191: Pluck Them Out and Cut Them Off

Jesus didn’t restore the unbending standard of the law so that the we could reach it, but to show us that we couldn’t…

When Jesus taught the people before He went to the cross, He said some pretty harsh and straightforward things regarding keeping the law, such as:

“”If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you…”” (Matthew 5:29-30)

Did Jesus really intend for people to start plucking out eyeballs and cutting off limbs? Most of us look at that passage and say, “”No, that’s just symbolism. Jesus didn’t really mean that.”” Really?

Throughout all of the years of Hebrew history under the law, no one had been able to keep the law completely, and yet many believe that we are still under the law today. If this were true, we would need to decide what to do with His teachings regarding the law in the four Gospels. There are basically three choices: 

1. Take them to be applied literally for us today. Have you met anyone who takes this view? Of course not. If there are people who mutilate their own body parts in an effort to keep Jesus’s high standards, they would be under the care of doctors for their mental health. 
2. Believe that He didn’t really mean all those things He said. In other words, His goal was to get us to do our best and then He would be there to help us when we fail. He exaggerated both the standards and the consequences to inspire us to behave ourselves. But the people listening to Jesus’s teachings were people under the law, so they took them literally. It’s the strategy of the Pharisee to water down the law and make it palatable. That’s what law does. Under law – even today – we make the rule, the boundary, or the line move or change to fit our ability to keep it. Why? So we can be acceptable to others and to God. It’s behavior modification.
3. Read the gospels in context and realize that Jesus’s teachings were directed to people who were still under the law: the Jews. Not only were they required to keep the law, they we required to offer blood sacrifices in the temple when they broke the law. We don’t have that option anymore! Jesus fulfilled the law! His blood was enough!

I believe Jesus meant what He said. Pluck them out and cut them off. When Jesus encountered the woman caught in adultery, the Pharisees reminded Him of the law to test Him: “Now in the Law, Moses commanded us to stone such women; what then do You say?” (John 8:5) So why would it be a stretch for Jesus to command people to pluck their eyes out or cut off their hands if it would keep them from sinning? It would be better than being stoned to death! (Incidentally, Jesus showed the Spirit that He came to reveal when He drove off the woman’s accusers by reminding them of their own sin and then saying to her, “Neither do I condemn you, now go and sin no more.”)

In order for Jesus to fulfill the law, it had to be brought back to its proper perspective and standard. In Jesus’ teachings, He exposed the hypocrisy of the religious system which had attempted to compromise the perfection of the law so that religious leaders could claim to be righteous and therefore control others who weren’t able to keep their ever-changing standards.

Jesus did not come to be another better, superior Moses with a new improved set of stones. Those stones could not have been more perfect than when God wrote on them with His own finger. Jesus magnified the law and raised the standard to where God intended it to be. He made it absolutely impossible for any human (other than Himself) to comply because He wanted us to receive righteousness as a gift!

To understand Jesus’s teachings in the Gospels, we have to know the context and time period in which He preached.

Jesus was born under the law and taught people who were still under the law.

“When the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. (Galatians 4:4-5)

When we read the gospels, it’s important to read them through our New Covenant grid of grace. If we don’t, we will be challenged by some of Jesus’s sayings and even condemned by His severe teachings. These teachings were not intended to bring condemnation on those who would one day be born again. Remember – no one was born again during the time period of the Gospels because the blood of Jesus had not been shed. He was not talking to New Covenant believers. He was talking to Old Covenant believers and Pharisees in order to bring the law back to its intended standard.

As the Apostle Paul put it after the cross, the law is extremely harsh:

“Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not hear the law?” (Galatians 4:21)

“Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin.” (Romans 3:19-20) 

“Why, then, was the law given? It was given alongside the promise [the covenant of grace to Abraham] to show people their sins. But the law was DESIGNED TO LAST ONLY UNTIL THE COMING OF THE CHILD who was promised. [JESUS!]” (Galatians 3:19, NLT)

Throughout the four gospels we see Jesus pre-cross, before the blood was shed, and before the New Covenant was enacted. 

“For where a covenant is, there must of necessity be the death of the one who made it. For a covenant is valid only when men are dead, for it is never in force while the one who made it lives.” (Hebrews 9:16-17)

Jesus’ death and shed blood is the dividing line of history and the dividing line between the old and new covenants, and we must read the Gospels with this perspective to gain understanding of the “red letters.”

However, before we throw out turning the other cheek, going the extra mile, loving our enemies, and getting the log out of our own eyes, we need to realize that post-cross we actually CAN do all those things that seem impossible. How? Christ in us! We no longer live under the law that held us captive to the performance of the flesh. Now we live our lives under obedience to the promptings of the Holy Spirit on the inside.

“But now we have been delivered from the law, having died to what we were held by, so that we should serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter.” (Romans 7:6)

“I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20)

(from pages 286-287 of Unveiling Jesus)

Want more from Tricia Gunn? Check out excerpts from the Unveiling Jesus 20-part series!

Unveiling Jesus, by Tricia Gunn, is a verse by verse study of the pure gospel of grace. It’s an amazing journey of love, identity, and freedom in Christ.

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