Matthew 5:28

“But I say to you, that every one who looks on a woman to lust after her, has committed adultery with her already in his heart.”

Once again Jesus declares authoritatively, “I say to you.” Once He has spoken that settles the matter. The principle here is very clear. Even the desire for adultery in the heart, a desire which is encouraged in himself by a man, is the equivalent of adultery. The man who looks on a woman with the desire to break in on her purity, thus considering breaking the oneness between her and her husband, is actually to be seen as guilty of committing adultery. He is invading her purity, and in his mind appropriating her for himself, without having the intention of forming a permanent relationship with her as his one and only wife (which of course he could not have in the nature of the case). He is intending to cause a breakdown of the original purpose of God in creating man and woman. For it had been God's purpose from the beginning that each man and each woman should have one partner to whom they would be insolubly bound until death broke the bond, looking only to them. The lustful look with intent at an unmarried woman, (unless with the genuine aim of marriage), or at a woman who was already bound to another, thus hit at the very purpose of God in creation. It indicated rebellion against God's will. In God's eyes it was therefore as much adultery on the person's part as if he had actually had sexual relations with her. And he has thus by it broken God's law.

Alternately we may translate this as, ‘every one who looks on a woman to cause her to lust'. (The wording is literally ‘for the lusting of/by her'). The idea then is that he has persuaded her to return his desires and there is therefore a very real case of adultery in their thoughts, brought about by his actions, but the final result is the same.

Here then Jesus is stressing that the thought is father of the deed (as with hatred and murder), and it is therefore something that His disciples must equally avoid because it attacks both the purity of the woman, and marriage itself, at their very heart. It is contrary to the sanctity of marriage. The idea that lustful thoughts were sinful was not new. In the Book of Jubilees Matthew 20:3, written by a Pharisee in 2nd century BC the writer says, that we should keep ourselves from all fornication and uncleanness --- let them not fornicate with her after their eyes and hearts.' In the Testament of Isaiah 7:2 we read, ‘except for my wife I have not known any woman. I did not act in a sexually immoral way by lifting up my eyes.' While in the Psalms of Solomon Matthew 4:4 it was said of someone with disapproval, ‘his eyes are on every woman without distinction'. In Qumran also we read of the ‘fornication of the eyes', while later the Rabbis would stress that a woman's little finger, or her leg, or her voice, or her eye, could all lead on to impure thoughts in a man (such women would in general be well covered up and thus even a hint of sexuality would be enough). But while they were aware of the impropriety of such behaviour, none of them suggested on their own authority that this is precisely what God's commandment was against. They disapproved, but they did not condemn. And yet this is what Jesus was saying.

“And if your right eye causes you to stumble,

Pluck it out, and cast it from you,

For it is profitable for you that one of your members should perish,

And not your whole body be cast into hell.”

And lest this be dismissed as just another example of theological hairsplitting Jesus rams home the seriousness of the matter. This is so important that if a man's right eye cause his thought to roam in this direction, he should, as it were, pluck out his eye and hurl it from him, so concerned should he be not to sin in this way. For it would be better to lose an eye and be half blind, than for his whole body to perish in Gehenna. The eye is in fact regularly connected with sin (see Numbers 15:39; Proverbs 21:4; Ezekiel 6:9; Ezekiel 18:12; Ezekiel 20:8) and clearly has a connection with a sin such as this.

There is no thought here that this mutilation should become a part of Jewish Law, or that this dismemberment should be carried out by others as a sentence on what he had done. For who would know of it? (Indeed were it so the vast majority of men would be half blind). It is a private and personal matter, and the choice is the man's. It is a moral choice. Nor does Jesus intend it to be carried out literally. He is using exaggeration to enforce His argument, as He regularly does. What He is really saying is that a man should go to any extreme in order to prevent himself from sinning in this way. He should be prepared to take drastic action. And today we can add the rider that if a woman dresses in such a way as to attract the roving eye she too is equally guilty. She is persuading men to commit adultery with her in their hearts.

The mention of the ‘right' eye suggests the most important eye. To have said both eyes would have resulted in total blindness. It was not the thought that the man make himself wholly blind. The thought was rather of getting rid of the offending member and paying any price to be rid of the sin. The picture is of the man recognising his sin, and immediately and violently responding by taking out his eye and throwing it from him because it had sinned. Mark 9:42, in another context, simply says ‘your eye'. This simply confirms that Jesus used similar illustrations and varied them. In fact, of course, this would not solve the problem, for it was not really the eye that had sinned, it was the whole person. Seeming to deal with the offending member would not really get to the root of the problem. Both eyes would need to be put out for it to be effective, and even then it would still not prevent evil thoughts. So to take it literally would be foolish. Nor would it be consistent with His rejection of mutilation in Mark 9:38. It is rather a stress on the need to take decisive action emphasised by exaggeration.

“And if your right hand causes you to stumble,

Cut it off, and cast it from you,

For it is profitable for you that one of your members should perish,

And not your whole body go into hell.”

Jesus now takes it one step further, moving from the initial eyeing of the woman to actual bodily contact. If a man allow his hand, (or any of his body parts), to stray in the woman's direction, even if it be his vital right hand, then he must cut if off and hurl it from him. For that would be better for him than having his whole body perish in Gehenna. Again the severity of the proposed remedy stresses the seriousness of the sin, and the greatness of the effort that should be taken in order to avoid it. Jesus is clearly very much concerned about this type of sin.

We can compare for this violent action the words of Paul in Colossians 3:5, ‘Put to death, therefore, your members which are on the earth, fornication, uncleanness, passion --'. His words are just as violent as the words of Jesus but we do not see it as a suggestion that we commit suicide, for we relate it to the cross.

There is, however, a possibility that the ‘right hand' here is a euphemism for the private parts. Such were often referred to euphemistically in the Old Testament by such means in order to avoid mentioning them directly (e.g. Isaiah 57:8).

“And it was said, Whoever shall put away his wife,

Let him give her a certificate of divorce,

But I say to you, that every one who puts away his wife,

Except for the cause of fornication,

Makes her an adulteress,

And whoever shall marry her when she is put away,

Commits adultery.”

But the matter does not just stop there, for man in his ingenuity can find a way around this. He divorces his wife. And then he argues that he can be free to cast lustful eyes on another. Jesus declares that that is not so. Unless the wife has committed adultery the marriage is permanently binding and the man cannot free himself to marry another. Adultery is allowed as an exception because it will, of course, have broken the unity between the married couple because by her act of adultery the woman has bound herself to another man. The husband will therefore no longer be bound. Indeed if he followed Jewish custom he would feel himself bound to arrange a divorce (compare Matthew 1:19). The woman will thus be living in sin but he will not. But apart from this exception he is bound to his wife as long as she lives, just as she is bound to him (Romans 7:1).

The case that ‘was said' here was built on Deuteronomy 24:1. But that law was intended rather in order to prevent a woman who has been divorced for ‘uncleanness' and has been married to another, from then returning to her first husband. That is forbidden. It is an abomination to God. The husband has rightly divorced her because she has united herself in some way to another man. Therefore he must never receive her back. Otherwise he too would be condoning sexual uncleanness. But this was not intended to encourage, or even indicate approval of divorce. It was catering for a situation where adultery, or similar, had already taken place.

It is difficult to see how Jesus could have laid a stronger emphasis on the sacredness and indissolubility of marriage. It is clear that in His view nothing was to be allowed to break the marriage bond. And the extremeness of His suggested remedies about plucking out and hurling away the eye and cutting off and throwing away the hand, together with His whole emphasis, brings out that God sees this matter as of vital importance. Woe betide, therefore, those who treat divorce lightly. That there is forgiveness even for the sin of adultery John 8:4; John 8:11 makes clear (and so does Psalms 51). But it was with the stern injunction that it must never happen again, while the divorced person goes on in adultery, as David did, and for him, although he was forgiven, the consequences of his sin also continued. We must not underestimate the mercy of God, but we must also beware of presumption. It should be noted, however, that Jesus did not suggest that those who had been divorced should get together again. Indeed that would be to go against Deuteronomy 24:1, and would be equally sinful if they had then married another.

‘And it was said.' This falls short of the full ‘you have heard that it was said' (Matthew 5:21; Matthew 5:27; Matthew 5:33; Matthew 5:38; Matthew 5:43). It is therefore clearly an addendum to what has gone before and not the indication of the beginning of a new section.

‘Let him give her a writing of divorce.' The Greek word for ‘of divorce' means ‘of relinquishing rights to a property'. That was mainly how a Jew would see his wife. It was very different with Jesus. To Him she shared equality with the man, for they had both been made one. The certificate of divorce stated that the woman was free to marry again and had to be signed and verified in the presence of witnesses. It was based on Deuteronomy 24:1 and provided the woman with the means of proving that she was no longer bound to a husband. But Deuteronomy 24:1 was never intended to provide general grounds for divorce. It was to be used in cases where a woman was found guilty of ‘an indecent thing'. This might have included adultery which her husband did not wish to charge her with publicly (otherwise she would suffer the death penalty), suspected adultery which could not be sufficiently proved but of which the husband had little doubt, potential adultery, and so on. Often the woman's family might come to some agreement about it in order to prevent the worst happening to their daughter. Rabbi Shammai saw ‘an indecent thing' as indicating adultery, and Jesus basically agrees with him, but Rabbi Hillel argued that it could apply to any failure, such as burning the dinner. Not surprisingly, knowing the hearts of men, Hillel's decision tended to be the most popular among the men, for they felt that it gave them divine authority to divorce their wives if they wished to. Divorce had thus become fairly commonplace. We can compare the Samaritan woman who had had five husbands under the same laws (John 4:18). We can also compare the attitude towards women in Sir 25:23-26, ‘A woman who will not make her husband happy is as hands which hang down and as palsied knees --- if she does not go as you would wish, cut her off from your flesh'. Jesus, however, makes clear that marriage was permanent in the eyes of God and that the only possible grounds for divorce was ‘fornication', for that meant that the sin of adultery had already been committed, and the oneness with her husband had already been destroyed.

‘Except for the cause of fornication.' The word for ‘fornication' can signify premarital sex, but it can also indicate general sexual misdemeanours, and adultery (compare also Matthew 19:9). Thus here it refers to adultery. But it might have included other sexual misdemeanours. In other contexts Jesus does not add this reservation (Mark 10:12; Luke 16:18), but it was clearly necessary when speaking to Jews, for now that an adulterous woman was no longer necessarily stoned to death there had to be some means by which the husband could be set free from the wrecked marriage. And Jewish thinking required a man to divorce such a wife.

The differing verses are as follows: ‘Everyone who divorces his wife, except on the grounds of fornication, makes her an adulteress' (Matthew 5:32); ‘Whoever divorces his wife, except for fornication, commits adultery (Matthew 19:9); ‘Whoever divorces his wife and marries another, commits adultery' (Mark 10:12); ‘Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery' (Luke 16:18). It has therefore been suggested by some that Matthew is expanding Jesus' words in order to reflect the position in his own day. But the more probable reason is that Mark and Luke are stating the accepted position held generally by Christian Gentiles, who did not consider it essential to divorce an adulteress, and were therefore simply abbreviating Jesus' statement to agree with it, without introducing the added complication about fornication which applied more to a Jewish situation, while Matthew is providing the detail about the exception, because he is well aware, as Jesus also had been, that the Jews who read his words would insist that a man must divorce a wife caught in the act of adultery in accordance with Jewish tradition, in order to maintain the purity of Israel, and was confirming that Jesus was in agreement with that. Note that both Mark and Luke have ‘and marries another' as an additional statement, stressing the fact that the man is choosing to commit adultery. They are more concerned with that than the exception. Thus all are indicating the aspects of what Jesus said which they wish to bring out.

Note on The Idea of Marriage and Adultery.

Scripture from beginning to end lays great stress on purity within marriage. It is stressed in Genesis 2:24. It is stressed in the fact that the major reason for the physical destruction of the Canaanites was to be because of their defiling sexual practises when their ‘iniquity was full'. It is stressed in the various provisions in the Law where it is made clear that the actual physical act of sexual union is seen as binding a man and woman together as one. (Thus a man who has sexual union with an unmarried woman must marry her. If she is betrothed or married he must be put to death, and she also if she consented). It is stressed in the teaching of Jesus, as here (see also Matthew 19:3). It is seen to lie at the very heart of creation. Scripture does not therefore treat the sexual act lightly. For even if a man has sexual relations with a prostitute, it makes him one with her and if he is a believer, defiles the Temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:15). To have had sexual relations with someone who is not the sole living partner with whom those relations have first been enjoyed is therefore seen as a major sin. Such people bear the permanent stain of being ‘adulterers' although the consequence for the forgiven adulterer is never spelled out. It is made clear, however, that they can never be restored to their original purity. They are for ever stained. We in the west tend to treat it lightly. Only eternity will reveal at what cost.

However, that there can be forgiveness for one who has committed adultery as long as there is genuine repentance comes out in Leviticus 19:20, in the only example where adulterers were not to be put to death (but see also Deuteronomy 21:14 which presumably allows the man and woman to marry again). The point in both these cases, however, is that they were not fully fledged members of the community. See also John 8:1. This must not, however, be seen as removing the seriousness of the sin. Murder too could be forgiven, but we do not therefore sympathise with murder.

End of note.