Request your free, three-month trial to Tabletalk magazine. You’ll receive the print issue monthly and gain immediate digital access to decades of archives. This trial is risk-free. No credit card required.
Try Tabletalk NowAlready receive Tabletalk magazine every month?
Verify your email address to gain unlimited access.
Matthew 5:27–30
“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” (Matt. 5:27–28).
Matthew Henry begins his commentary on today’s passage with these words: “We have here an exposition of the seventh commandment, given us by the same hand that made the law, and therefore was fittest to be the interpreter of it.” Henry’s comments remind us that if we want the full understanding of the law of God, we cannot be content merely to look at the commandments but must look also at how our Lord Jesus interprets and applies them. After all, because He is the God of Israel who saved His people out of Egypt centuries before His incarnation (Jude 5), Jesus is the same God who revealed the Ten Commandments and therefore our surest guide to their full meaning.
As we see in Jesus’ exposition of the seventh commandment, recorded for us in Matthew 5:27–30, the law against adultery was never meant to apply only to the sexual relationship between two unmarried people. This law, like the other laws, also has broader implications for our hearts. Jesus tells us that the man who looks upon a woman with lust has broken the seventh commandment even if he never enters into a physical relationship with her (Matt. 5:27–28). Of course, Jesus does not mean that a lustful look or desire alone is just as bad as a physical act of adultery. There are no judicial punishments in the law for lustful desire, and sexual acts are far more serious in their immediate consequences than illicit thoughts. Christ’s point is that we dare not think we have actually kept the seventh commandment in its fullness if we entertain lust in our hearts. In addition to enjoining faithfulness in marriage in a physical sense, the seventh commandment calls us to stay away from lustful thoughts and desires and from anything that might incite them in our hearts and minds. Thus, Christians must stay away from pornography and immodesty in general, being careful in what they look at, listen to, and think about.
In our era of immodesty and sexual license, endeavoring to keep the seventh commandment will require us to think very carefully about the clothing we wear and the entertainment we consume. Sometimes our choices may require us to abstain from things in ways that the wider culture or even many professing Christians will consider strange. Better to be thought weird by the world, however, than to have lust consume us (Matt. 5:29–30).
Coram Deo Living before the face of God
Because the culture catechizes us and forms the environment in which we live, it can be easy to live without thinking much about our entertainment choices, clothing, or recreational activities. It can be easy to push boundaries and think we are keeping the seventh commandment even when we have broken it or are right on the edge of breaking it. Let us put careful thought into the choices we make lest we fall into lust.
For Further Study
- Job 31:1
- Mark 7:14–23
- 1 Thessalonians 4:1–8
- 1 Timothy 2:8–10