If your right eye causes
you to stumble, 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 stumble, 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. (Matthew
5: 29-30)
Gouge your eye out! Cut your hand off! I can’t even imagine
the kind of painful, bloody, and gore-ish mess of actually doing that. But God
is telling us that is how much we should hate the sin in our lives, the sin we
carry around in our bodies; accepting the sin as if it’s truly a part of our body. Take sin seriously!
Gouge it out. Cut it off. Permanently remove it. Cast it far away. Lose the
sinful part.
But alas. Even my very best “Love God and Neighbor” days, I
am a sinner.
What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to
death? (Romans 7:24)
All
these thoughts of pain, blood and gore take me to the foot of the cross. Our Savior’s
crucifixion. Not a gouging out or cutting off His sin … but ours.
Who
will rescue me?
You were dead in sins,
and your sinful desires were not yet cut away. Then he gave you a share in
the very life of Christ, for he forgave all your sins, and blotted out the charges proved against you, the
list of his commandments which you had not obeyed. He took this list of sins
and destroyed it by nailing it to Christ’s cross. In this way God took away Satan’s power to accuse
you of sin, and God openly displayed to the whole world Christ’s
triumph at the cross where your sins were all taken away.
(Colossians 2:13-15)
Nothing
but the blood of Jesus …
…
whew …
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