DRASTIC MUTILATION

‘If anyone causes one of these little ones– those who believe in me – to stumble. It would be better for him if a large millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea.

If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off. It were better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go into hell, where the fire never goes out. And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than to have two feet and go to hell. And if your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell where ‘the worms that eat them do not die and the fire is not quenched.

Everyone will be salted with fire. ‘Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can you make it salty again? Have salt among yourselves, and be at peace with one another.’ (Mark 9: 42-50).

What Jesus was talking about makes no sense to a westerner without an understanding of Hebrew background and rabbinic teaching methods. First of all, Jesus used a teaching method here called hyperbole or exaggeration. What He said was never intended to be taken literally, and His disciples understood that.  

He was not telling His disciples to mutilate themselves in order to get rid of sin. That would contradict what He had already taught them, that sin is not about behaviour first of all; sin begins in the heart and issues in words and behaviour. What would be the point of cutting off hands or feet or plucking out an eye without a change of heart? Equally useless are the rules about diet and washing the body, because none of these things have any effect on the heart.

What did Jesus mean, then? He was speaking to His disciples in the context of John’s information that they had stopped a man from casting out demons in His name because he was not “one of them”. Jesus was indignant because they were being exclusive, as though He belonged to them and to no one else. He opened the door for anyone to follow Him. If they were not against Him, they were for Him.

What did He mean by “little ones”? He used this expression not only for children but also for the ordinary people who followed Him. They were “little ones” in the sense that they were simple and down-to-earth, like children. They had no high-and-mighty ideas about themselves unlike the religious leaders who thought they were a cut above everyone else and that they had exclusive rights to the understanding of the Torah.

Jesus had to use strong words to get them to understand that their attitude was unacceptable to Him. They were sinning against Jesus and against the man by stopping him from following Jesus. By “cutting off” hand or foot or “plucking out” an eye that offended, Jesus was conveying the need for a drastic change of attitude. “Get rid of whatever causes you to sin against another person.”

What these men needed to do was not to mutilate their bodies in order to change the attitude but to mutilate their hearts. The Apostle Paul would take this thought ever further. In the light of Jesus’s death, in order to change one’s attitude, one was to reckon oneself dead to sin and alive to God.

What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? (Rom. 6: 1-2).

The use of the word gehenna (translated “hell”) is also misunderstood. Gehenna was the city rubbish dump outside Jerusalem in the valley of Hinnom where the fire burned continually and where the garbage was thrown, including the bodies of criminals. Jesus was not referring to a place of eternal torment but a place where worthless rubbish was destroyed. His words were a warning that a person who had both hands, both feet and both eyes, but whose heart was corrupted by sin, would be utterly destroyed, like the garbage in the city dump.

Was He advocating a literal fire that never went out? Was He saying that people will burn forever in hell? We don’t know. What we do know is that what He said was intended not to scare people out of hell and into heaven, but to warn them of the dangers of selfishness which issue from a corrupted heart. If we want to experience real life with Him, we must get rid of the attitudes that diminish and dehumanise us.

This is not a “self-help” programme but a response to what He did for us. He died to remove sin and change our hearts. Without that, whatever changes we may make will merely be cosmetic. He calls us to follow Him. Only through faith in Him can we experience the deliverance He achieved through the cross. He put sin to death when He died. Now we can enter into real like by dying to sin with Him.

Since you died with Christ . . .  Since you have been raised with Christ, set you hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God (Col. 2: 20a; 3:1).

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

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