And if your right hand causes you to offend, cut it off, and cast it from you: for it is better for you that one of your members should perish, and not that your whole body should be cast into hell.
All Commentaries on Matthew 5:30 Go To Matthew 5
John Chrysostom
AD 407
For while he neither saves himself, nor fails to destroy you too, what kindness is it for both to sink, whereas if they were separated, one at least might have been preserved?
But why did Paul then, it may be said, choose to become accursed? Romans 9:3 Not on condition of gaining nothing, but with a view to the salvation of others. But in this case the mischief pertains to both. And therefore He said not, pluck out only, but also cast from you: to receive him again no more, if he continue as he is. For so shall you both deliver him from a heavier charge, and free yourself from ruin.
But that you may see yet more clearly the profit of this law; let us, if you please, try what has been said, in the case of the body itself, by way of supposition. I mean, if choice were given, and you must either, keeping your eye, be cast into a pit and perish, or plucking it out, preserve the rest of your body; would you not of course accept the latter? It is plain to everyone. For this were not to act as one hating the eye, but as one loving the rest of the body. This same reckoning do thou make with regard to men also and women: that if he who harms you by his friendship should continue incurable, his being thus cut off will both free you from all mischief, and he also will himself be delivered from the heavier charges, not having to answer for your destruction along with his own evil deeds.
Do you see how full the law is of gentleness and tender care, and that which seems to men in general to be severity, how much love towards man it discloses?
Let them hearken to these things, who hasten to the theatres, and make themselves adulterers every day. For if the law commands to cut off him, whose connection with us tends to our hurt; what plea can they have, who, by their haunting those places, attract towards them daily those even that have not yet become known to them, and procure to themselves occasions of ruin without number?
For henceforth, He not only forbids us to look unchastely, but having signified the mischief thence ensuing, He even straitens the law as He goes on, commanding to cut off, and dissever, and cast somewhere far away. And all this He ordains, who has uttered words beyond number about love, that in either way you might learn His providence, and how from every source He seeks your profit.
