The Strictest Discipline

"If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell." -- Matthew 5:30

Jesus did not say that everyone must cut off his right hand, but that "if your right hand causes you to sin" in your walk with Him, then it is better to cut it off. There are many things that are perfectly legitimate, but if you are going to concentrate on God, you cannot do them. Your right hand is one of the best things you have, but Jesus says that if it hinders you in following His precepts, then cut it off. The principle taught here is the strictest discipline or lesson that ever hit humankind.

When God changes you through regeneration, giving you new life through spiritual rebirth, your life initially has the characteristic of being maimed. There are a hundred and one things that you dare not do - things that would be sin for you, and would be recognized as sin by those who really know you. But the unspiritual people around you will say, "What's so wrong with doing that? How absurd you are!" There has never yet been a saint who has not lived a maimed life initially. Yet, it is better to enter into life maimed but lovely in God's sight, than to appear lovely to man's eyes but lame to God's.

At first, Jesus Christ, through His Spirit, has to restrain you from doing a great many things that may be perfectly alright for everyone else - but not right for you. Yet, see that you don't use your restrictions to criticize someone else.

The Christian life is life maimed, initially, but in Matthew 5:48, Jesus gave us the picture of a perfectly well-rounded life… "You shall therefore be perfect, as your Father who is in the heavens is perfect."

The devotional above by Oswald Chambers relates so directly to the person in recovery. Take the alcoholic, for example. It is a sin for the alcoholic to drink, yet not for the non-alcoholic. The normal person drinks with impunity. Not the alcoholic. For the alcoholic, booze gets between him and God. In fact, booze is an extension of his self-will; it becomes the expression of self-dependence instead of God dependence. This is the great dilemma that we face, God's way or the way of self, the daily choice.