go after the root (Matt 5:29-30)

Matthew 5: 29-30

If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell.

Whereas the early church father Origen, followed these words literally and castrated himself, we can be confident that Jesus that jesus didn't expect us to be chopping body parts off! Our eye and hand does not cause us to sin, we could chop them off and the sin would still be there. Jesus shocking words show the serious attitude we should have towards our sin. Where we see sin, we should take action - not that we can defeat it in our own strength, but that our deepest desire is to follow Jesus. We tend to tolerate sin and prefer to just subdue it a bit rather than go after the root. We should be waging war on it. As John Owen says, "be killing sin, or sin will be killing you"

The Pharisees righteousness did not have a violent attitude to sin, it was happy to maintain an appearance of keeping sin at bay but was not concerned with going deeper and digging out the root. Our righteousnees needs to be greater than the Pharisees and that means looking below the surface of our sin. In our own strength, maybe we can keep the visible weeds at bay. Jesus attacks the root.