Thoughts for the Day

You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery’           Matthew 5:27

After Jesus’ breath-taking extension of the command ‘You shall not murder’, I wonder what the crowd might have anticipated on the matter of adultery – perhaps a detailed update of all acceptable or unacceptable sexual practices. That would certainly have been helpful for future reference!  But it would have missed the point completely, because this was primarily a command about relational – specifically marital – integrity, and against breaking that union at its exclusive, intimate core.  Adultery was such a betrayal of marriage that, when challenged about whether men could divorce their wives ‘for any and every reason’, the only concession Jesus mentioned was sexual immorality.

Once again, Jesus strips it back to the heart, back from the act not only to the intent, not only to the desire, but to that first lustful look.  The ‘tip of the iceberg’ metaphor came to my mind, but this too misses the point.  Jesus is saying the lustful look alone is a danger to the soul, equivalent in damage to having committed the act itself and to be avoided at all costs, even if (hyperbolically speaking) one has to gouge out one’s eye to do so.  Reflecting on this, I’m guessing Jesus would have had some strong words to say against pornography too!

Jesus is not recorded as systematically re-visiting all the moral laws of the Old Testament.  Even if he had, it hasn’t been my aim here to explore all he taught.  Rather, I wanted to take these last couple of days to illustrate that his teaching (which we are told we will obey if we love him) was rooted in these moral laws, and far from discarding them, he surprised people by taking them deeper … challenging our hearts rather than focusing on the letter of the law.