"And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. 30And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell." Matthew 5:29-31

Many readers of Scripture pass through the Sermon on the Mount with a sense of both wonder and discomfort, especially when they encounter the words of Jesus in Matthew chapter 5, where He declares that if the right eye causes a person to sin, it should be plucked out, and if the right hand causes one to sin, it should be cut off and cast away. For generations, preachers and teachers have explained that this language is hyperbole, a vivid and forceful way of urging believers to take sin seriously, to remove from their lives anything that leads them toward moral failure, and to commit to radical separation from temptation. That explanation carries truth, and it rightly communicates the seriousness with which Scripture treats sin. Yet when we look closer at the flow of the passage, at the heart-centered theme of the Sermon on the Mount, and at the larger testimony of Scripture, we discover that the meaning goes much deeper than behavior control. Jesus is doing more than warning us about sin. He is pointing us to the true source of sin and to the only One who has the power to transform it.

In the preceding verse, Jesus speaks about lust and declares that whoever looks on a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery in his heart. The focus is not first on the outward action but on the inward condition. Throughout the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus exposes the spiritual reality that outward sins are simply the fruits that grow from an inner root. The murder springs from anger in the heart. Adultery springs from lust in the heart. Hypocrisy springs from pride in the heart. The people of His day were often satisfied with external righteousness, keeping visible rules and preserving a respectable reputation, but Jesus presses deeper and reveals that God is concerned with the hidden person of the heart, the unseen source from which actions flow. Proverbs 4:23 says, “Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life.” The heart is the fountain from which every action proceeds, and unless the fountain is changed, the waters that flow from it will remain polluted.

Now imagine a man enslaved by lust who attempts to obey the words of Jesus in a literal and outward sense. He discovers that his eyes lead him into sin, so he removes them. Yet even without sight, his imagination and memory still burn with desire. He realizes that his hands have acted out that lust, so he removes them, but the inward craving remains untouched. His tongue has spoken sinful words, so he silences it, only to learn that sin continues to thrive within him. His ears have heard what has stirred temptation, so he shuts them off, but even then the inward voice of his desires whispers on. Piece by piece, limb by limb, organ by organ, he could remove every external faculty, and still he would never reach the core of the problem. There is always one more impulse, one more inward spark, one more hidden movement of the soul that refuses to be amputated. The struggle never ends because the true source of sin is not the eye, nor the hand, nor the tongue, but the heart itself.

This is the deeper message Jesus is revealing. If we truly wished to cut off the part of ourselves that causes us to sin, we would have to cut out our own heart, because it is there that the desires, intentions, and affections are formed. In Matthew 15:19 Jesus says, “For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies.” The heart is the factory of sin, the unseen workshop where sinful actions are first shaped. No amount of self-mutilation, no degree of external discipline, and no intensity of personal effort can change the heart. At best, those efforts suppress or restrain outward behavior for a time, but they cannot reach the root. That is why holiness cannot be reduced to behavior modification, moral self-improvement, or religious discipline. The problem is deeper than actions, and the cure must be deeper than rules.

This truth leads us to one of the most beautiful promises in the Old Testament. In Ezekiel 36:26, God declares, “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you, and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.” The heart of stone is cold, unresponsive, resistant to God, hardened by sin, and unable to love righteousness. The heart of flesh is living, responsive, tender toward God, and sensitive to His will. This promise is fulfilled through the saving work of Jesus Christ and the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit. When a person comes to Christ in faith, God does not merely forgive past sins and leave the inner nature unchanged. He performs a miracle at the deepest level of the human person. He removes the old heart, enslaved to sin, and gives a new heart with new desires, new affections, and a new orientation toward holiness. Second Corinthians 5:17 says, “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature, old things are passed away, behold, all things are become new.”

The command to pluck out the eye and cut off the hand, then, is not meant to encourage physical harm, nor is it merely a dramatic warning about temptation. It is a powerful revelation of our inability to fix ourselves by outward measures. It confronts us with the impossibility of self-salvation and exposes the futility of trying to cure sin through external effort alone. Religion that only reforms behavior without transforming the heart can never produce true righteousness. It may modify the surface of life, but it leaves the inner core untouched. Jesus speaks in such strong language because He wants us to recognize that we cannot save ourselves by cutting off the branches. We need the entire tree to be made new.

This understanding also guards us from a shallow view of sin. Sin is not simply breaking rules or committing isolated acts. It is a condition of the heart, a bent of the soul, a deep inward corruption that touches motives, desires, imagination, and will. That is why external control, cultural pressure, or personal willpower can never produce lasting holiness. A person may hide his sin from others, discipline his body, restrain certain behaviors, or replace obvious sins with more socially acceptable ones, and yet still remain spiritually unchanged. Only Christ can perform the surgery the human heart requires. Only the Spirit of God can take what is dead and make it alive.

At the same time, this deeper meaning does not cancel the original call to take sin seriously. A new heart produces new behavior, and the believer is still called to resist temptation, to flee from sin, and to remove from life those influences and habits that nurture evil desires. The difference is that these outward actions now flow from an inward change. They are not desperate attempts to save oneself, but joyful responses to the transforming grace of God. The Christian does not cut off the hand to earn righteousness, but because the new heart longs to walk in righteousness.

The message of Matthew chapter 5 and Ezekiel chapter 36 together forms a profound theological truth. The gospel is not the story of a God who stands at a distance demanding external compliance. It is the story of a God who enters into the deepest interior of human life, who replaces the heart that cannot obey with one that can, who writes His law within, and who empowers His people by His Spirit. Christianity is not primarily about making bad people behave better. It is about making dead hearts live. When Jesus speaks about removing the eye and the hand, He is not calling us to destroy our bodies. He is calling us to admit that the real problem lies deeper than our members and to look to Him as the only One who can make us new from the inside out.

In this light, the passage is not terrifying but hopeful. It confronts us with the seriousness of sin, but it also points us toward the grace of God who alone can transform the heart. It reminds us that true righteousness does not begin with outward discipline but with inward renewal. And it calls every believer to live not by self-reformation, but by the power of the new heart that God has graciously given through Jesus Christ our Lord.