And if your eye offend you, pluck it out, and cast it from you: it is better for you to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire.
All Commentaries on Matthew 18:9 Go To Matthew 18
John Chrysostom
AD 407
Hom., lix: This does not subvert the liberty of the will, or impose a necessity of any act, but foreshews what must come to pass. Offences are hindrances in the right way. But Christ’s prophecy does not bring in the offences, for it is not done because He foretold it, but He foretold it because it was certainly to come to pass. But some one will say, If all men are recovered, and if there be none to bring the offences, will not His speech be convicted of falsehood? By no means; for seeing that men were incurable, He therefore said, “It must needs be that offences come;” that is, they surely will come; which He never would have said, if all men might be amended.
For offences rouse men, and make them more attentive; and he who falls by them speedily rises again, and is more careful.
But that you may learn that there is no absolute necessity for offences, hear what follows, “If thy hand or thy foot offend thee” This is not said of the limbs of the body, but of friends whom we esteem as limbs necessary to us; for nothing is so hurtful as evil communications.
