Cast into Hell (body). Mt 5:29–30; 18:8–9; Mark 9:45–47. “And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.” The key to this application is in the definition of “offend” (skandalizw, entrap, stumble, entice to sin). In Matthew 5, the Sermon on the Mount is a long introduction to the conversion of the old law to a new law. The new law is the law of faith (Ro 3:27), the law of the Spirit (Rom 8:2), the law of righteousness (Ro 9:31), the law of Christ (Gal 6:2), and the law of liberty (Jas 2:12). The law of carnal commandment (Heb 7:17) could not produce perfection, but the new law can produce the Messiah, of which Melchizidech was a prophetic type, and a prophetic faith can replace it: “For the law made nothing perfect, but the bringing in of a better hope did; by the which we draw nigh unto God” (Heb 7:19). The “hope” is a hope for a future fulfillment of the law in Christ. God made an oath (prophetic promise) to bring Messiah: “by so much was Jesus made a surety (certainty of prophetic fulfillment) of a better testament” (Heb 7:22). Therefore, the New Testament is founded on a prophetic promise of God, fulfilled and embodied in Christ, which faith in this fulfilled hope His believers are to embody and fulfill in their lives. It is not a means to perfection of action; it’s a means to replace an impossible requirement of perfection of action with the perfection of spirit by faith in the prophecies and its embodiment in Christ. Physical performance is a symbol of God’s work to bring about the Messiah, and its obsolescence to any conception of righteousness is in its objective, historical realization. This realization inaugurated by the Messiah’s personal, fulfilling appearance. He then sets out to build a new standard of righteousness by the essential work of prophetic fulfillment. The individual’s faith in those fulfillments then fulfills the new standard to replace the old of mere unfulfilled promise.
In Matthew 5 the new law is taught in contrast to the old law by that enfleshed promise, Jesus of Nazareth. Righteousness is then to believe that prophetic Good News, not to obey a carnal commandment: “And this is his commandment, which we should believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, as he gave us commandment” (1 Jo 3:23)”[1] In 1 Jo 2:7 and 8, the Apostle says that the old commandment contains the new (“I write no new commandment unto you, but an old commandment which ye had from the beginning”), as it was founded in expectation of the coming light (truth) of Messiah. This is a prophetic faith, a faith that the age-old promises of God would, and did, come true. It is an oracular faith, of spiritual action and law-keeping, not carnal. Jesus gives examples of sin by the old law and sin by the new law to say that the old kind of sin and righteousness are obsolete conceptions. But He is not saying that the new law is a higher carnal standard of old law, but a higher spiritual standard by the consequences of prophetic faith. The alternatives He gives are characteristic of Jesus’ teaching technique of revealing truth but obscuring it behind the same kinds of prophetic foreshadowings that draw out those who know the promises and can see the His fulfillments through the biblical language.
This vital to the understanding of Christ’s use of the idea of a body being cast into Hell.
The carnal sin of adultery is set against the spiritual sin of planning adultery. This does not mean that adulterous fantasy and planning are the sin to which He refers; it means the adultery of the religious heart’s intercourse by the lust of religious affection that makes it disloyal to the PW. The same charge is laid against the Israelites in many places, such as in Jer 3:6,8–9, Eze 16:32, Hos 1:2,3, and Re 2:22. These and all instances have God punishing Israel by prophecy or reaffirming His original promise, as their spiritual adultery is essentially against the promises of her husband Jehovah (Jer 3:14–19, Eze 16:37, particularly in Hosea’s prophecy at every subsequent birth). This same pattern Jesus uses. The prophetic context speaks of the ultimate sin: the disbelief in God’s promises of Messianic consummation.
Murder is set against “the influence of angry, malicious, or revengeful feeling” (Abbot) which murders a person’s character or reputation, but this murder is the killing of the same verbal killing of the prophets and their words, and Christ by the unbelieving Pharisees (Mt 9:34; 12:24; Mr 3:22, et. al.), which is the quintessential murder. The new type of murder is the contradiction of the prophetic word and office which points to Messiah.
Marriage is a kind of prophetic oath made to a woman to be loyal to her, quite like Jehovah to His people. Divorce is allowed (5: 31), but only if she is disloyal, not by selfish, cruel, and capricious motivations. But this is not about carnal divorce or marriage, but about that of God to His people.
God swore an oath to bring Messiah to His people. Messiah is faithful not to capriciously break that promise (Joh 14:3), like our faith expressed in the carnal marriage vow. Evil is not resisted or retribution sought, as in an eye for an eye, but patience is prescribed as the Lamb of God to His tormentors (Isaiah 50:6–7, Mic 5:1). This reflects good overcoming evil (Calvin, and Rom 12:21), but in the context of a prophetic ministry shows the Messianic realizations in moral action (right cheek, the most worthy side), and offers in response to its abuse the Messianic promises (left cheek) which are being emulated by the individual.[2]
It was once said not to commit perjury, but to perform your oaths to God. This is a personal expression of the prophetic faith, in speaking truth and swearing to do what one swore one would do. But in light of the history of prophetic realization, the reasons once used are now obsolete. In the past it was the habit of making an oath as God made His prophetic oaths: “Thus saith the LORD, The heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool: where is the house that ye build unto me, and where is the place of my rest?” (See Isa 66:1.) This is the oath of promise but without a present fulfillment, which is yet far off: “For all those things hath mine hand made, and all those things have been.” These are fulfilled things, but not fulfilled people. Jerusalem and the temple, being man’s tokens of a future earthly millennial Kingdom with God on earth, are inadequate expressions of the prophetic faith of this future state, as is the law, but this state lies in “poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at my word” (v. 2).
That “word” is prophecy, in distinction from heartless and prophetically disconnected religion (v. 4): ”to those I also will choose their delusions, and will bring their fears upon them; because when I called, none did answer; when I spake, they did not hear.” This “body” that is cast into hell or goes into life is the essential Messianic textual stream which is counted generally unworthy (Jesus Himself) of other scriptural assignations by false exegetical practices, which in turn leads the soul unwittingly to miss the PW as its core and lead one to damnation, or that body which believes and lives.
That one will go into (spiritual) life (spiritually) maimed rather than go into hell with his whole body ( that is, spiritual body) unchanged means that coveted religious prejudices and conceptions, and by extension practices, although held sinfully dear by habit, are also offending to the conscience, are excised. Leaving one alive but positionally diminished: “If any man’s work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire” (1Co 3:15). “Work” is not the work of bodily action, but spiritual action, which is supposed to precipitate and sanctify any religious physical action by the work of belief in the prophecies of Christ.
[1] For the phrase “on the name,” The Pulpit Commentary states that believing in a name means “believing those truths which the name implies.”
[2] Lightfoot says: “That the doctrine of Christ may here more clearly shine out, let the Jewish doctrine be set against it; to which he opposeth his.” In 1 Kings 22:24 there is a good illustration of this and the smiting on the cheek is when Zedekiah strikes Micaiah on the cheek for prophesying prophetic truth that was nevertheless despised. The striking on the cheek represents a denunciation of God’s prophetic Word, the prophet’s prophecy and sign of prophetism. The response, the turning of the other cheek, has the prophet reconfirming the previous prophecy by another one which is more personal to the smiter: “And Micaiah said, Behold, thou shalt see in that day, when thou shalt go into an inner chamber to hide thyself” (1Ki 22:25). This is identical to many instances, most strikingly to such where Jesus displays the Messianic sign of healing, it is ascribed to the devil, and Jesus answers in prophetic judgment: Mat 12:36, 12:41–42, Luk 11:15, 11:19; Mr 3:22, 3:29. The gentiles repented at the words of the prophet, but “this generation” has not, and will be condemned.
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