Mark 9:43-48 – The demands for holiness

So far the Lord had been dealing with attitudes and characters that His disciples must adopt and develop in life and ministry. Knowing human propensity to polarize toward sinfulness, it’s not a surprise for Him to deal with the necessity of holiness. So in verses 43-48, He calls us to cultivate a holy life. He said, “If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life crippled, than, having your two hands, to go into hell, into the unquenchable fire, [where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.] If your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame, than, having your two feet, to be cast into hell, [where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.] If your eye causes you to stumble, throw it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye, than, having two eyes, to be cast into hell, where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.”

Using hyperbole, His instruction to His disciples then, and for us His followers today, is to deal radically with life’s sinful nature. Summarily the hand, foot and eye represent the whole of one’s life.  Symbolically these represent what we do, where we go, and what we see. The essence of what the Lord had said is this: it is better to deal with our erring life now, by exercising self-denial, than to go into an eternity of endless misery in Gehenna. That’s a place where the fire could never be quenched and where the indestructible worms would forever devour and feed on the heap of wasted human lives.

  

The metaphors the Lord used give us the picture of the necessity of ruthless severance with the sinful habits of life. To deal radically with life now would require self-denial, strict discipline and forfeiture of one’s wrong desire, but ultimately it is all going to be worth the sacrifice. One cannot come to it half-heartedly. It calls for a decisive and complete act. It’s a decision that each one of us must make personally, because it’s an individual responsibility. It would be delusional to imagine that someone else could do it for us. Any serious minded follower of Christ understands the compelling logic that He had made in these hyperbole.

Are we found in places in life that we have no business being there? Do we encounter things we need to avoid because the temptation is too risky and hard to handle? What are some habits in life that we undoubtedly know we need to purge thoroughly? There’s no denial that our Lord’s recommendation of a total departure with our sinful lifestyle is both demanding and painful to the flesh. We all know that there is no better way to deal with them than a complete severance. It is better to endure the pain now and give up the shortcomings than to end up in eternal destruction. If we can feel Him tugging at our hearts, let’s not procrastinate, let’s do it right away!