The Terrible Mercy of Amputation Text: Matthew 18:7-9
Introduction: A Sentimental Age
We live in a soft and sentimental age. Our culture, and sadly, much of the church, has refashioned Jesus into a sort of divine therapist, a celestial Mister Rogers whose chief attributes are niceness and a deep commitment to never offending anyone. We have taken the Lion of the Tribe of Judah and declawed Him, muzzled Him, and turned Him into a housecat that purrs affirmations. But the Jesus we meet in the Scriptures is altogether different. He is loving, yes, but His love is a holy, consuming fire. He is kind, but His kindness is a sharp, two-edged sword. And He is not safe.
The passage before us today is one of those portions of Scripture that our modern sensibilities would prefer to quietly skip over. It is jarring. It speaks of woes, stumbling blocks, eternal fire, and self-mutilation. This is not the stuff of inspirational posters. This is hard, sharp, angular truth. And it is precisely what our limp-wristed generation needs to hear. Jesus is not interested in making us comfortable in our sins. He is interested in saving us from our sins, and the process is often as severe as battlefield surgery.
Here, Christ is teaching His disciples about the gravity of sin, both the sin of causing others to fall and the sin that entangles our own hearts. He uses shocking, hyperbolic language to wake us from our spiritual slumber. He wants us to understand that sin is not a minor infraction, a slight misstep, or a correctable character flaw. It is a damnable poison. It is a spiritual gangrene that, if left unchecked, will lead to eternal death. And the appropriate response to such a lethal threat is not moderation, but radical, ruthless amputation.
To understand this passage, we must grasp two foundational realities that our culture despises. First, the reality of hell. Jesus speaks of "eternal fire" and "fiery hell" without flinching. This is not allegory for a bad state of mind. It is a real place of conscious, eternal torment for those who die in their rebellion against God. If we diminish the reality of hell, the cross becomes an overreaction and the radical commands of Christ become nonsensical. Second, we must grasp the reality of corporate responsibility. We are not isolated individuals. Our lives are intertwined, and our sin has a ripple effect. We are capable of becoming snares and traps for others, and God takes this with terrifying seriousness.
The Text
"Woe to the world because of its stumbling blocks! For it is inevitable that stumbling blocks come; nevertheless, woe to that man through whom the stumbling block comes! And if your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it from you; it is better for you to enter life crippled or lame, than, having two hands or two feet, to be cast into the eternal fire. And if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out and throw it from you. It is better for you to enter life with one eye, than, having two eyes, to be cast into the fiery hell."
(Matthew 18:7-9 LSB)
The Inevitable Woe (v. 7)
Jesus begins with a solemn pronouncement of judgment, a woe that covers the entire fallen world system.
"Woe to the world because of its stumbling blocks! For it is inevitable that stumbling blocks come; nevertheless, woe to that man through whom the stumbling block comes!" (Matthew 18:7)
The word for "stumbling blocks" here is the Greek skandalon. It originally referred to the trigger stick of a trap, the bait stick that springs the snare. In a fallen world, these snares are everywhere. Sin is the air we breathe. Temptations are inevitable. This is a sober, realistic assessment of life east of Eden. We live in a world that is rigged with spiritual tripwires designed to bring us down. Jesus is not a utopian idealist; He is a clear-eyed realist. He says it is "inevitable" that these offenses will come.
But this inevitability does not remove personal responsibility. This is a crucial distinction. God's sovereignty and man's responsibility are not contradictory; they are two parallel lines that meet in the mind of God. The world system is under a curse, a "woe," because it is a factory of stumbling blocks. But then Jesus narrows His focus with surgical precision: "nevertheless, woe to that man through whom the stumbling block comes!"
You cannot excuse your sin by saying, "Well, it's just the way the world is." You cannot say, "Judas had to betray Jesus for the cross to happen, so he gets a pass." No. Jesus said of Judas, "The Son of Man goes as it is written of him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been better for that man if he had not been born" (Matthew 26:24). God ordains all things, but He is not the author of sin, and His ordination never cancels out the guilt of the sinner. If you become the means by which another person is tripped up, enticed into sin, or hindered in their faith, you place yourself under this divine woe. This is a terrifying warning against gossip, against setting a poor example, against teaching false doctrine, against seducing others into sin, whether sexual, financial, or otherwise. You are your brother's keeper, and God will hold you accountable if you become your brother's trap.
Radical Amputation (v. 8)
Having addressed the danger of being a stumbling block to others, Jesus now turns to the danger of the stumbling blocks within our own lives.
"And if your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it from you; it is better for you to enter life crippled or lame, than, having two hands or two feet, to be cast into the eternal fire." (Matthew 18:8 LSB)
This is, of course, hyperbole. Jesus is not commanding literal self-mutilation. If you cut off your hand for stealing, you still have a covetous heart and another hand. The problem is never ultimately with the bodily member; the problem is with the sinful heart that directs it. As Jesus says elsewhere, "out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander" (Matthew 15:19). The hand, the foot, and the eye are simply the instruments the heart uses to carry out its rebellion.
So what is Jesus commanding? He is commanding a spiritual violence against sin that is as radical and decisive as a physical amputation. He is telling us to be utterly ruthless with anything in our lives that leads us into sin. The "hand" represents our actions, our work, what we do. The "foot" represents our path, our associations, where we go. If your job requires you to compromise your integrity, cut it off. If your business practices are dishonest, cut them off. If your friendships are pulling you away from Christ, cut them off. If the places you go lead you into temptation, cut them off.
Notice the logic Jesus employs: "it is better for you to enter life crippled or lame, than... to be cast into the eternal fire." This is a divine cost-benefit analysis. Jesus is setting two things side by side: temporary, earthly loss and eternal, conscious torment. He is saying that any sacrifice in this life, no matter how painful, is an infinite bargain compared to losing your soul in hell. We are so shortsighted. We cling to our pet sins, our comfortable habits, our toxic relationships as though they were precious limbs, refusing to part with them. Jesus says, "That thing you are protecting is killing you. It is better to go through life maimed and get to heaven than to arrive at hell whole." This requires a radical reorientation of our values. We must begin to see sin as God sees it: not as a pet, but as a poison; not as a comfort, but as a cancer.
The War on the Eye Gate (v. 9)
Jesus continues the same line of reasoning, now focusing on the most powerful of the senses.
"And if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out and throw it from you. It is better for you to enter life with one eye, than, having two eyes, to be cast into the fiery hell." (Genesis 18:9 LSB)
The eye is the gateway to the soul. What we allow ourselves to look at has a profound effect on our hearts. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus connects looking with lust to the act of adultery itself (Matthew 5:28). The "eye" here represents our desires, our appetites, what we feed our minds. In our modern, technologically saturated world, this warning has never been more relevant. We are drowning in a sea of digital images, and the vast majority of them are designed to provoke lust, envy, and discontentment.
If your internet browsing causes you to stumble, tear it out. This means installing filters, setting up accountability, or getting rid of your smartphone altogether if necessary. If the movies you watch or the shows you binge feed your flesh, tear them out. Cancel the subscription. Throw out the television. If the books you read or the magazines you look at inflame covetousness, tear them out. This is not legalism; it is spiritual sanity. It is taking the war against sin seriously.
Again, the logic is the same. It is better to be blind to the fleeting pleasures of this world and see the face of Christ for eternity than to gaze on every vanity this life has to offer and then open your eyes in the fiery hell. The Greek word for hell here is Gehenna. This was the name for the valley of Hinnom, a garbage dump outside Jerusalem where trash and the carcasses of criminals were constantly burning. It was a vivid, foul, and terrifying picture of utter ruin and judgment. Jesus uses this physical reality to point to the far greater spiritual reality of eternal punishment. He is not trying to scare us with ghost stories. He is warning us with the cold, hard facts of eternity.
Conclusion: Grace-Fueled Surgery
So what do we do with such a hard teaching? We must first recognize that this radical standard is impossible for us to meet in our own strength. If salvation depended on our perfect ability to amputate every sin, we would all be hopelessly lost. Our hearts are so corrupt that we would sooner cut off our own heads than part with our most cherished idols.
This passage, like all the hard commands of Christ, is designed to drive us to our knees. It is meant to show us our bankruptcy and our desperate need for a Savior. And the good news of the gospel is that we have one. Jesus Christ lived the perfectly amputated life. He was tempted in every way, yet without sin. He never once needed to cut off a hand or pluck out an eye. He then went to the cross, where His hands and feet were pierced and His side was torn open, not for His own sin, but for ours.
On the cross, God performed the ultimate amputation. He took our sin, all of it, and cut it off from us, nailing it to the tree with His Son. He treated Jesus as the stumbling block so that we, the true stumbling blocks, could be forgiven. He cast Him into the outer darkness of judgment so that we could be brought into the eternal light of His presence.
Therefore, the war against sin that Jesus commands is not a self-righteous project we undertake to earn God's favor. It is the grateful, grace-fueled response of a person who has already been saved. Because Christ has done the great surgery on our souls through regeneration, we are now empowered by His Spirit to begin performing these smaller surgeries in our daily lives. We fight sin not in order to be saved, but because we have been saved. We cut and we tear, not out of fear of losing our salvation, but out of a joyful desire to be what we already are in Christ: holy and blameless before Him. So take up the scalpel of the Word, and by the power of the Spirit, get to cutting. It is better to enter life maimed than to enter hell whole.