Matt 5:27–32 — Jesus Teaches And Applies the Seventh Commandment

Sex and marriage touch the core of our being. Our culture tries to make sex casual, yet Scripture recognizes its profound personal and spiritual significance. Paul therefore writes, “Flee from sexual immorality,” because the sexually immoral person sins against his own body (1 Cor. 6:18).

In Matthew 5:27–32 Jesus addresses his disciples directly. As with the sixth commandment, he moves from the outward act to the desires of the heart. We will consider the deeper meaning of the seventh commandment and three ways disciples may grow in purity.

The Deeper Meaning of the Seventh Commandment

Here Jesus is teaching his disciples about the deeper meaning of the seventh commandment and calling his disciples to grow in holiness in this area of the Christian life. So let’s look first at the deeper meaning of the seventh commandment. Just as you can murder someone in your heart, as he taught in the previous paragraph, so Jesus says you can commit adultery in your heart. And this is part of Jesus’ key teaching. Remember later on in the Gospel of Matthew, Matthew chapter 15, I’ve mentioned this several times before already. I keep going back to this because it sheds so much light on the Sermon on the Mount. But in Matthew 15, there’s this whole discussion about hand washing and the traditions of men. And Jesus is having this controversy with the Pharisees over this issue. The Pharisees are keeping the traditions of men, but in the process, they are actually violating the commandments of God. He says, this people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.

The teaching of Jesus about ethics and about the Christian life is focused upon the heart. That is what Jesus really wants to get at. He says that it’s not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth. That is what defiles a person. He says that what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and that is what defiles a person. For out of the heart come all of these sins, whether it’s evil thoughts, murder, he mentions. So that sheds light on the passage about murder in Matthew 5. Then he mentions adultery and sexual immorality, theft, false witness, and slander.

These are what defile a person. But to eat with unwashed hands and getting defiled externally, that’s not what defiles you. What God is concerned about is your heart. And so the teaching of Jesus about morality, about the Christian life, about the grateful obedience that he requires of his disciples is focused upon the heart. Out of the heart come these sins. And so if you simply focus on the outward action without dealing with your heart, then You’ve lost the game. There’s no point in just focusing on being outwardly obedient.

The Pharisees were very good at that. They were very good at tithing and mint and dill and cumin and doing all the outward things, but inwardly their hearts were full of wickedness and sin. He says that you are like whitewashed tombs. Outwardly you look good, but inside you’re full of dead men’s bones because your hearts are not right with God.

The deeper meaning of the Seventh Commandment is that just as you can murder someone in your heart, so you can commit adultery in your heart as well. Before it even gets to that outward stage of actually committing physical adultery, you can already have committed adultery in your heart.

Notice that he says there in verse 28, And he focuses on that phrase there, with lustful intent. Again, this gets back to his focus upon the motives and the desires of the heart. Jesus here is teaching us that The desire for unlawful sexuality is covetousness. In fact, it’s interesting that the word that’s used there to commit, he says, anyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent, the word lust or to lust, it’s actually the same word that’s translated as to covet.

In the 10th commandment, when it says, you shall not covet, it mentions you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife. And so I think Jesus here is pointing out that the deeper meaning of the seventh commandment, while he is the one who is helping us to see it, was already contained in seed form even in the Ten Commandments themselves. Already in the Ten Commandments themselves there was this idea that covetously desiring an immoral relationship is also forbidden by God. Now it’s interesting that immediately after this teaching on the true meaning of the 7th commandment, that you can commit adultery in your heart, he talks about divorce and marriage in verses 31 and 32.

He says whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce, quoting from Deuteronomy chapter 24. And he says, but I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife except on the ground of sexual immorality makes her commit adultery. And whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

The reason why that’s important is because he’s tying these two things together. He’s tying the seventh commandment together with the biblical teaching on marriage. Jesus is providing us here with a helpful rule for understanding God’s design for sexuality. He’s defining sexual sin in relationship to the concept of marriage.

Marriage between one man and one woman, a one flesh union between one man and one woman. And he’s saying that anything that violates that is sexual immorality. That word sexual immorality is just a broad term that covers any sex outside of marriage. It can cover extramarital sex, fornication. It can cover adultery, too. Adultery falls under that category. It can even include same-sex relationships.

Any sex that is outside of the biblical definition of marriage, which is a one-flesh union between one man and one woman, that is sexual immorality. And so, by bringing up this issue of marriage, that helps us to define what sinful sexuality is, or what lust is. Basically, lust, according to the biblical definition, is sinful sexual desire. That is, any desire for sex outside of marriage.

That’s a very helpful way of defining it. It just covers everything? It’s comprehensive, and it makes it very clear. Interestingly, even the desire to sin is sin.? That makes sense, doesn’t it? Even the desire to sin is sin. Even the desire to engage in sex outside of marriage is sinful in itself. And it’s as if you’ve already committed the sin. It’s as if you’ve already broken the seventh commandment.

The Heidelberg Catechism has a helpful pair of two questions and answers that explain this teaching. So Heidelberg Catechism question number 108 says, The answer is that God condemns all unchastity. And that we should therefore detest it wholeheartedly and live decent and chaste lives within or outside of the holy state of marriage.” So again, notice how the Catechism is defining unchastity in relationship to the holy state of marriage. If you’re within a marriage, so if you’re married, then you should live a chaste life. And not desire sexual relations with anyone outside of your spouse. If you’re living within the state of marriage or without, either way that defines what chastity and unchastity is. And then question 109 says, does God in this commandment forbid only such scandalous sins as adultery? And so here we see exactly what Jesus is addressing. No. We are temples of the Holy Spirit, body and soul, and God wants both to be kept clean and holy. That is why God forbids all unchaste actions, looks, talk, thoughts, or desires, and whatever may incite someone to them. And so that is expounding the teaching of Jesus here in our passage. So that is the deeper meaning of the Seventh Commandment. God cares about even our desires, even if we do not act upon them. Even the desire to sin is sin. God is concerned about our hearts.

Remember as well, if you go back to the Old Testament, what was the essence of the promise of the New Covenant? Remember the New Covenant is predicted and talked about several places in the Old Testament, specifically Jeremiah 31, but it’s also in Ezekiel 36. Where he talks about, I will give you a new heart. I’ll take away your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will sprinkle clean water upon you and give you a new heart.

That is what Jesus is saying. Jesus is saying that the new covenant is now being fulfilled through his person and work. And so God cares about our hearts. We even see that already in a seed form with the 10th commandment, you shall not covet? So we already see it there in the Old Testament in the Decalogue. But Jesus is now saying, in the fullness of redemptive history, as we come into this period of time where Christ has come, the Messiah has come, and he’s bringing in this kingdom of righteousness and grace, God is really concerned about our hearts. And he is calling us to live in light of that new covenant reality, that we have new hearts in Christ.

Growing in Purity

How can we grow in this area of discipleship as members of the kingdom of Christ? We are disciples of Christ. We’ve been brought by grace out of death into life, out of our sinful way of life into this new kingdom of salvation and grace in Christ. We have the forgiveness of sins. We have all these wonderful benefits in Christ. We’ve died with Christ.

We are raised with him to walk in newness of life. And now Jesus is talking to his disciples and saying, here is how I want you to live. How can we grow in this area as disciples of Christ? Well, there are three things that Jesus talks about that we can do to grow in discipleship. In this area of our lives.

Remove Occasions for Sin

The first is by removing occasions for sin. So Jesus says there in verse 29, if your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your own members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.

Right away there’s somewhat of a misleading translation issue there where the ESV says, if your right eye causes you to sin. And that’s not exactly the, that’s, it’s a legitimate translation, but it’s somewhat misleading because Jesus doesn’t believe that anything physical or external can cause you to sin? We just talked about that in Matthew 15. He says it’s not what comes into you, it’s what comes out of you? So there’s nothing physical or external that can cause you to sin.

The Greek word that is translated causes you to sin is actually the word to stumble. So it’s the same word that’s translated as a stumbling block. He’s saying if your right eye or your right hand is an occasion to stumble you and lead you into sin. Sin arises from our hearts, but there are things that are occasions for sin that can bring out the sinfulness that is in our hearts? And so Jesus here is saying we should remove occasions for sin. That is, we should remove stumbling blocks from our lives. I would translate it this way, if your right eye serves as an occasion for sin and thus stumbles you, then, he says, you should tear it out and throw it away. Interestingly, there’s a parallel passage in Matthew chapter 18 that is almost word for word the same as this here about your right eye and your right hand, but he adds another part of the body.

He says, if your foot causes you to stumble, then you should cut off your foot. It’s better to enter into life lacking a foot than to be cast into hell but have your whole body intact. So that he adds the foot there is helpful because that brings to mind stumbling? When you’re walking along and you don’t see the stone sticking out on the path and you trip over it and you stumble. So that’s the point that Jesus is getting at here.

He’s not talking about physically mutilating your body as if that will be what keeps you from sin. Jesus is not literally advocating mutilating your body, literally cutting off your hand or poking out your eye. In fact, according to the Mosaic law, in Deuteronomy 14, verse one, self-mutilation is forbidden. The people of God were not allowed to engage in that. That was a pagan practice. So he says when Jesus is talking about cutting off your right hand and so on, he’s not literally speaking about bodily mutilation. Jesus is using hyperbole. He’s exaggerating for effect.

Why does he say the right hand or the right eye? Let’s say you thought that somehow it was your right hand or your right eye that was causing you to sin, and then you physically chopped off your hand or poked out your eye. Would that solve anything? Your left eye can sin just as much as your right eye can? You can still lust with your left eye. He mentions the right eye and the right hand because those were considered to be the most valuable members of your body. The right eye and the right hand are the most valuable members of your body.

he’s saying you should take decisive action to even remove from yourself things that might be a cause of sin, even if it is valuable to yourself. He’s saying disciples of Christ do not take this sin lightly, but rather they take decisive radical action to remove occasions for sin and stumbling blocks.

What that is for you is totally based upon your own personality, your own life history, your own struggles. It’s unique to each person, so I can’t tell you this is what you should do. It depends on the things that are most likely to lead you into sin. But you should consider taking decisive action to remove those occasions for sin. Yourself what it is that makes you most vulnerable to commit this sin of lust. And so you should take decisive action to remove those occasions, those things that are stumbling blocks for you that are most likely to lead you into sin.

Jesus is saying here that sin is like It’s like mold. How if you have a block of cheese and there’s that one little speck of mold, and if you just let it go and you stick it in the refrigerator, you come back a week later and the whole cheese block is moldy? Sin is like mold. One little spot, if it’s left unchecked, is going to grow and grow.

he’s calling us to check our sin, to take decisive action to make sure that these things are not growing into a worse problem. We should never stop repenting, in other words. We all sin in many ways, especially in this seventh commandment. We all sin. But don’t get to this place where you make peace with your sin and you start to make excuses for it and just say, well, okay I just have this problem. Never stop repenting.

Continually come to the cross, continually come to the Lord, confessing your sin and seeking his grace to be more faithful to him in this area of your life. So that’s the first thing we can do as disciples of Christ is to take sin seriously and to remove occasions for sin. The second thing is we can increase our fear of God and our joy in the gospel.

Notice how Jesus there says that if your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away, for it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And he repeats that same thought again in verse 30.

He talks about the reality that lust, that is any desire for that which God has forbidden, if unmortified, leads to hell. Now, he’s not saying that if you commit one sexual sin, then you’re going to hell automatically. Of course, there’s forgiveness in Christ for those who repent. But he’s saying this is the natural, the logical endpoint of lust. Lust, if unmortified, ultimately leads to hell. The wages of sin is death. This is the natural endpoint of sin. And He’s trying to awaken the disciples to a sense of the gravity of sin, the depth of sin, and to awaken within them a sense of a fear of God. I like to compare what Jesus is saying here with Paul’s teaching in the epistles, where he does the same thing. He’s talking to the Christians in these various churches, whether it’s Ephesus or Colossae and so on, and he really warns them seriously about some of these sins that he’s concerned about, especially sexual immorality, which as former pagans, they’ve now become Christians, but as former pagans, that was a big deal for them, along with the other major sin that former pagans were tempted by, which was idolatry? Going along with the idolatrous practices of the pagan world. And so Paul, in all these epistles, and I’m going to read just one example from Ephesians 5, he warns the Christians not to engage in these serious sins because of that the logical endpoint of those sins is hell. He’s not saying that you’re going to go to hell, but he’s saying, don’t you realize that this is where these sins lead? So listen to Ephesians 5 and use this as a an interpretation of what Jesus is saying in the Sermon on the Mount. Paul says, Saints means holy ones. We’ve been set apart as holy unto God because of the work of Christ and the gift of the Spirit.

as saints, then, we shouldn’t let these sins be named among us. Let there be no filthiness, nor foolish talk, nor crude joking which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving. For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral, or impure, or who is covetous, that is an idolater, has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words.

For, and here’s the part that I’m pointing out, for because of these things, the wrath of God is coming upon the sons of disobedience.? He’s not saying the wrath of God is coming upon you because you’re in Christ. But he’s saying, look, these are the things for which the wrath of God is coming upon the unbelievers, upon the sons of disobedience. So therefore, he says, verse seven, do not become partakers with them. For at one time you were darkness, you were partakers of these things, but now you are not. Now you are light in the Lord. Therefore walk as children of light.”

But you see the logic of what Paul is saying here. He’s doing the same thing Jesus is doing in the Sermon on the Mount. He’s saying, don’t you realize that if you live in this sin without repenting of it, without any sense of the fear of God and seeing that this is where the sin leads, then that is the logical end point. The wrath of God is coming upon those who engage in these sins without repentance. But that’s not who you are. You are believers. You have been set apart as holy unto God. You have come into this kingdom of light. You’ve been transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light. And so therefore, do not be partners with them in those sins that lead to death and to hell.

Because of these things, the wrath of God is coming upon the sons of disobedience. And so there is this healthy fear of God that we should have that Jesus is calling us to and that Paul is also calling the Christians to as he writes to the various Gentile churches. He’s calling them to see that this is serious. This is not some minor thing that these kinds of sins lead to. The ultimate endpoint of these sins is hell itself. I think that it’s helpful for us to restore a healthy sense of a fear of God, of that is realizing the danger of indulging in these sins, especially sexual sin, without repentance. The danger is hell. The danger is the wrath of God. But at the same time, side by side with that healthy fear of God, there’s also this joy in the gospel?

I think it’s really interesting that if you go back to the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus does not say that if you commit this sin just once, then your whole body will be thrown into hell. That’s not what he says. He says if your right eye becomes an occasion that stumbles you and leads you into sin, So implying that the sin has happened? Then you should respond to that with repentance. You should tear it out and throw it away, for it’s better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. So notice how it’s very subtle, but notice how the gospel is implied there. It sounds threatening and terrifying, like you’re going to go to hell? But he actually says that if you do end up stumbling and falling into this sin, the response of a disciple to that is not to just relax and say, everything’s fine, I’m forgiven, I don’t need to worry about it, I don’t need to fight against this sin. The response of a true disciple is to realize, wow, what did I do? And I need to then take decisive action. In response to that. I need to repent and take decisive action to remove occasions for sin because I don’t want to go to hell.

There is the gospel implied right here in this verse. It’s subtle. It’s hinted at, but you can see that it’s very clear. That he is calling us to have a healthy fear of God and of the reality of hell, not because we are afraid that we’re going to lose our salvation, but because we are disciples and because we’re already members of Christ’s kingdom. And so we desire then to turn from our sin and to lead a more godly life. Paul talks about this in his epistles.

He talks about how our old man, which is the old way of life, has been crucified with Christ, but then at the same time he calls us to live in the reality of that, to consider ourselves to be dead unto sin and alive unto God in union with Christ. There’s like this indicative imperative balance there. On the one hand, the indicative, it’s true, you have already died, your old man has been crucified, your sinful flesh has been crucified with Christ. But at the same time, right, we are called to live in that reality, to walk as those who are indeed dead unto sin and who are putting to death our sin Well, if I really deserve hell I know I’m not perfect, but do I really deserve hell?

That’s what the Bible teaches. The Bible teaches that we do deserve hell. The awful reality that we deserve hell because of our sins. That’s why Christ’s death was necessary. If we deny that, if we say, I think that I don’t really deserve to go to hell, then we’re saying we don’t need Christ’s death on the cross as our substitute. And so if we do believe that, if we really believe that our sins deserve hell, we deserve to be sent into hell forever, into that fiery wrath of God, the place of wrath under the condemnation of God. But we also believe that, thank God and praise the Lord that Jesus Christ has borne that in my place, that he has effectively gone to hell for me, that he has taken the wrath of God in my place.

If we really believe that, and we believe that our own sins were so deep and so dark that Christ had to die for our sins, then, logically, how can we make peace with our sins? How can we make peace with those very sins that required Christ’s death? How can we make peace with it and say, well, it’s just a spot of mold, I don’t care that much about it, it’s no big deal, it was just in my mind, I didn’t actually physically do it, Well, the Lord is teaching us here. Jesus himself is teaching us here in the Sermon on the Mount that as disciples of Christ we cannot make peace with sin because we realize that our sins do deserve being cast into hell.

Praise God that we have a Savior who bore hell in our place. Praise God that we have the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. To satisfy God’s justice and holiness by his awful, painful, horrific death upon the cross. He was crucified. His crucifixion was an agony. It was a shameful death. It was a death of judgment and wrath. He cried out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And it was all because of our sin.

Increase Our Fear of God and Joy in the Gospel

The second way that we can grow in our discipleship in this area of holiness and purity in the seventh commandment is by keeping this perfect balance of increasing our sense of the fear of God combined with the wonderful truth of the reality of the gospel, which itself also points us back to the fear of God. And yet it does so in a way not that devastates us or makes us afraid or makes us doubt our salvation, but that makes us want more and more to take sides with Christ against our flesh, to say, I belong to Christ. I have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. I didn’t crucify it by my own strength, but Christ crucified it for me. And in union with him, I lay hold of the power of the crucifixion of Christ so that by the cross of Christ, I can grow in greater holiness and sanctification. The third way and the final way that we can grow in our discipleship is by upholding the creation ordinance of marriage.

Uphold the Creation Ordinance of Marriage

That’s why Jesus talks about marriage in verses 31 to 32. Just somewhat of context here. In Deuteronomy chapter 24 verse 1, Moses gave a law that presupposed the reality of divorce. He wasn’t encouraging divorce. He wasn’t saying that the Jews can divorce for any reason. But he just says, if a man finds something indecent in his wife, that very phrase was debated how to interpret that. If he finds something objectionable in her, then he, if he puts her away and so on, then he says, make sure that you don’t defile the land by then marrying someone else and then divorcing her and then going back and remarrying the original woman. So there’s very complicated passage there. It’s a very long sentence in Deuteronomy 24 verses 1 and following. The point is very simple though, that the Jews in the time of Jesus took that verse, which Moses was just using as an opportunity to seek to provide some guidelines for something that was already happening, but they took it and they ran with it and they said that you could divorce your wife for any reason.

They translated that phrase, if he finds some indecency in her, as just anything that he objects to. And so easy divorce for just about any reason was widely permitted by most Jewish rabbis in the first century. In fact, we have the writings of the Talmud, which is a commentary upon the Mishnah. The Mishnah is a set of oral traditions that were handed down from around the time of Christ. And in there, it explicitly says that if the wife burns the food or puts too much salt in it, then you can divorce her. Or if the husband just doesn’t like the way she looks anymore, then he can divorce her. And so easy divorce was widely permitted by most Jewish rabbis.

This is very interesting because we think of the Pharisees as being so strict legalists and hardcore moralists? But actually they were very loose on this one area. And what Jesus is doing then is he is saying, he’s trying to shock the Jews into a sense of the seriousness of how how important marriage is. He’s shocking the complacency of the Jews in teaching that divorce and remarriage is a form of adultery.

That’s what he’s saying. Just to boil it all down, he’s saying that if you divorce your wife for any reason like that, if you do this practice that the Jews were doing of divorcing your wife just because you don’t like her anymore, and then you marry someone else, that is a form of adultery. So this is very similar to the first section there, where he says, you’ve heard that it was said you shall not commit adultery, but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. He’s using the same reasoning here about divorce, and he’s saying, if you have this flippant view of divorce, that you can divorce for just any reason, and then you get remarried, that too is tantamount to adultery. You’re committing adultery in that case as well.

Jesus is teaching here that the ideal, he’s recognizing that divorce is a reality, but for the disciples of Christ it shouldn’t be this way. It shouldn’t be something that is so easily carried out, because the ideal is lifelong monogamy. In Matthew chapter 19, verses 3 to 6, the Pharisees came to Jesus with this question. This was a debate that was going on in their own circles, and so they tested Jesus and they asked him, is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause? That was the debate.

In Matthew 19 Jesus appeals beyond the Mosaic regulation of divorce to God’s purpose in creation: “He who created them from the beginning made them male and female,” and “the two shall become one flesh.” Marriage is a one-flesh union between one man and one woman, ordinarily intended to last for life. Death dissolves it, and sexual immorality may rupture it, but lifelong fidelity remains the creation ideal.

The seventh commandment therefore includes more than avoiding adultery and lust. It calls us positively to honor marriage. Husbands should love their wives; wives should honor and respect their husbands; and unmarried believers should live chastely while seeking to follow God’s calling for them.

Christ desires transformed hearts. As citizens of his new creation, we seek to honor him with our bodies, our desires, and our marriages. This is not peripheral to discipleship, but a significant sphere in which the new-covenant promise becomes visible in a holy life.