Matthew 18:9

9 And if your eye causes you to sin, 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.

When someone wants to refute a person who says they believe in the literal authority of the Bible, I have heard this verse used to try to expose the person as a hypocrite. The reasoning is that if a person really followed the Bible literally, they would follow Jesus' advice and pluck out their eye. The responses I have heard to this are usually along the lines that it is an exaggeration to prove a point and not an actual command. But this response kind of supports the accusers argument that the Bible can't be taken literally. If that be the case, how do I know when Jesus is exaggerating and when I have to do exactly what He says, says the doubter.

Of course, I don't believe that Jesus is advocating anyone to pluck out their eye under any circumstance, but I don't think we have to give up on a "literal" interpretation of the Bible to say that. First, the kind of sin he is talking about has to be non-belief because that is the only thing that can cause us to be "cast into hell fire". Nobody's eye ever caused them to reject Jesus as their Lord and Savior. Second, even so, as Christians, our eyes do not cause us to sin either, any more than a knife would cause us to murder someone. The eyes, like the knife, are just an instrument to be used for what the user decides to use it for, whether good or bad. Third, if Jesus believed that the eye was responsible for the sin of lust, He would not have miraculously restored sight to blind people the way that He did in the Bible. And last, the passage indicates that the person who needs to "pluck out their eye" is able to enter into heaven with his other eye still intact, so Jesus did not mean to imply that loss of sight eliminates sin, as this person could still see.

I believe that Jesus says this to illustrate His point that no matter how otherwise useful and necessary something may be to us, if it is keeping us from being right with God, it has to go. The "eyes" that might stand between people and their salvation could include a lifestyle that they don't think they can stop, a relationship that does not honor Christ but is keeping them afloat, a job that is paying bills but requires some sort of immoral practice, or anything else that they feel they must continue doing but could not do so if they became a Christian. The physical eye is not capable of being that for anyone, but if it was, it would be appropriate to to lose it, as Jesus does call us to lose even more than that for Him.