The Look of Lust

MHA: From external regulations designed to protect society from infringements of the law and crimes, Jesus turns his attention to what goes on inside a person, to the heart.

DMLJ: I know, of course, that the doctrine of sin is not popular today. … That is why we must consider it, for there is nothing at the present time which is more urgently necessary than that we should truly grasp the biblical doctrine with respect to sin.

Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Jesus Christ: His Life and Teaching, Vol.2 - The Sermon on the Mount, Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev

Before diving into the specific teaching, Lloyd-Jones describes the issue of “sin”; not particular “sins,” but “sin.”

DMLJ: I suggest that unless we are clear about the doctrine of sin we shall never truly understand the New Testament way of salvation.

The doctrine of sin must begin with the preaching of the law.  One must be convicted by the idea and cost of sin.  Jesus cannot be presented merely as a friend (He Gets Us); He can be this, He wants to be this.  But without recognizing and acknowledging and being convicted of sin, there is no new life, new heart, new nature.  Jesus is asking” Do you know what it means denying yourself, taking up your cross daily and following Me? 

Jesus emphasizes the depth and the power of sin; not of our sins, but of sin.  Sin is not merely a matter of actions and deeds; it is something within the heart.  The individual sins are symptoms of this disease of sin.  The cure isn’t found in relieving the symptoms, as important as that can be; the cure is found in resolving the cause, the source.

Then there is the subtlety of sin.  We are contented when not committing the act, ignoring the cancerous growth within us, causing our decay.  Further, the perverting nature and effect of sin.  Sin twists and perverts everything, so much so that precious gifts like the hand or the eye become a nuisance, driving us to metaphorically cut them off or pluck them out.  Finally, sin is destructive.  Sin destroys man; it introduced death into the life of man.  it is hateful to God.

Without recognizing this doctrine of sin, there is no true conception of holiness.  Holiness is not achieved merely by avoiding the physical act of a particular sin.  It isn’t enough to not commit adultery; we must not covet our neighbor’s wife.  It isn’t enough not to murder; we must not hate, or allow our anger to grow against another.

Grasping this doctrine of sin helps us to understand the greatness of God’s love toward us.  It should cause in us a deep desire to love Him.  it isn’t sufficient just to believe certain things about Him.  Fully grasping this doctrine of sin causes us to understand: there is no path to deliverance other than running to Christ and relying on Him. 

DMLJ: If we can conceivably be satisfied with our lives because we have never committed an act of adultery or of murder or any one of these things, I say that we do not know ourselves nor the blackness and the foulness of our own hearts.

The point is not, merely, to avoid the particular physical sin.  For many of us, and especially for the big sins, this is not terribly difficult.  And this is what Jesus is getting at with the following several examples, beginning here with lust, adultery, and divorce. 

Matthew 5:27 Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: 28 But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.

Metropolitan Hilarion considers the word “adultery” in this opening. 

MHA: In Greek there are two terms used to refer to adultery, each of which possesses different shades of meaning: moicheia and porneia. 

The first refers to the violation of marital fidelity.  However, Jesus uses the second term here, and its meaning is much broader:

MHA: …it can refer to fornication, prostitution, and promiscuous behavior; it can also be used to refer to sexual relations before marriage, incest, and other forms of sexual immorality.

In other words, it seems Jesus is making clear two things with the use of this second term: the act of adultery is much broader than simply marital infidelity, and even looking at a woman with lust – the heart, not merely the act – is adultery. 

MHA: …the actual tone in which Jesus gives his commandment regarding the inadmissibility of adultery, even in thought, contrasts very sharply with the overall tone of the instructions concerning spousal fidelity in the Old Testament.

To the extent the tone is changed, Jesus only seems to make clear that the sin begins in the heart before it is manifest in deed.  If David did not first lust after Bathsheba, he would not then have committed the act of adultery (and, later, murder).

Matthew 5: 29 And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. 30 And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.

Here, Jesus is making an extreme point to demonstrate His view of the holiness of marriage, which will then feed into His strong views regarding adultery.

MHA: We can assume that Jesus used these images repeatedly in referring to the difficulty of struggling with sinful desires: to tear the latter out of the heart is no less difficult and painful than to pluck out an eye or cut off a hand or a foot.

Lloyd-Jones considers: Were the Pharisees saying, don’t blame me, blame my hand; blame my eye?  Was Jesus pointing out the silliness of this notion?  Perhaps.  Or, was Jesus ridiculing this notion by pointing out that once the right eye or right hand are cut off, still another eye and hand remain?  Could be.  Lloyd-Jones offers something more:

DMLJ: Now I do not want to reject that exposition entirely. 

He finds the better interpretation as the Lord being anxious to teach the real and horrible nature of sin, the terrible danger in which sin involves us, and the importance of dealing with sin and getting rid of it.  It isn’t the act; it is the pollution of the heart.  This must be dealt with.  We must understand the nature of sin and its consequences:

DMLJ: Perhaps the most convenient way of putting all this is to remind ourselves of Palm Sunday… Why is He going to that cross and to that death?  There is only one answer to that question.  Sin is the cause; and sin is something that can be dealt with in that way only, and in no other.

Sin in you and in me is something that caused the Son of God to sweat drops of blood in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Jesus cut off the entire body because of sin – our sin. 

DMLJ: Nowhere is the nature of sin displayed in such terrible and awful colours as in the death of the blessed Son of God. … We must realize once more the price that had to be paid to deliver us from sin.

Further, we must understand the importance of the soul and its destiny.  The soul is so important that if our right eye causes us to sin, it must be cut out.  In other words, whatever comes between us and Him must be hated and put aside.  We must do all we can to destroy it within ourselves.

All of this leads to the positive desire: the ideal is to have a clean and pure heart, a heart free from lusts.  Holiness is a positive ideal; it isn’t merely the absence of a negative. 

DMLJ: In other words, our ambition should be to have a heart which never knows bitterness, envy, jealousy, hate, or spite, but is ever full of love.

Is any of this humanly possible?  Of course, the answer is no.  We have an absolute need of the Holy Spirit. 

Matthew 5: 31 It hath been said, Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement: 32 But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery.

We must keep in mind: Jesus is not correcting the law of Moses.  It was God who gave this law; it is not in need of correction.  Instead, it is the interpretation and application that must be corrected.

So, what did the law of Moses say?  What was it the scribes and Pharisees taught?  Finally, what is it that Jesus is saying is the proper teaching?

DMLJ: The whole object of the Mosaic legislation in this matter was simply to control divorce. … [The men] had come to believe that they had a right to divorce their wives for almost any and every kind of frivolous and unworthy reason.

Jesus notes, in Matthew 19: the law was such because of the hardness of men’s hearts.  The law was first meant to greatly reduce the causes for divorce.  Further, the man must give his divorced wife a bill of divorcement, hence she could not be charged with unfaithfulness or adultery.  The entire purpose was to reign in the chaos.  We must keep in mind: God gave his command regarding marriage in the first chapters of Genesis.  This hasn’t changed; one flesh cannot later become two:

Genesis 2: 24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.

According to Metropolitan Hilarion, the legislation concerning divorce was subject to wide interpretation at the time.  One school taught that it is limited to cases of unchastity.  A different school taught that the just causes were much broader, to include even the serving of a spoiled dish, or if the husband found a woman that was more pleasing to him.  These two schools were likely known to Jesus, and Jesus is teaching something much closer to the first school – a narrower understanding.

It was likely that, when the Pharisees asked Jesus about divorce (captured again in Matthew 19), they were testing Jesus regarding the difference between these two schools.  Metropolitan Hilarion notes that Jesus’s teaching – clarifying the meaning and intent of God’s commandments regarding marriage and divorce, greatly increasing the wife’s security – laid the foundation for the later teaching of the apostle Paul regarding a much higher, albeit not in every way equal, position in the marriage for the wife.

What of the qualifier: saving for the cause of fornication?  Here, Jesus is noting that the one flesh of marriage has been broken.  This unfaithfulness is the one allowable cause for divorce.

DMLJ: He Himself tells us that unfaithfulness is a cause for divorce and the reason for this is surely obvious.  It is the question of ‘one flesh’ again; and the person who is guilty of adultery has broken the bond and become united to another.

What I find curious here, in Lloyd-Jones teaching, is that when it comes to adultery and murder, he rightly points out that the violation, the sin, is not limited to the physical act.  Jesus is teaching that the sin is in the heart, before the act – even if the act is never carried out.

But Lloyd-Jones does not allow for the same qualifier when it comes to fornication.  This is only limited, in his understanding, to the actual act.  I am not going to try to understand this or sort it out, but everywhere in Jesus’s teaching on morals, He starts with the heart, the desire, the thought.  Why is it not the same here?

Conclusion

Which may lead to some of the variety in the understanding of divorce across various Christian traditions…

Metropolitan Hilarion offers the wide differences in the various Christian traditions in the implementation of this teaching.  The Catholic Church is most strict, with divorce practically forbidden.  In the Orthodox tradition, the principle of leniency is widely applied.

Meanwhile, in the Protestant world, the implementation varies widely from one denomination to the next, often dependent on the individual pastor.  He cites one Protestant scholar, who writes:

“The inflexible divorce law in Catholicism appears to many the opposite of God’s love and forgiveness.  On the other hand, the absence of a practiced church divorce law in Protestantism means that pastors are left to their own devices.”

My intention is not to sort this out.  For me, it is enough to note how serious Jesus sees this entire matter of lust, adultery, and divorce – and the connection of each one of these to the others.

And that it all starts in the heart.

Epilogue

DMLJ: What right have we to expect nations to stand to their bonds and keep their vows if men and women do not do it even in this most solemn and sacred union of marriage?

I recall Ross Perot, when it came to considering executives for his company, saying something like: why should I trust you when your own wife can’t trust you?

The most promiscuous men in our society have their hands on the levers of ultimate worldly power – the state.  Expecting them to act morally toward us seems a pipe dream.