How Serious Is Sin? Part I

Today's Three-minute Bible Study
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Title: How Serious Is Sin? Part I ------------------- Date: 6/17/2003
Keywords: "heaven" "hell" "sin"
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Passage: Mark 9:43-47*

43. If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter into life maimed, rather than having two hands, to go to hell, into the fire that shall never be quenched-

44. where 'Their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.'

45. And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life lame, rather than having two feet, to be cast into hell, into the fire that shall never be quenched-

46. where 'Their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.'

47. And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye, rather than having two eyes, to be cast into hell fire-where 'Their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.'

Questions

1. As you read this passage, pick out the repeating phrases. If someone were to tell you essentially the same thing three times in a row, what might this mean to you?

 

2. This passage is written in a poetic form. How does that affect your method of interpretation?

 

Practical help

Hands, feet and eyes are not the causes of sin — people's willful choices are. And this passage is not intended to be taken literally, so put the cleaver away!

But don't get too relaxed either. Just because it is not intended to be taken word for word does not mean there is not a vital message Jesus wants us to grasp. In fact, based on the manner in which he makes his point, I would say Jesus seeks to awaken us in a way similar to suddenly throwing a bucket of ice cold water on someone taking a nap.

Think about one of your hands — how important is it to your life on a daily basis? Are you ready to cut it off and toss it away? What ever would make anyone want to do that would have to be pretty important, don't you think? Well, how about your right foot? You feel sort of attached to it as well is my guess. What ever would cause you to it lop off and throw it away along with a perfectly good hand, would have to be growing exponentially in importance, right? But let's not stop there. Which eye are you ready to part with as well? Whatever this problem is we are called to face, and that we would be willing to severely cripple ourselves to overcome it, must be of absolute importance.

So what's so important that it is worth this sort of intense commitment? The Bible calls it "sin" — an old archaic term modern society doesn't seem particularly impressed with these days. Many look at the concept of sin as a throw-back to the Puritans who wore dark, dull clothes and never smiled. In some ways we have grown to justify sin as a normal part of maturity — the sow-those-wild-oats-while-you-still-can-or-you-will-regret-it philosophy. "As long as nobody gets hurt", the argument goes, "what's the big deal?" We even think that some types of sin are better than others. Murder is bad, adultery is not as bad and porn might even be healthy, right?

In the midst of our ambivalence to the significance of sin, Jesus is strongly urging us to see how bad it really is. He is saying it would be worse for a person to live with sin of any kind than to lose the use of all of these important body parts combined. And the reason is that sin, if allowed to remain unaddressed, will lead to a horrific future. So taking sin seriously is really, really, really important! More on this tomorrow.

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*Scripture taken from the New King James Version (NKJV), © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.