Daily Devotional
"If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell."
Matthew 5:29
Jesus tells us to tear out eyes and cut off hands. Nobody in his audience took him literally; nobody should today. Blomberg rightly calls this hyperbole, a deliberate overstatement meant to drive home a point that understatement would blunt. But hyperbole is not softer than a plain command; it is sharper. Jesus is not saying, “if you can find a moment, you might want to address this.” He is saying, “tear out whatever is hurting you, because hell is worse.”
That last word is the one we often skip. Jesus would rather you live maimed than die damned. He is not interested in the cosmetic arrangement of your life. He is interested in your soul. The reason for the hyperbole is love. A doctor who tells you the truth about a tumor is kinder than one who tells you it is probably fine.
Brian Croft puts the application in one sentence: be radical in the fight against sin. That looks different for every believer. For some it is a filter and an accountability partner. For others it is leaving a subscription service, changing a route home, moving a device out of the bedroom, or confessing something to a spouse that has been kept hidden for years. None of it saves you; Christ alone does. But the person who has been rescued by Christ fights like a rescued person fights. He does not negotiate with the thing that almost killed him.
If you have been treating a known sin like a minor inconvenience, Jesus is inviting you to rename it today. Not a nuisance. Not a weakness. A threat. And then he is inviting you to act accordingly.
Today's Challenge
What single radical step, if you took it in the next forty eight hours, would the enemy most like you to keep putting off? What is stopping you?
Prayer
Father, I have treated as small what your Son treats as serious. I have negotiated with what I should have cut off. Give me courage today, not the dramatic courage of a hero, but the quiet courage of honesty. Let me pick up the saw and the shears and do what needs doing. And while I do, remind me that you are not angry at me, that the same Jesus who commands the surgery is the one who already took the wound. Amen.
