Whatever It Takes!
“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
Some old sayings are not true. One of them states, “You can look, but you just can’t touch.” Or, as one of the pop songs of my youth said, “You can look at the menu, but you just can’t eat.”[1] Many people use sayings like these to justify their behavior. “In the ancient [Roman] world generally it was held that a married man could have sexual adventures as long as they did not involve a married woman (which would mean violating the rights of her husband). A woman, however, was expected to have no such relations; she should be chaste before marriage and faithful after it.”[2] The Jews leaders were stricter and said that it became sin when you acted on your sexual desires apart from marriage. This was true of single people as well, but in that culture most people got married young so most of the audience would be married which is why it was usually addressed as “adultery.”
Jesus says this way of thinking is misguided. Read again his words, “But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. (v. 28 emphasis added) Jesus tells us that sin starts in our hearts. The external temptation presented to us stirs within us an internal sinful response for which we are responsible for and guilty of before God. Often, we think that sin must be willful and voluntary before we can be held accountable, need to repent, and confess it as sin. But Jesus tells us that even those unbidden desires that automatically and “naturally” come from our hearts are in fact sinful desires for which we must repent. There are two aspects to temptation, there is the objective, external temptation that presents itself to us. At this point we are being tested but it is not sin. But there is also the internal temptation, which is our heart response to that stimulus. Jesus says that at a core level we have committed sin in our hearts even if we don’t physically act on it.
In the next two verses he tells us how we should respond to that sin. He is not telling us that we should literally mutilate our bodies to keep ourselves from sinning. That is a gross misunderstanding of his intent. He is using hyperbole to make a serious point. If I could put it in my own words I would say, sin is so bad that we need to do whatever it takes to get it out of our lives. Recognize how evil and destructive sin can be especially sexual sin. Don’t play games with it. Don’t rationalize it. Kill it. If your phone is causing you to sin, get rid of it. If cable is causing you to sin, cancel it. I advised a friend of mine who had an affair with his neighbor to sell his house and move. Extreme? I don’t think so.
We all sin in many ways and each of us has temptations that we are more vulnerable to. Some sins are more serious and destructive than others. God calls us to recognize the seriousness of sin and see how destructive it can be in our lives if unaddressed. We rationalize and minimize our sin not realizing how corrosive and damaging it is. If there are major temptations in your life, now is the time to see it for what it is and do whatever it takes to get it out of your life. The beauty of the gospel is that the moment you genuinely repent and confess your sin Jesus is ready to restore you to fellowship and rekindle your love relationship with him.
[1] Howard Jones, “No one is to blame.” 1985.
[2] Leon Morris. The Gospel According to Matthew. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1992, 117.
