The Deadly Lure of Lust

Adultery hurts children. Adultery does grievous harm to an innocent party—children. . . . Children are harmed when adultery brings chaos and conflict and disunity. . . . No wonder, then, that the Bible contains such serious, repeated warnings against it: “Can a man carry fire next to his chest and his clothes not be burned? Or can one walk on hot coals and his feet not be scorched? So is he who goes in to his neighbor’s wife; none who touches her will go unpunished” (Proverbs 6:27-29). “He who commits adultery lacks sense; he who does it destroys himself” (Proverbs 6:32). “Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous” (Hebrews 13:4). (Challies, “Six Reasons”)

Challies and Ash convincingly prove that the act of adultery is a sinful and serious act. But this is where Jesus drops a devastating spiritual bomb on us. Setting his words again in contrast to the ancients, who stuck doggedly to the letter of the law, Jesus says, “But I tell you, everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (v. 28). Jesus carries us to a place that we never saw coming but that was intended by God all along. Once more we are confronted with an unavoidable and undeniable truth: the heart of the matter is the matter of the heart. Do you conceal lust in your heart but count yourself righteous because you have never followed through with the act? Jesus says, Not on your life! Adultery is not limited to the act. It includes the gazing and lingering look that objectifies another person to whom you are not married in a covenant relationship. This is a gaze, not a glance (“looks” is a present participle and could be translated “keeps on looking”). The gaze excites sexual imaginations in the heart, and you mentally engage in an act reserved for your spouse and the marriage bed. David Dockery and David Garland are blunt but accurate in their assessment:

The man “lusts her” and “adulterates her.” . . . The woman is made into an object. Lust is completely self-centered, interested only in sexual gratification. It treats other persons as things to be exploited. It adulterates them. When the lust is sated, the object of the lust is discarded (see 2 Sam 13:1-22) and another object is sought out. (Seeking the Kingdom, 55)

We desperately need men today like Job who said, “I have made a covenant with my eyes. How then could I look at a young woman?” (Job 31:1). So beware. Be on guard against a lingering look of sexual gratification. It could lead to marital disaster. It could lead, as we are about to see, to eternal destruction.

Matthew 5:29

You can have lust in your heart without your eyes, but your eyes make sinful lust easier. Jesus addresses in stark and shocking terms the intimate relationship between the lust, the heart, and the eyes. We must resist the temptation to water down what Jesus says and thereby miss the impact he intends to make.

Jesus uses two powerful and vivid illustrations in verses 29-30. He ends both with a warning about hell. The main idea is this: sinful lust will lead you down a dead-end road. It will not deliver what it promises. You think it will make you happy. Jesus says it will lead you to hell. So if necessary, take whatever steps you must to deal with sinful lust. As Sinclair Ferguson says, “Act decisively, immediately, even if it is painful. . . . [T]­he drastic nature of the remedy is simply the index of the radical danger of the sin. It is not a situation for negotiation” (Sermon, 90).

So “if your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away.” The phrase “causes you to sin” is literally “causes you to stumble” in Greek. It is the Greek word skandalon. It is in the present tense. So the idea is, if your eye keeps on causing you to stumble into lustful sin, which can lead you to hell, you would be wise and better off to “gouge it out and throw it away.” It is far better, Jesus says, to throw an eye away than it is to have your whole body thrown into hell.

This famous text, along with Matthew 19:12, moved the church father Origen (ca. AD 185–254) to roll naked over sharp briars. However, when this failed to cure him of sexual lust, he took the drastic step of castrating himself. He would later regret this decision and conclude that he may have misinterpreted what Jesus meant (Quarles, Sermon, 119–20).

Origen did misunderstand the text. The real problem lay not with his eye (or male genitals). The real problem lay within his heart. The eyes can certainly entice the heart. But you can have lust in your heart without your eyes. The key to spiritual victory over lust is not a mutilated eye. The key to spiritual victory is a circumcised heart (Deut 10:16; 30:6). A new-covenant heart has God’s law written on it (Jer 31:31-34). It is a new heart gained by faith in Jesus and being born again (John 3:3-16).

Matthew 5:30

Verse 30 reinforces verse 29. As Dockery and Garland note, “Sin is serious business. We are to perform radical surgery on anything that would cause us to be cut off from eternal life” (Seeking the Kingdom, 55). Jesus moves his warning from the right eye to the right hand. This warning parallels the warning in verse 29. If your right hand becomes a skandalon, a spiritual stumbling block, it is better to take the drastic measure and “cut it off and throw it away” (v. 30). Why? The reasoning is the same. “For it is better that you lose one of the parts of your body than for your whole body to go into hell,” into gehenna. It is better to lose a physical part than a spiritual whole. It is better to experience a temporal loss than an eternal loss. The stakes are high! So much is on the line.

All of what Jesus is saying is a package deal with the heart as the key. The eyes can certainly entice the heart, but the heart, enticed by the eyes, directs the hands. The hand acts in response to the attitude and direction of the heart. That is why Jesus says in Matthew 5:8 that we need to gain and pursue a pure heart. We can only receive this pure heart, however, as a gift of grace from God by faith in Christ.

The path to purity requires a pure heart and the mortification of the flesh, illustrated in our text by the eye and the hand. The words of John Owen return to my mind: “Be killing sin or [sin will] be killing you” (Works, 6:9). Jesus would add, Sin will be killing you and sending you to hell. What then are some wise and practical steps we can take to walk the path of purity and the halls of holiness? Sinclair Ferguson gives us four:

When we are in Christ, we are able to guard our hearts from temptation. When we are drawn to him like a totally devoted lover, the attractions fueled by lust lose their luster. They find no room in our hearts. Now, in our hearts, in that innermost sanctuary, there is a place reserved only for Christ. Jesus certainly wants to lead and guide our behavior, but first and most importantly, he wants our hearts. He bought them (1 Cor 6:19). He owns them. What he bought, we should gladly and freely give to him. Treasure Christ above all in your heart, and the eye, the hand, and the rest of the body will happily follow its lead.