Plucking Out an Eye?

²⁷“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ ²⁸But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart. ²⁹If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. ³⁰And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to go into hell." --Matthew 5:27-30

I'm sure this statement has raised more than a few eyebrows in its time.  Not necessarily that adultery part at the top (although I'm sure it has made more than a few men and women a little uncomfortable), but that part about plucking out your eye and cutting off your hand.  Does Jesus really mean for His followers to do such a thing?

More than a few times, I've heard people use this text to defend non-adherence to the Law or commands of Scripture.  "Jesus isn't really telling us to cut our hands off or pluck our eyes out," they say.  "He's using hyperbole--pushing the limits--here.  He's exaggerating, so there might be other times He's exaggerating and we need to look at things more closely when it comes to the commands He tells us."

Maybe on the hyperbole part.  Not so sure about the conclusions drawn from it.

I've been a bit influenced on Dallas Willard's part because he actually deals with this text in his book The Great Omission in the chapter titled, "Jesus the Logician":

What exactly is Jesus doing here?  One would certainly be mistaken in thinking that he is advising anyone to actually dismember himself as a way of escaping damnation.  One must keep the context in mind.  Jesus is exhibiting the righteousness that goes beyond the "righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees."  This latter was a righteousness that took as its goal to not do anything wrong.  If not doing anything wrong is the goal, that can be achieved by dismembering yourself and making actions impossible.   What you cannot do you certainly will not do.  Remove your eye, your hand, etc., therefore, and you will roll into heaven a mutilated stump.  The price of dismemberment would be small compared to the reward of heaven.  That is the logical conclusion for one who held the beliefs of the scribes and the Pharisees.  Jesus is urging them to be consistent with their principles and do in practice what their principles imply.  He reduces their principles, that righteousness lies in not doing anything wrong, to the absurd, in the hope they will forsake their principle and see and enter the righteousness that is "beyond the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees"--beyond, where compassion or love and not sacrifice is the fundamental thing.  Jesus, of course knew that if you dismember yourself you can still have a hateful heart toward God and toward man.  It wouldn't really help toward righteousness at all.  That is the basic thing he is teaching in this passage.  Failure to appreciate the logic makes it impossible to get his point.  --page 188-189

I think Willard is dead on in his conclusion--although perhaps, his exegesis could use some work. 

I'd like to suggest that perhaps, just perhaps, Jesus is using hyperbole and pushing the envelope to get us to stop blaming extraneous factors when it comes to sinning.  Just about every Christian I know of at some time has said, "The Devil made me do it."  Well, then you have no responsibility for your sin, and we know that is not the case.  You do make choices, and even if the Devil tempts you, he is not the direct cause of sinning.

Likewise for your eye or your hand.  Neither of these things cause you to sin.  They are each controlled by the inner workings of our being--our head and our heart.  And it is the heart which Jesus is after in these comments.  Remember, in the saying about adultery, if one looks at a woman with lust, he has committed adultery in his heart.  The lust which resides in the heart leads to adultery, not the eye.

Yet, if you want to blame your eye, cut it off.  That's the logical conclusion. For it is better that you go through life without an eye than to end up in hell.  (Of course, that posed a very serious problem for those who were concerned with wholeness being associated with godliness in that day and age.)  And if you want to blame your hand for your sin, cut it off.  It's better for you to go through life lame than to allow your hand to cause you to go to hell. 

Indeed, Jesus uses an argument of the absurd to get down to the root of what causes sin--our hearts.  And if we don't wrestle with our human nature--the fact that we are both saint and sinner and the fact that each side has a claim upon us as we live--we will blame all sorts of factors for our sinfulness except the right one.