Bible Questions and Answers

Matthew 5:29 And if thy right eye offend thee (NKJV causes you to sin), 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 (Gehenna – the valley of Hinnom outside Jerusalem where rubbish was burned).

Jesus is not intending this saying to be taken literally. Our right eye or hand or foot cannot literally cause us to sin against God. Self mutilation is not required.

He is speaking in a parable and is referring to those things that we take great pleasure in doing in this life. Things that are as precious to us as our right eye or hand or foot but that cause us to sin against God. These things we should stop doing; even though it pains us to do so. Because if we don’t and we continue to sin against God we will not enter the kingdom of God but perish in the same way as Jerusalem’s rubbish.

It is another way of saying that we should not continue in the pleasures of sin.

Romans 6:12 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof. 13 Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.

Each of us will know what it is in our lives which we allow to take precedence over serving God.

Colossians 3:17 whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him.

Those who are disabled who believe the gospel and are baptised and live their lives by Christ’s commandments will be restored whole at the resurrection when Christ returns. Our bodies are to be made like his glorious body – we will enter the kingdom of God without defects.

Philippians 3:20,21 For our conversation (citizenship) is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: 21 Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself.

I hope you have found this helpful.

May God bless you,
Glenn