You have 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. 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 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. (Matt (5:27–30)

Jesus’s words in Matthew 5:27–30 confront us with an unsettling clarity. They are difficult not only because they speak so directly about sex and lust but because they expose realities that are already present within us. Few read these verses without remembering personal struggle, lingering temptation, moral regret, or wounds inflicted by the sexual sins of others. For some, these words awaken shame over what has been viewed, imagined, or done in secret. For others, they reopen deep scars from having been sinned against. And for many, there is the quiet suspicion that their story has moved them beyond the reach of healing, as though sexual brokenness has placed them in a different category from other sinners.

Yet Christ does not speak to crush the bruised conscience of his people. His aim is not destruction but restoration. His words cut deeply, but they cut like a surgeon’s scalpel rather than a careless blade. They expose what is diseased in order to heal. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is not merely a moral teacher intensifying ethical expectations. He is the Great Physician, revealing the true condition of the human heart so that he can make it whole.

The Law and the Depth of the Heart

In Matthew 5, Jesus consistently presses beyond external obedience into the interior life from which outward actions flow. The law of God was never intended as a surface-level moral code. It reaches into the hidden center of human desire. Just as murder begins with anger and contempt, adultery begins with disordered desire. In this sense, Jesus does not relax the seventh commandment; he intensifies it. He refuses to allow a reduced righteousness that limits sin to outward acts while leaving the heart untouched.

In the first-century world, adultery was recognized as a serious violation of covenant fidelity, damaging families and unraveling social trust. Yet it was possible, at least in practice, to imagine oneself righteous simply by avoiding the physical act of adultry. Jesus disrupts this assumption entirely. The issue is not merely behavior, but the heart that gives rise to behavior.

The term often translated “lust” carries the sense of coveting. It echoes the tenth commandment: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife” (Exod 20:17). Lust, then, is not the passive awareness of beauty but the active shaping of desire toward possession. It is the turning of another person, made in the image of God, into an object for personal consumption.

This is what makes lust so spiritually corrosive. It does not merely violate a rule; it distorts perception. It trains the human heart to see others not as neighbors to love but as instruments for gratification. Jesus speaks directly to men who look at women in this way, not because women are exempt from sin but because this pattern of objectification has been historically asymmetrical and socially embedded. Yet his words extend far beyond any single demographic. He addresses the universal human tendency to disintegrate love into desire detached from covenantal responsibility.

What makes this so dangerous is not simply the outward behavior it produces but the inward formation it creates. A person slowly becomes incapable of seeing others rightly. Instead of recognizing fellow image bearers with dignity and humanity, the lustful heart learns to reduce people to what they can provide emotionally, visually, or sexually. In this way, lust dehumanizes both the one being desired and the one desiring. It hollows out neighbor-love from the inside, training the heart to consume where it was created to commune, to take where it was called to love.

A World Engineered for Lust

Humanity has always struggled with sexual sin. Lust is not unique to the modern age. What is unique is the sheer saturation of temptation.

We live within systems that monetize attention by stimulating desire. Pornography is not merely available; it is engineered for instant access, private consumption, and endless escalation. Social media platforms reward sexualized visibility because it sustains engagement. Advertising, entertainment, and music often rely on the same visual logic, forming habits of consumption that are difficult to recognize precisely because they are so normal. The result is not simply a permissive culture but a formative one. Human beings are being shaped, often without awareness, into patterns of disordered desire.

In many ways, entire industries depend on our inability to resist lust. Attention has become a commodity, and sexual desire is one of the most reliable ways to capture it. The modern economy often profits by keeping people visually stimulated, emotionally restless, and perpetually consuming. This does not remove personal responsibility, but it does help explain why temptation can feel so constant and exhausting. We are not merely confronting isolated moments of weakness. We are living within environments intentionally designed to cultivate disordered desire and normalize the consumption of other human beings.

This is why Jesus immediately moves from the heart to the eye: “If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away” (Matt 5:29). His language is deliberately shocking. He is not advocating self-mutilation, a misreading that has periodically surfaced in Christian history. Rather, he is insisting that sin is so serious that decisive action is required to resist it.

The Christian tradition has often spoken here of mortification: the disciplined putting to death of sin. What Jesus refuses is the illusion of casual discipleship, in which we expect spiritual freedom while continuing to nurture the conditions that sustain bondage. To follow Christ is not merely to resist sin in moments of temptation but to refuse its cultivation in ordinary patterns of life.

Sometimes this will take the form of intentional safeguards. Sometimes it will involve removing sources of temptation, limiting digital exposure, or restructuring habits that consistently weaken resolve. Often it will look less like dramatic heroism and more like quiet wisdom: going to bed earlier, refusing isolation, or learning the patterns of one’s own vulnerability.

I often tell my congregation that fighting sin is a hard battle, but sometimes we unnecessarily make it harder. We place ourselves in situations that consistently weaken us, feed habits we are supposedly trying to kill, and then wonder why resistance feels impossible. Wisdom is not weakness. There is nothing spiritually impressive about repeatedly walking into temptation unprepared. Part of Christian maturity is learning to recognize the ordinary conditions in which sin thrives and, by God’s grace, refusing to nurture them.

For example, if I stay up too late at night, I know I will often be tempted toward gluttony. Fatigue lowers vigilance, discipline weakens, and temptation becomes easier to rationalize. In those moments, the wisest spiritual decision may not be something dramatic at all. It may simply be going to bed. That may sound ordinary, but sanctification often happens through ordinary acts of wisdom and self-denial. Many temptations gain strength not because sin is irresistible but because we repeatedly place ourselves in spiritually vulnerable situations and then expect maturity to overcome what wisdom would have avoided.

The Gospel That Meets Sexual Sinners

Yet there is another danger in hearing these words. For some, the intensity of Jesus’s teaching produces despair. The exposure of the heart can feel like condemnation, as though the unveiling of desire were itself a final verdict. But the gospel does not leave sinners in exposure; it meets them there with mercy.

Christ came into the world not for the morally impressive but for sinners, including sexual sinners. Scripture never minimizes sexual sin, but neither does it isolate it as uniquely disqualifying. Jesus ate with prostitutes. He defended the woman caught in adultery from self-righteous accusers. The apostle Paul reminded the Corinthians that some of them had once been sexually immoral, adulterers, and enslaved to various sins. Then he says, “And such were some of you. But you were washed” (1 Cor 6:11).

Notice that Paul speaks in the past tense. Their sin was real. Their guilt was real. Their shame was real. But it was no longer the truest thing about them. Christ had cleansed them. That matters because many Christians continue to define themselves by their failures long after Christ has forgiven them. Some believers live as though sexual sin places them in a separate category of permanently defiled people. They assume they may be tolerated by God but never truly welcomed by him.

But the gospel does not merely offer reluctant pardon. In Christ, sinners are washed, justified, and adopted as beloved children of God. This does not mean the consequences of sin always disappear overnight. Temptation may remain. Memories may linger. Trust may need to be rebuilt. Some wounds heal slowly. But the presence of ongoing struggle does not mean the absence of grace. If you belong to Christ, your union with him is deeper than your deepest failure.

Satan loves to convince Christians that hidden sin places them beyond the reach of mercy. But Jesus Christ already knows the worst thing about his people, and he still went to the cross for them willingly. The same Savior who says, “Go and sin no more,” also says, “Neither do I condemn you.” This is not permission to continue in sin. It is freedom to step out of hiding and walk in repentance with the confidence that mercy is still available for sinners who come to Christ.

Holiness Requires Community

Finally, sexual integrity cannot be pursued alone. One of the great lies of sin is that secrecy is safety. In reality, hidden sin grows stronger in isolation. In his book Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer warned that many Christian communities quietly create cultures where nobody feels safe admitting sin. The result is isolation, hypocrisy, and spiritual decay. The church must be something different.

Christians need honest fellowship where struggles can be confessed, prayer can be requested, and burdens can be carried together.¹ We need trusted brothers and sisters who help us walk in the light rather than hide in the dark. This kind of honesty is difficult because it feels risky. But secrecy has never produced holiness. Jesus calls his people into the light because that is where healing begins.

Conclusion

Matthew 5:27–30 is a hard word. It exposes more than most of us are comfortable admitting. Yet it is not a word of rejection but of mercy. Christ does not expose sin to abandon his people in shame but to free them from what destroys them in secret. His aim is not merely to condemn lust but to reform desire so that it is finally ordered toward love.

Dear Christian, the scalpel of Christ is never cruel. It wounds in order to heal.

Note

1. It is important to exercise wisdom in choosing whom you share these particular temptations with. Not every struggle needs to be publicly disclosed, and not every person is equipped to bear such confessions wisely. Christian honesty is not the same thing as reckless transparency. In most cases, it is wisest for men to share these struggles with other men and for women to share them with other women within relationships marked by trust, maturity, and spiritual care. It is also often appropriate to involve one’s pastor, who can provide pastoral counsel, prayer, and shepherding oversight. I encourage pastors to encourage and invest in godly, mature women in the congregation (Titus 2:3) who are able to disciple, mentor, and walk alongside younger women in the church with wisdom, discretion, and grace, helping them apply the Word of God to areas of temptation and everyday faithfulness.

©DeMyron Haynes. All Rights Reserved.

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Post authored by:

• DeMyron Haynes

  

  Rev. DeMyron Haynes (MDiv, Reformed Theological Seminary) is the pastor of New City Fellowship (PCA) in Grand Rapids, MI. He is married to Hayley, and together they are blessed with five children.

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