Mark 9:43 And if your hand offend you, cut it off: it is better for you to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell… The New Testament revisers have rightly substituted the words "cause to stumble," for "offend;" for the popular conception of offend is misleading. It means that which is annoying or distasteful to another, but not necessarily hurtful. But the word in the New Testament habitually means something dangerous. That which offends in the gospel sense may be neither annoying nor distasteful; but agreeable and seductive. St. Paul speaks of "meat" as an offence to a brother. In these hard words about cutting off, our Lord is not speaking of things that are simply troublesome, for in God's moral economy a good many troublesome things are retained as permanent factors of life. Self-sacrifice, hard duty, are troublesome things, yet they enter into every genuine Christian life; while many agreeable things are of the character of stumbling blocks. The truth here stated by Christ appears a cruel one. It is simply that maiming enters into the development of life, and is a part of the process through which one attains eternal life. We shall find that thin law is not so cruel after all. There is an aspect in which we all recognize this truth; namely, on the side where it is related to our ordinary life. No life is developed into perfection without cutting off something. The natural tendencies of the boy are to play and eat and sleep. Left to themselves, those things will fill up the space allotted to thought and culture, so that they must be controlled and restricted. The law indeed holds, from a point below human life, that every higher thing costs; that it is won by the abridgment or suppression of something lower. The corn of wheat must die in order to bring forth fruit. The seed life and the seed form must go, so that the "full corn in the ear" may come. This fact of limitation goes along with the entire process of human education. The man who aims at eminence in any one department of life must close the gates which open into other departments. In order to be a successful merchant, he must abridge the pleasures of literary culture. He may have equally strong affinities for medicine and for law, but he cannot become a successful lawyer without cutting off the studies and the associations which go to make a successful doctor. And success in any sphere necessitates his cutting off a large section of self-indulgence. He must sacrifice pleasant leisure and pleasant society, and needful rest and recreation. Moreover, it is true that men love life so much that they will have it at the expense of maiming. A man will leap from a third story of a burning house, and will take the chance of going through life with a crippled limb or a distorted face, rather than stay and be burned or suffocated. "All that a man hath will he give for his life." Maecenas, the prime minister of the first Roman emperor, said that he preferred life with the anguish of crucifixion to death. Where is the man who will not lie down on the surgeon's table, and have his right hand cut off or his right eye plucked out rather than die? The most helpless cripple, the blind man, the mutilated and disfigured man, will say, "It is better for us to live maimed than to die." So that, on one side at least, the truth is not so unfamiliar or so cruel, after all. It represents, not an arbitrary decree, but a free choice. Now, our Lord leads us up into the region of spiritual and eternal life, and confronts us with the same alternative. Cut off anything, sacrifice anything, be maimed and crippled so far as this life is concerned, rather than forfeit eternal life. Life in God's kingdom, like life in the kingdom of nature and sense, involves a process of education and discipline. A part of this discipline is wrought through the agency of the man himself; that is, by the force of his own renewed will. A part of it is brought to bear on him from without, through no agency of his own. And here, as elsewhere, development implies limitation, suppression, cutting off. Have you never known a woman on whom the door of her father's house was closed from the moment that she went out of it with the husband of her choice, and who gave herself to him, knowing that, in taking his part, she was cutting off and casting from her parental sympathy and all the dear associations of childhood? In our great civil war, was it not true that many a man, by taking a side, became an outcast to those whom he had loved best? Has it not been so in all the great issues of history? In Christ's own day, and much more in the early dais of the Church, that happened again and again which Christ's words had foreshadowed. He who went after the despised Galilean or His apostles, must forfeit home and friends and social standing, and be called an ingrate and a traitor. He could not keep father and mother and old associates who hated his Master. They would be only stumbling blocks to him; and he must therefore cut them off, and go after Christ maimed on that side of his life. This text tells us that this cutting off and casting away must be our own act. "If thy hand cause thee to stumble, cut it off," — thou thyself. We are not to presume on God's taking away from us whatever is hurtful. Our spiritual discipline does not consist in merely lying still and being pruned. That must do for a vine or a tree, but not for a living will. The surrender of that must be a self-surrender. The forced surrender of a will is no surrender. The necessary abridgement or limitation must enlist the active cooperation of the man who is limited. "Ye are God's husbandry," says Paul; but, almost in the same breath, he says, "Ye are God's fellow workers." There are, however, two aspects in which this self-cutting is to be viewed. On the one band, there is, as just noted, something which the man is to do by his own will and act. On the other hand, there is a certain amount of limitation applied directly by God, without the man's agency. In this latter case, the man makes the cutting off his own act by cheerful acceptance of his limitations. Let us look at each of these two aspects in turn. In Christian experience, one soon discovers certain sides on which it is necessary to limit himself; certain things which he must renounce. The things are not the same for all men. They are not necessarily evil things in themselves, but a sensitive and well-disciplined conscience soon detects certain matters which it is best to lay violent hands upon. Another conscience may not fix upon the same points; but to this conscience they are stumbling blocks, hindrances to spiritual growth, inconsistent with entire devotion to Christ. It is enough that they are so in this particular case. It is right to have hands and feet and eyes, and to use them. But in certain cases there is an antagonism between these and eternal life. The whole question centres there. Whatever interferes with the attainment of eternal life must go. Thus much for the self-applied limitations, for conscious hindrances in the march to eternal life. But there is another class of limitations, the need of which we do not perceive. They belong in the higher and deeper regions of character, and are linked with facts and tendencies which our self-knowledge does not cover. Such limitations we cannot apply to ourselves: they are applied to us by God: and all that our will has to do is to concur with the limitations and meekly to accept them. In this region the discipline is more painful. God cuts off and takes away where we can see no reason for it; but on the contrary, where we think we see every reason against it. There are multitudes of Christian people who are going through life maimed on one side or another. There is a man with the making of a statesman, ruler, painter, or poet. He is maimed by no opportunity of culture. But every true disciple of Christ enters His school with absolute self-surrender, and will trust that God will cut off nothing that makes for eternal life. We could not win eternal life as well with these gifts as without them. And so it will be better if we can but enter into life. Better, far better, to go maimed all the way than to lose eternal life. It matters little that those stately masts had to be cut down in the raging gale. No one thinks what splendid timbers were thrown overboard, on that day when the ship, battered and mastless, and with torn sails and tangled cordage, forges into the land-locked port with every soul on board safe. Better maimed than lost. (M. R. Vincent, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched: |
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