Would You Cut Off Your Hand?

I suffered an injury recently to the ring finger on my left hand. I was working on my sister's house so she could get it ready to sell. I was standing on her porch railing, filling in holes on some of the beams where woodpeckers had done their damage. As I jumped off the railing to the porch below my wedding ring caught on a nail in one of the beams. The weight of my fall caused my ring to cut into my finger in a bad way.

Thankfully, my sister lives near a fire station with an EMT unit. I dunked my hand in a cooler full of ice water as we sped over to the station. (the pain was unbelievable!) The EMT's cut my ring off my finger and patched me up pretty good. I am grateful to still have my finger, as I was made aware that many who encounter such a situation are not so fortunate.

A couple days after this accident I got to thinking about a passage of Scripture that I hadn't thought about in a while. Matthew 5:29-30 says, "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. 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." I then thought of this passage as it pertains to the secret sins in our lives.

Now, I realize Jesus was speaking to unbelievers here so the reference to the body going to hell does not apply to those of us who have believed in Jesus for salvation. But the principle of "gouging out" and "cutting off" can still apply to the sin with which we easily become enamored. We must cut such sin out of our lives in order to be clean, pure vessels before God.

As I thought of this principle, my finger throbbed. I then thought of how excruciating it would feel to cut off my entire hand. Ouch! My finger was still attached. Can you imagine slicing off your whole hand?! This got me thinking about the very real truth that removing sin from our lives is painful. I don't think we take this into account sometimes.

As we look around at other Christians who are struggling with different sins in their lives (gossip, lying, addiction, etc.) we are often quick to give simple, trite solutions. We tell them to "stop it" or to "pray more." But do we ever take into account the pain they must endure to sacrifice their sin? Do we offer encouragement and grace for such a journey?

Now take a look at your own life. How often do you gloss over some secret sin because every time the Sword of the Spirit, God's Word, touches it you feel pain? You want to please God and live a life of purity and honor. But you never realized how much it would hurt to really rid your life of sin! I think it is time we stop fooling ourselves and acknowledge that it hurts to "cut off" sin in our lives.

The more I pondered this principle of "cutting off" sin the more I came to realize that such pain, as intense and excruciating as it may be, is temporary compared to the ongoing suffering of letting the sin remain. Sin is a cancer. Its sole purpose is to destroy us, to literally kill us. And as long as the sin remains untouched and attached we forfeit the opportunity to live abundantly. Therefore, the momentary pain of removing the sin produces eternal joy.

So, the next time you are tempted to let sin hang around in your life, take a look at your hand. It's a nice hand, no doubt. But if it causes you to sin, it's not worth hanging on to.

Slicing and dicing,

jonathan