Lust and Adultery – Matthew 5:27-30

Then presidential candidate Jimmy Carter said in an interview in Playboy magazine in 1976: “I’ve looked on many women with lust. I’ve committed adultery in my heart many times. God knows I will do this and forgives me.” Carter later said that the comments might have lost him his wide lead over President Gerald Ford, and could have cost him the election. But he never took back his words or his meaning. As he says in the interview, “Christ set some almost impossible standards for us.”

Take out the word “almost” and his statement is accurate. Jesus is tackling the true interpretation of the Law in his sermon and now focuses on the command against adultery.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell. (Matthew 5:27-30 ESV)

The Ten Commandments say, “You shall not commit adultery.”  Jesus says, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.'”  We see from the following examples Jesus uses that “it was said” refers to how past teachers of the Law have interpreted the Law.  Here, the implied interpretation is that the Law is to be taken only in reference to external behavior.  Jesus says it must be understood to govern internal motivation as well.  Jesus is justified in this interpretation because he is the Messiah, but his interpretation is justified by the 10 Commandments themselves, which begin with having no other gods and end with not coveting, both of which are internal motivations and which signify that God’s intent included motivation and not just external behavior.

In the case of God’s command against adultery this means, as Jesus indicates, that the lustful intent to have a sexual relationship with someone not your spouse is itself sinful and the mark of a self-centered and rebellious heart.  And if you are concerned to be righteous as one who loves God, you will take radical action to deal with sin.

Jesus speaks in hyperbole or exaggeratedly here. Sinful motives are not really removed by taking out an eye or cutting off a hand.  But if my lustful heart is stirred by gazing on someone, or talking intimately with them, or reading about others in romantic relationships, or giving myself to daydreaming, I must take radical action to cut off these lead-ins to temptation and sin.  The one who is given to sin and does not have the energy from a relationship with the Father to put to death sin in his mortal body (Romans 8:13), is one who is not really born again and will not see the kingdom but rather the fire of hell.

Jesus offers the prospect of hell (literally, Gehenna, that is, the valley of Hinnom, where garbage was burned constantly, a fire never dying, and used metaphorically for the final destiny of the wicked). Hell is the final punishment for those who refuse to acknowledge their Creator, who rebelliously want nothing to do with Him, and to whom He grants the desire to be separated from Him forever. Adulterers of the heart and the body will spend their eternity there. True believers will be putting to death these sins in their mortal bodies by the power of the Spirit and will spend eternity in the kingdom of heaven.