If your hand or foot causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you. It is better for you to enter into life lame or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet, to be cast into the everlasting fire.
Matthew 18:8
If you want to be free of pornography, you must pay the price. Sexual purity doesn’t come cheap. Freedom from sexual sin can’t be purchased with church attendance or a 12-step recovery program. If you want to be free of the grip of porn and masturbation, you have to pay, and pay dearly.
Sanctification is costly. That’s what Jesus teaches. If your hand or foot causes you to sin, you cut it off and cast it from you. That’s the high price you must pay to avoid sinning. You must be willing to go through life with just one hand or just one foot in order to avoid sin and to please your Lord.
Jesus is speaking in hyperbole (extravagant exaggeration), of course, to drive home His point. He uses the picture of you cutting off your hand or lobbing off your foot to drive home the price you must pay to avoid sin. The price is high because the stakes are high. If you take the costly action required to avoid sin, you enter into life everlasting. But if you do nothing, you will be cast into everlasting fire.
Naturally, this raises a rather sensitive question. What price are you paying right now to be sexually pure? What inconvenience or daily annoyance are you facing to avoid pornography, to avoid sexual temptation, to walk a holy walk? The price that Jesus is talking about is all about loss of convenience. When you are missing a hand or a foot, your life gets inconvenient, quickly. You can’t pick up objects with two hands anymore. You can’t walk unaided. Your employment options diminish considerably. People stare.
The same is true of paying the price to live porn-free. It gets mighty inconvenient mighty quickly. There are magazines you can’t read. Movies you can’t watch. Websites you can’t visit. Beaches you can’t frequent. Electronic devices you can’t use in private anymore. Apps you can’t use. Talk with any Christian man who has traded in his iPhone for a flip phone that does nothing but talk and text, and you are talking with a man who knows something of this command. A man who carries a flip phone to stay sexually pure is a man willing to pay the necessary price to avoid sexual sin. Yes, a dumbphone is inconvenient (no GPS, no weather app, no banking app, no social media apps, no camera, no alarm clock, no calendar), but that’s the point. If something in your life causes you to sin, you must cut it off and throw it away. Maintaining sexual purity is annoying, disruptive and difficult. But worth the price. Isn’t it?
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