Our lusts might create big, big trouble.

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.

Out-of-control lusts.

Both “Don’t adulter” and “Don’t covet” are two of the Ten Commandments, Ex 20.16-17, Dt 5.17-18 and bear repeating because people regularly commit both these sins. Did in ancient times; do now.

What’s the origin of these sins? Lust. Intense, usually uncontrolled, desire for money, sex, or power. And in the United States, few bother to control their lust for any of those things. Just the opposite: They revel in these lusts. They pursue money with all their might, sex with all their being, power with all their soul. They’re proud of it.

Even self-described Christians do this—and don’t deny it, though they will try to come up with phony “righteous explanations” for why they need money and power so badly. They will still admit out-of-control sexual lusts aren’t good… but only around fellow Christians, or at church. Or while they’re underage; just look at all the pop stars who ditched their purity rings as soon as they turned 18. On weekdays, around their pagan friends, a lot of these “good Christians” transform into the very same horndogs as their pagan friends.

In my article about getting hold of our anger, I pointed out we shouldn’t let our imaginations run wild, and imagine the murder of everyone who angers us. Especially not dwelling on this imaginary homicide, and basking in the warm evil glow of our hatred. There’s a massive difference between being idly tempted to shove someone in front of a train, and plotting it in great detail—but claiming you’d never; this is all just for fun. Evil fun.

Same deal with lust. There’s a massive difference between being idly tempted to lust for an attractive person, and indulging in a detailed naughty fantasy about them. Everyone gets tempted, and temptation isn’t sin. But when you dwell on that temptation—well that’s exactly what Jesus means about “adulters in his heart.” Because in Jesus’s culture, “heart” meant mind—people believed you thought with your heart, and adultering in one’s heart therefore means you’ve adultered in your thoughts. You’ve let them compose a daydream where you’re fulfilling these fantasies.

Look, humans are sexual beings. We were created that way. God ordered us humans to be fruitful and multiply, Ge 1.28 and put a sex drive in us lest we never procreate. Like everything else in our flesh, it’s something we need to control—and of course we don’t. So it’s inevitably gonna create problems.

Paul and Sosthenes recommended Christians get married rather than burn with lust, 1Co 7.9 but too many of us prefer to burn. We won’t marry till we’ve found the “perfect mate”—which is a fantasy, and doesn’t exist. We stall our existing relationships, with various excuses—

• “I’m waiting to graduate.”
• “I’m waiting till I settle in my new job.”
• “My SO’s gotta get that promotion first.”
• “I’m paying off my credit cards first.”
• “I’m not even 30!”

—but if we’re honest, it’s because we suspect we can do better, and if we can just stall long enough, we’ll find them, ditch our loser, and marry that person—just like in all the romance novels and romantic comedies.

We selfishly never think about whether we’re the perfect mate for someone else, and try to improve ourselves. We get more and more bitter about how everyone keeps rejecting us for being jerks, and become angry incels. We wanna try all sorts of weird sex, which we’re pretty sure a spouse would never abide, so we wanna do that before we “settle.” Or we decide a lifestyle of meaningless sex with randos is more convenient; relationships are work, and time-consuming, and there are so many video games to be played.

Popular Christian culture tends to act like all that stuff I just mentioned are pagan, “worldly” problems, but I’ve seen all of it among my fellow Christians. The stuff I’ve seen among pagans is worse. I won’t go into it here, but I witnessed it in college, my coworkers brag all about it, and all of it leaks into mainstream movies and TV—thus provoking other pagans to say, “Wait, that’s going on? I wanna try it!” So they try it. And if you think our culture is bad, Roman-era sexual atrocities were even worse—and legal, and often conducted out in the open, tempting Roman Christians even more.

The ideal, the thing all we Christians oughta be striving for, is chastity—a faithful, loving relationship with one trustworthy person, who can provide us a healthy, reciprocal sexual outlet. When we’re tempted by anyone else, we don’t have to burn; we have our spouse. True of people throughout history.

Temptation isn’t sin.

As I keep saying, temptation isn’t sin. If you see an attractive person, and you covet them, just stop. Force your mind to think of other things. Don’t covet someone who’s not yours. Ex 20.17, Dt 5.21 Resist temptation.

I gotta keep saying “Temptation isn’t sin” because popular Christian culture honestly doesn’t expect people to exercise any self-control. (Hey, they don’t control themselves; why should they expect anyone else to?) So they try to ban temptation, as if that’s possible. Christian men actually blame women for being too attractive to them, and demand the women exercise far more self-control than they do. Even though Jesus’s teaching right here is obviously directed towards men.

Combine this warped thinking about temptation, with this inaccurate thinking about what “adultery” means in the bible, and you wind up with a near-impossible scenario for a lot of Christians. This is part of the reason many Christians think the Sermon on the Mount is an impossible standard, meant to make us despair of ever being good—and quit trying, and depend on grace. I’m certainly not saying we shouldn’t depend on grace; we have to. But embracing disobedience in favor of grace? Ro 6.1 That’s cheap grace. That’s not just a work of the flesh; it’s a lifestyle of the flesh.

Back when I was a teenager, our youth pastors taught us teenage boys we shouldn’t even look at teenage girls. ’Cause we’ll lust for them. 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! He 4.15 Even Jesus was a teenage boy once. And either we imagine Jesus as some weird, freakish, temptation-proof being with all the passions of a block of wood, or we recognize he’s been there, done that, and easily defeated temptation. As can we. Turn to the Holy Spirit. Lean on him as he develops gentleness and self-control in our lives. Remember grace is there for when we slip up, as we will. 1Jn 2.1 Doesn’t mean to quit. Keep resisting.