Matthew 5.27-28.
There are a lot of similarities between the first and second of Jesus’s “Ye have heard… but I say unto you” teachings in his Sermon on the Mount. That, and both are largely misinterpreted because our culture and Jesus’s are so different.
The first is Jesus warning us about anger; this one about lust. And just like we gotta get ahold of our anger, lest it lead to sins like murder, we’ve gotta get ahold of our lusts, lest it lead us to sins like adultery.
And again, I should point out: Anger’s not a sin, but it clearly leads to sin when we don’t control ourselves, and let our anger control us instead. Lust works the very same way: It’s not in itself a sin. (No it’s not. Feel free to lust for your spouse!) But out-of-control lust can absolutely lead to sin, and again, that’s what Jesus is warning his audience, and us, about.
- Matthew 5.27-28 KWL
- 27“You hear {the oldtimers} say,
- ‘You will not adulter’? Ex 20.14, Dt 5.18
- 28I tell you:
- Every man who looks at a woman to covet her,
- adulters with her already, in his heart.”
I have “the oldtimers” in brackets because the Textus Receptus, and therefore the King James Version, includes the words τοῖς ἀρχαίοις/tis arhéis, “to the ancients”—borrowing the words from Jesus’s previous instruction Mt 5.21 to make it line up better. But it’s not found in bibles till the 700s. Eusebius of Cæsarea misquoted verse 27 that way in his Church History, so people were already misquoting verse 27 by the year 340, but tis arhéis is not in this verse in the oldest copies of Matthew.
Okay. Since Jesus talks about adulteration, I gotta remind you adultery in bible times is not what our culture means. Generally pagans define adultery very narrowly: It’s extramarital intercourse when committed without permission. If you’re not married, it’s just “cheating,” it’s not adultery; if your spouse actually grants you permission to have sex with others, it’s not adultery. Conservative Christians of course have their own definition: It’s every form of nonmarital unchastity. Premarital sex, extramarital sex, self-gratification, everything. Don’t have a spouse?—then you’re cheating on your potential spouse, and that’s adultery too.
None of this is what the ancients who wrote the bible meant by it. Not in the 15th century BC, when the the Ten Commandments were declared; nor the first century when Jesus taught. Adultery meant sex with anyone who’s not yours. In their largely patriarchal culture, women weren’t equals; they were subjects whom men ruled over as their lords. Fathers, husbands, boyfriends, slaveowners—they were held responsible for the women under them, and these women were obligated to obey.
Today’s sexists love the idea, and point out hey, it’s described in the bible, and described as the way things were oughta be, ’cause it’s must be a biblical principle! They wanna go back to those “good ol’ days”—and nevermind the proper biblical principle of women and men being equal under God. But I digress.
Here’s the deal. When Jesus is talking about a man coveting a woman, the man isn’t properly thinking, “I could see us raising a family and running the family business together”; he was thinking, “I wanna do sexy, sexy things to her”—regardless of any ideas she might have. Hormones, y’know.
And same as anger could easily escalate to murder, lust could just as easily escalate to rape. Yes, rape. People keep presuming “adultery” in the bible was consensual. 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: An ancient woman was under a lord, which means her “consent” wasn’t lawful.
In our day it’s not rape, because God and our current laws did away with patriarchy and slavery. 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.