It Is FinishedSample

“Corrupt”

We read, “If your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out” (v. 47) and turn it into, “If a certain person in church causes you to become angry, avoid that person.” We do this because we want to soften what Jesus is saying. We can say to ourselves, “Well, it’s not my eye that’s causing me to stumble, it’s the presence of this catalogue!” or, “It’s not my brain that’s causing me to get angry, it’s this incredibly trying person!” In other words: “It’s not me that’s causing me to sin, it’s this or that.”

We get, intuitively, that when we steal, it’s not really our hands that are causing it. When we look at someone with NC-17 thoughts in our heads it’s not really our eyes that are at fault. We’re willing to admit that Jesus can’t be saying that. We can see that He’s asking us to consider the question, though: “What is it that causes you to sin?”

Jesus locates the cause of sin in our hearts. So He is leading us in a different direction with His discussion of hands, feet, and eyes. But He’s not leading us outside ourselves. He’s leading us inside. It’s not a metaphor; it’s just not the right body part! He’s saying, “It’s not your hand that causes you to sin. And it’s not your eye either, but you’ll wish it were. Because you can lose a hand, a foot, and an eye and live. The problem is your heart. And if you tear out your heart, the thing that really causes you to sin, you’ll die.”

The good news is that, while our hearts are the real problem, Jesus’s heart is the only solution. He came to rescue internally corrupt people like you and me because internally corrupt people are all that there are.

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