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Cutting Off Your Foot - Mark 9
Cutting Off Your Foot Mark 09
"And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life lame than with two feet to be thrown into hell” (Mark 9:45).
In the sermon on the mount Jesus taught that those who hunger and thirst after God would see God. Here He teaches the same lesson from a negative side. How far would you go to avoid sin and hell?
First, I understand this to be hyperbole and not something to be taken literally. I do not think that Jesus was prescribing mutilation. However, having said that I also am afraid that many people then basically dismiss the thrust of the teaching.
Do we really perceive hell to be a worse fate than living without hands, feet, or eyes? Truth is, it is! Much worse. One of the indications of how horrible hell is, besides the simple graphic word pictures that Jesus gave us, is the amount of times that Jesus spoke about it. Remember who He is and what He thus knows about the reality of this awful place. With such knowledge He repeatedly warned naive people about it.
The bottom line of Jesus’ teaching is simply that you do NOT want to go there. Whatever it takes to avoid going there is worth it.
Most people, if faced with the immediate consequence of having their hand or foot cut off if they did a certain act would find a way to restrain themselves. Why then don’t we take Jesus more seriously about this? We don’t take our sin as seriously as Jesus does. Which in effect is not taking Jesus seriously enough. Hugh DeLong
