in various ways, but however you answer, it is crucially important that you make some room for passages like this in your theological system. We need to find a way to take these kinds of warnings seriously, because this is not the only place where believes are warned about ending up in hell.
Not Cause and Effect
So let me give you my understanding. This is my feeble attempt at reconciling the tension between the promises that there is no condemnation for us on the one hand, and threats like this directed to genuine believers on the other.
I read something this week by John Owen that I found helpful in this regard. He points out the fact that while we must defeat sin in our lives in order to go to heaven, there is not a cause and effect relationship between defeating sin and going to heaven. Defeating sin does not cause me to go to heaven. Grace alone causes a person to go to heaven. So my fighting against sin and my going to heaven do not have a cause and effect relationship, but they do have a means and end relationship.
Remember last week when I used the illustration of an assassin? God tells you, “There is an assassin on the church grounds, and you must kill him or he will kill you.” If that happened, would your killing the assassin be the cause or source of your life? No – The cause of you having life is your parents conceiving you and giving birth. That is the source of your life. Killing the assassin does not have a cause and effect relationship with you having life. However, it does have a means and end relationship to you making it home alive. The end (or goal) is for you to make it home alive, and the means to reaching that goal is putting the assassin to death.
That is the picture we get in Scripture about our sin. You do not become a Christian by overcoming sin. But overcoming sin is one of the means God uses to bring you to heaven. It is the means He uses to preserve your faith so you do not fall away.
No one makes it to heaven apart from sanctification. There is absolutely no such thing as a person who becomes a Christian, never grows spiritual, never makes progress in becoming more holy and more Christlike, never fights sin, never has any success in putting sin to death – but still goes to heaven. There is no such thing.
Hebrews 12:14 Make every effort … to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord.
A person who is not striving after holiness, or who is not making any progress at all toward holiness, will never see the Lord.
Romans 8:13 For if you live according to the flesh, you are about to die; but if by the Spirit you kill the misdeeds of the body, you will live.
So we must strive for holiness. But what about the doctrine of preservation? Scripture promises that God will keep us and hold us and preserve our faith so we won’t fall away. How do we reconcile that with passages that warn us about falling away? There are two major branches of thought within Christianity. Whichever side you take, I would urge you not to make that a point of dividing fellowship with those on the other side.
The Classic View
Let me start with what I will call, for lack of a better term, the classic view. Throughout most of Church history the way the Church has tended to reconcile this difficulty has been by assuming that God’s promises to preserve our faith and keep us to the end are not absolute in this life. They are like so many of the rest of the promises of salvation – only partial in this life and absolute after Jesus returns. For example, God promises to keep us from sin. But is that absolute in this life? No – even though He is actively keeping us from sin, we still sin.
So the classic view says that it is the same way with God’s promise to keep us from falling away. It is a real promise, and God is indeed working in us to preserve our faith (which is the only reason it’s even possible for us to persevere to the end), however it is not an absolute promise in this life. It is possible, in this view, for a genuinely born-again believer to ultimately fall away and be lost if he does not persevere in his faith.
Now don’t misunderstand. This view does not say that you lose your salvation every time you sin – not at all. What it does say is that continuing in sin places a believer on a path that would ultimately lead to falling away. Jesus is not saying here that you lose your salvation every time you commit adultery or murder. No sin is big enough to cancel out the grace of God. You did not get saved by stopping your sin and so you cannot lose your salvation by sinning. You did gain your salvation, however, through faith. And if you go down a path of unrepentant sin, that path will eventually bring you to a place where your faith is completely destroyed. And even if you do repent, if there is no progress in the effort to kill that sin in your life, that can also eventually have the effect of destroying your faith. And where there is no faith there is no salvation.
The Reformed view
So that is the explanation that has been the dominant view throughout Church history. But there is another view. This one I will call the Reformed view because it first appeared during the time of the Reformation in the 1500’s. That view assumes God’s promises of preservation are absolute in this life. That is, it is absolutely impossible for a genuinely born-again believer to ever fall away. God would just never let that happen. Therefore if someone falls away it is automatically assumed that person must not have been truly saved in the first place.
“But how do the people who hold that view explain the warnings?” Some have tried to say, “Well, those warnings are for fake Christians – pretenders.” But that does not work because God’s message to phony Christians is not, “Persevere – stand firm the way you are so you don’t fall away.” The message of Scripture to phony Christians is not “persevere,” but rather “repent.” Those people are not in danger of falling away because there is nothing for them to fall away from.
And if you take Jesus’ statement about gouging out your eye and cutting off your hand as applying only to unbelievers, you have a real problem, because that means Jesus is saying the way for an unbeliever to be saved is by taking steps to kill the sin in his life.
And people like John Calvin realized all that, and so they took the warnings to be directed to genuine believers. And they resolved the tension by just saying, “Yes, true believers are warned about actually falling away and becoming lost. However, that could never actually happen. All true believers will heed those warnings and persevere all the way to the end.” So the Reformed view is that yes we are warned about falling away, but it is something that will never happened because God will see to it that we pay attention to the warnings.
Personally, I do not think God would warn us about an impossibility. And so for those reasons and a few others I take the traditional view and not the Reformed view. I am convinced Scripture warns genuinely saved believers about the real, actual danger of falling away.
Benediction: 2 Peter 1:5 make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; 6 and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; 7 and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. … For if you do these things, you will never fall, 11 and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Summary
If lustful looking is adulterous, then immodest dress is also wrong. Gouge out the eye means take drastic action to kill that part of you that looks the wrong way or pushes you toward sin. Nothing is too extreme because heaven and hell are at stake.
