Hand, Foot, Eye

Thank you to my friend, who was the inspiration for this post.

“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” Matthew 18:8-9.

Confession.

Sometimes it is dragged out of us.

Sometimes it is half-hearted.

Sometimes we ignore it. Or a little appendage to our prayer.

Not Nehemiah (Neh. 9). Not Daniel (Dan. 9). Confession was a large part of their prayer.

And I? Do I hate sin as much as Jesus does?!

Oh, my Jesus! You of holy eyes! You who are better than life, you who are life itself! And sometimes we love our sin so much, it becomes ingrown. Like our hand. Like our foot. Part of us.

Cut it off?

We like it. We don’t know how we’d walk without it. How we’d operate without this sin. We feel like we will be blind without this sin.

For we have let it lie so long, we are comfortable. We don’t see it. Blind in our blindness.

Severe mercy. You, my Jesus, reorient us. Let us hate sin as much as you do. See it as the cancer that it is. See it as the death that it is.

And when we cut off the hand that causes us to sin, we will not be crippled—we will have hands to lift up. “Let my prayer be counted as incense before you, and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice” (Ps. 141:2).

When we cut off the foot that causes us to sin, we will not be crippled—we may walk with a limp like Jacob, but we will run in the way of the Lord. “I will run in the way of your commandments when you enlarge my heart!” (Ps. 119:32).

When we tear out the eye that causes us to sin, we will not be blind—we will have eyes to really see. “Jesus said, ‘For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind’” (Jn. 9:38).

And those with whole bodies and whole eyes stood before the cross, and seeing they did not see the beauty of God. Walking in the same dust, they did not walk before the Lord. Touching Jesus, they did not know they touched God.

And Jesus—his hands, pierced. His feet, pierced. His eyes, weak with pain, bowed down, blood trickling. My amputation, he bore. My sin pierced him. My sin gouged him.

So I can walk with him. So I can lift up my hands before him and someday touch him. So I can see him.

Death to self is life because Life himself died for me.