Matthew 5.27-32, 18.8-9, Mark 9.43-49, Luke 16.18.
In case you didn’t read
Matthew 5.27-28 KWL - 27 “You heard this said: ‘You shall not adulter.’
Ex 20.14, Dt 5.18 - 28 And I tell you this: Everybody who looks at a woman to covet her,
- has now adultered with her in their heart.”
First of all I need to remind you of
Or, more accurately, rape.
Yes rape. People keep presuming “adultery” in the bible was consensual. And in some cases it might have been. But that just makes it statutory rape, like when someone in our culture has sex with a minor: The woman’s “consent” wasn’t lawful.
God, and our current laws, did away with patriarchy and slavery. Yeah, various sexists try to re-implement it, or some form of it, and claim their variant is somehow biblical. Nevertheless (in the United States anyway) we live in a free society. Married women voluntarily belong to their spouses. Underage girls belong to their parents till they reach an age where (supposedly) they’ll be responsible. Every other woman is free: She belongs to no one but herself. And if she doesn’t agree to be yours, once again, sex with her is rape.
Yep. That’s what Jesus’s teaching now means in today’s culture.
If you thought doing away with patriarchy made things lighter, or gave us a bunch of loopholes, it really didn’t. Everybody who looks at a woman to deliberately covet her, who has no business nor permission to imagine such things of her, has raped her in their heart. People object to radical feminists (or even ordinary feminists) using such terms to describe the way men leer at them, or referring to their objectification as “rape culture.” Turns out they’re absolutely right.
And I remind you: Jesus’s instruction was primarily addressed to the young men he taught, but it applies just the same to women. Covet a man who’s not yours, and it’s either mental adultery or mental rape. So don’t go there.
Again: Temptation isn’t sin.
As I pointed out in the previous lesson, temptation isn’t sin. If you see an attractive person, and you covet them, stop. There’s a whole other command against coveting what’s not yours,
Problem is, it’s not the way
Popular Christian culture defines adultery as any nonmarital sexual activity. Most of the reason Christians interpret the word this way is ’cause they’re trying to discourage nonmarital sex. And rightly so: The authors of scripture considered all sexual activity, appropriate or not, to be marital.
Combine this wrong thinking about temptation, with this inaccurate thinking about adultery, and you wind up with a really difficult scenario for a lot of Christians. And this is some of the reason many Christians think
Back when I was a teenager, our youth pastors taught us we teenage boys shouldn’t even look at teenage girls, lest we lust for ’em. Now, if you’ve ever been a teenage boy, you know full well you don’t even have to look at a girl to lust for ’em. Puberty means teenage boys’ bodies are flooded with all these new hormones, and they haven’t yet learned self-control, so they’re a big ball of overemotional, horny lust. It’s gross, but that’s puberty for you. Adult men often forget how awful this time was—how gross they were at that age—and aren’t as patient and gracious with the boys as they oughta be. (And since some adult men never did learn any self-control, women often assume men are always this gross.)
So, in hearing this interpretation, a lot of us boys struggled. Really struggled. Many of us gave up on Jesus in despair. Or sometimes no despair at all: “Well, since I’ve already committed adultery in my heart, may as well commit it for real.” So much for preventative measures.
It’s because we were trying to do the impossible—to not just resist temptation, but avoid it in the first place. Which can’t be done. Even Jesus was tempted!
Because sin is just that bad.
The next bit, about gouging out eyes and cutting off hands and feet, is regularly used as an example
Mark 9.43-49 KWL - 43 “When your hand trips you up, amputate it. It’s better for you to enter life crippled
- than have two hands and go into ge-Henna, into the endless fire.
- 45 When your foot trips you up, amputate it. It’s better for you to enter life limping
- than have two feet and be thrown into ge-Henna.
- 47 When your eye trips you up, toss it. It’s better for you to enter God’s kingdom one-eyed
- than have two eyes and be thrown into ge-Henna.
- 48 Where their worm doesn’t stop and the fire doesn’t end.”
Matthew 5.29-30 KWL - 29 “If your right eye trips you up, gouge it out and throw it from you.
- It’s to your advantage: One of your limbs can be destroyed,
- so your whole body might not be thrown into ge-Henna.
- 30 If your right hand trips you up, cut it off and throw it from you.
- It’s to your advantage: One of your limbs can be destroyed,
- so your whole body might not go off into ge-Henna.”
Matthew 18.8-9 KWL - 8 “If your hand or foot trips you up, cut it off and throw it from you.
- Which is better for you? To enter life crippled or limping?
- Or having two hands or two feet—to be thrown into the fire of the age to come?
- 9 If your eye trips you up, gouge it out and throw it from you.
- Which is better for you? To enter life one-eyed?
- Or having two eyes—to be thrown into the fire of ge-Henna?”
Ge-Henna is
Jesus spoke about your hand, foot, or eye causing you to
Trouble is, offend currently means “feel upset”—same as our English word scandalize, which is based on skandalídzei. So people assume this word has to do with emotion or outrage. If your limb outrages you, lop it off. Of course, if you’ve given in to temptation, and are neck-deep in sin, you’re long past the point of outrage. Still, some bibles made the same mistake popular Christian culture does, and confuse temptation with sin. Hence “sin” (
The point of this statement is how sin is so destructive, so bad, we ought to be willing to lose a limb in the struggle against temptation. Better to
Problem is, few of us are willing to take sin and temptation so seriously. We might mention sin is bad and destructive and to be avoided… but never say it takes serious effort on our part. Never say it takes dedication, commitment, persistence, and self-control. Those who do, get called legalists.
And Jesus’s teaching here, that temptation is so bad we oughta be willing to saw off our own hands in self-defense? Yes it’s still hyperbole. But few Christians bother to seriously consider what Jesus meant when he taught it. “Oh, it’s a grab at our attention,” we say… and shrug, and give it none of our attention. It’s just Jesus being wacky.
We don’t just miss his point; we fully ignore it.
Sin is bad. Don’t do it! Stay the
Jesus, divorce, and adultery.
Jesus discusses divorce in greater detail elsewhere in Matthew and Mark, but for now we just have this brief statement, which ties together with the whole adultery theme.
Matthew 5.31-32 KWL - 31 “And this said: ‘Whoever may divorce his woman: Give her a divorce scroll.’
Dt 24.1 - 32 And I tell you this: Everyone who divorces his woman outside of a sexual reason, makes her adulter.
- And when anyone marries the divorcée, he adulters.
Luke 16.18 KWL - “Everyone who divorces his woman and marries another, adulters.
- One who’s married to a man’s divorcée, adulters.”
In the Luke passage, Jesus was asked about the Jews’ common practice of no-fault divorce. Yep, they practiced it back then too. Learned it from the Romans; justified it by the fact there’s a command in the Law allowing for divorce.
In contrast, Jesus stated divorce is valid for only one reason—a
In our egalitarian culture, this works both ways. If the man cheats, it’s grounds for divorce. Might be with another person; might be pornography. After all we did just discuss adultery in one’s heart, and isn’t that idea the entire basis of pornography? Porn’s cheating. Don’t kid yourself.
And porn’s a common temptation for married men. Especially since on the internet, it’s everywhere. Do a simple Google search and you’ll find it on accident. (Or at least that’s the excuse your teenage boy will use.) Not every man is willing to pluck out his own eye, or cut off his own hand, lest he lead himself astray with it. As for cutting off one’s own foot… well, some of us know “foot” is a euphemism for “genitals” in the Old Testament.
But this is how dangerous temptation is. So this is the level of commitment God wants for those who follow him: We have to love him more than our own lives and comfort. We have to be willing to go to extremes to resist our temptations, and do anything but sin. Not resort to legalism, and force others to cater to our hangups;
Lust is a tough one. Probably the toughest one for most of us. But unless we get hold of it, we’re unfit for marital relationships. So it’s gotta be conquered.
