Tear . . . Cut . . . Throw

Matthew 5:27-30

You have heard that it was said, “You shall not commit adultery.” But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.

Tom Wright, Matthew for Everyone (Vol. 1)

Deal ruthlessly with lust. . . . Don’t suppose that Jesus means you must never feel the impulse of lust when you look at someone attractive. That would be impossible, and is not in any case what the words mean. What he commands us to avoid is the gaze, and the lustful imagination, that follows the initial impulse. . . . Choosing not to be swept along by inappropriate sexual passion may well feel on occasion like cutting off a hand or plucking out an eye, and our world has frequently tried to tell us that doing this is very bad for us. . . . Jesus [however] is not just giving moral commands. He is unveiling a whole new way of being human (48-9).

A. Orendorff

Authentic Christian discipleship—following after and being like Jesus—is always set in the context of the cross. When Jesus (and Paul and John and Peter and the author of Hebrews) talk about how we to reclaim our humanity, when Scripture describe the process of being “made new,” it is always set in the most self-denying and self-destroying terms. Resisting the pull of death, resisting the siren of temptation, is hard, brutal, uncomfortable work. And that (as Jesus makes plain) is how it’s suppose to be. The way we know we're resisting temptation and following hard after God is that it hurts. It feels like “cutting off a hand or plucking out an eye.” Yet it is in that death to self that our life to God takes place. Pain is where we met and are met by God.