Day 25 Bible Reading

Genesis 49 & 50, Matthew 18: 1-9, Psalm 15

Matthew 18:8-9 (ESV)

“And if your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life crippled or lame than with two hands or two feet to be thrown into the eternal fire. And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into the hell of fire.”

Verses 8 and 9 from Matthew 18 stood out to me today. I don’t believe Christ meant to literally cut your foot off or gouge your own eye out because of sin. One commentator suggested that Christ is saying we must be willing to sacrifice in fighting against sin. In earlier verses, Christ said that if you sin in your heart and mind it is the same as committing the actual sin. For me this means that if you indulge in even thinking of the sin and do it constantly, then one day an opportunity will present itself to actually commit the sin and you will do it because you’ve already been thinking about committing the sin. What has sometimes shocked me when I watch an Agatha Christie movie is how easily people murder other people in her stories. But if you study the murder scene more closely, the opportunity to commit the presented itself and it was easy to do, that the person couldn’t overcome the temptation. And if we could see inside their heart and mind, I’m sure we would have seen constant thoughts of murder. So Christ is saying the best thing to do is not even think of the sin, so when the opportunity does present itself to commit the sin we wouldn’t even think about doing it because it would never occur to us. We must cut if off at the start, or it will as some people have said, spread like an infection in our heart and mind.