Cut off that Hand!

Daily Devotional – Sunday, February 4, 2024
And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off 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.
Matthew 5:30 (NKJV)

In the khat-growing areas of my country, there is an unusually high number of people without hands. Khat farmers use elongated and sharp machetes to chop off the hands of suspected thieves in this inhuman, unlawful activity. For guilty individuals, though, the loss of a hand marks the end of stealing and possibly averts the worst consequences of a crime like death.

Severe the Limb

Jesus, too, had something to say about the severing of limbs because of sin, albeit in a different context. The Lord warned His disciples, “And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off 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.” (Matthew 5:30).

Of course, Jesus is using figurative language to convey a profound spiritual truth. Losing a hand is painful, but the loss is incomparable to losing one’s life forever. Whatever obscures God from us is not worth holding on to, however precious that object or person is to us. Christians must be ready to make painful sacrifices for the sake of eternal life.

Cut Off that Hand!

We do not have to cut off our hands, but there are friends we must remove from our lives because they are a bad influence. Our cherished leisure activities that involve drunkenness, immorality, and criminality need to be chopped off. Indeed, as a man with one hand in the khat zone once remarked, “If I had not lost my hand, I probably would be dead now through mob justice.” Which ‘hands’ will you severe today in your quest for eternal life?

Prayer
Dear Jesus, help me identify and cut off habits that could cost me eternal life.