Jesus often put forth a number of challenges to current Jewish orthodoxy, such as that appendages and external things are what defile a person. Jesus thus brings the Pharisees' view to its logical conclusion. The condition thus has a provocative power seen in this light. It is not the hands and eyes that cause one to sin, but the heart. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with him those who are asleep through Jesus.
Many modern translations render the particle since .
Although it is certainly true that Paul embraced this as true, to translate it as since keeps the audience at an arm's length. The sentence becomes a lecture rather than a dialogue. By translating it if , the audience is drawn into the argument of the apodosis. In such instances it is not the protasis that is in doubt, but the apodosis. Not infrequently in the NT, the speaker draws his audience to just such a connection, basing his argument on what both speaker and audience already embrace as true.