Matthew 5:28, commentary and pictures

To look with deliberate desire at another is already to break the marriage bond in the mind, for wrong exists first in the heart and not only in the outward deed. The seventh commandment therefore forbids unchaste thought as well as unchaste act, showing God's law to be exceedingly broad in reaching intentions, desires, feelings and motives. Those who pride themselves on outward purity while cherishing lustful imagination are as guilty within as open violators of that commandment. Faithfulness to marriage vows must be kept in thought as well as in word and deed, condemning unholy passions that resent marriage as a barrier to gratification. This calls for guarded control of thoughts, imagination, senses and affections, since cherished impurity defiles the heart, leads toward corrupt acts, and can be resisted only by grace that purifies the soul.

Sermon Setting and Purpose

This saying belongs to the Sermon on the Mount, spoken especially to the disciples yet within hearing of the assembled multitude at the opening of Christ's ministry. It is part of His exposition and full development of the law, bringing to light its pure principles and far-reaching claims.

That exposition stripped the commandments of the traditions, customs, and burdensome exactions placed upon them by Jewish teachers. It contradicted the self-righteous teaching and practice of the scribes and Pharisees. It opposed their misrepresentation of God as stern and without compassion, mercy, or love, revealing instead His true character. It set forth the principles governing Christ's kingdom of divine grace, not a promise of earthly glory. It was meant to govern everyday life, reaching into thoughts and not outward actions only.

The instruction in Matthew 5 is full of deep meaning and holds wonderful golden treasures of truth. It reveals the truth about the laws of God's government, that God's commandments are binding and disobedience brings peril. Its sayings are sufficient to guide toward salvation when understood, believed, and practiced. They must be incorporated into the life to give experimental knowledge of highest value. So received and lived out, its truths work transformation of character that makes a holy people who show God's praises. They come as a soul-saving message by which those who receive them humbly are converted and God's rebuke for past wrongs is removed. They show messengers of God the true position they are called to occupy, that when proved and tried they may work out the same teaching in their own lives.

In this setting the saying exalts God's holy law in its original purity as a perfect system of morality. Its standard includes the heart, reaching even to unspoken thoughts, and its demands are summed up in wholehearted love for God and love for neighbor, so that even unjustly taking another's means fails it. Christ's blameless life of perfect conformity was a living illustration of its requirements.

Hearers Turned Upon Themselves

The hearers prided themselves on morality and looked with horror on the sensual practices of the heathen. They despised openly sensual and dissipated characters as sinners above all others, even while priding themselves on outward purity. They were continually offended by the lust and dissipation brought into Palestine and Capernaum by Roman officers and their companions. They expected a stern denunciation of that class.

Instead of denouncing open heathen sin, the saying lays bare the evil of the hearers' own hearts. It turns judgment upon them. It astonishes them with their own inward guilt.

Those who cherish lascivious thoughts and deliberately indulge lustful thoughts are as guilty at heart as shameless outward violators of the seventh commandment.

Adultery Committed in Heart

Adultery exists first in the heart, and whoever looks on a woman in order to lust after her has already committed adultery with her in the heart. Sin has its seat in the mind, not only in outward conduct, for the seventh commandment reaches the thoughts and intents of the heart. A lustful look is already adultery in the heart, and fidelity to marriage vows must therefore be guarded not only in actions but also in thoughts. Pursuing another woman in thought, word, or deed violates those vows and God's law, and God holds people accountable for impure imaginings of the heart even when they have high status, talent, or influence.

Cherishing an evil thought, taking pleasure in impurity, or indulging a lustful look is already evidence that sin reigns in the heart, even when no outward act occurs. Deliberately entertaining amorous fantasies and lustful daydreams, and cherishing sexual desire and lustful imagination, are adultery of the mind and heart without physical sexual activity. Sensual thoughts and desires, and practices that stir them, are also forbidden, for purity is required in the secret intentions and emotions of the heart. An evil thought or look is truly sinful, not only the unlawful act, yet ignorance of this demand on the mind can lead people to regard themselves as innocent while violating the law.

The outward act does not create the evil, for temptation and a fall into open sin reveal what was hidden within. The shame and grief of open sin expose the true nature of the secret evil. Indulging the mind in impure thoughts is sinful even when the thoughts are not acted upon, when only lack of opportunity prevents the act. A person dwelling on impure desire is guilty before God in a degree as if the thought had been acted on, and allowing thoughts, imagination, passions, and affections to dwell on corrupt things can ruin character and endanger salvation. Control of the thoughts and the senses is therefore required, and such self-control requires God's grace.

Such cherished thoughts are the beginning of great evil, and when indulged repeatedly or for a long time they weaken and disturb the body's nervous and muscular systems and contribute to disease and premature death. Dwelling in thought on highly wrought portrayals of impurity excites the imagination so that the scenes are lived over again, and as the mind dwells on them passion is aroused. That inward lust is already sin even without an outward act, and ends in sin. It unfits the mind for usefulness, disqualifies it for spiritual exercise, destroys interest in the Bible, and leaves little place in the thoughts for heavenly things. Adultery includes more than the outward act, for sexually corrupt practices that pollute the imagination are charged as adultery, and communicating them to youth leads them into self-abuse and shared corruption. Lustful looking reveals a lustful heart, and welcoming or tolerating improper advances is evidence that the mind is not pure and chaste and that lust has been allowed to remain alive in the heart.

Law Reaches Inward Motives

The seventh commandment forbids adultery in thought as well as in act, for God's moral law is exceedingly broad, a matter of character rather than form. The law is not a cold code of rules or a set of human traditions, but remains the standard of righteousness with far-reaching claims contained in love to God and neighbor, reaching into thoughts, feelings, desires, intentions, motives, and purposes. A lustful look transgresses the law, and adultery is already committed in the heart before any outward act, because soul and mind must be pure and aligned with love and righteousness. Christ's sermon is meant to govern everyday life, and the commandments reach into everyday thoughts.

The law searches the hidden moral life and the deep secrets of human nature concealed from human sight and knowledge. What the hands do or the tongue utters and what the outer life reveals shows moral character only imperfectly, for the law searches thoughts, motives, and purposes. Dark passions hidden from men — jealousy, hatred, lust, ambition — and evil deeds meditated in the dark recesses of the soul yet never carried out for want of opportunity are all condemned by God's law. This claim was set before Felix and Drusilla to show man's duty to live soberly and temperately, keeping the passions under the control of reason in conformity to God's law and preserving the physical and mental powers in a healthy condition. Obedience to such a law means turning from ungodliness and worldly desires and living rightly.

Jesus explains the commandment's full depth, restores its true significance, and magnifies it by showing its inward requirements, rejecting the idea that outward obedience alone is enough. Selfish motives violate the law, and no precept is made less sacred. Its standard is perfect obedience, it condemns every evil action, its claims remain binding through every generation, and obedience leads to denying worldly lusts and living godly lives. True religion therefore requires holiness within as well as outward correctness.

A man may be a lawbreaker in heart even when the outward act is wanting, and may be an adulterer in heart while treated as loyal by the world and regarded by fellow men as possessing great integrity. God's law looks into the secrets of the heart and pours a flood of light on things buried in darkness. A person can violate the law inwardly even without showing it in feelings or actions. Genuine righteousness therefore conforms the heart to God's revealed will as well as shaping outward conduct, and mere external religious observance does not meet the law's claims.

The law forbids narrowing the precepts to the smallest possible claims and restricting them to condemn outward acts alone while dishonoring God in thoughts and affections. That narrowing deceives the soul, flatters itself that it is keeping the law, and ventures as far toward wrongdoing as possible without being branded a transgressor. The heart that loves God supremely renders cheerful full spiritual obedience, sees the commandments in their spiritual power, gives them the largest interpretation, and strives to bring will, affections, and all the heart to exemplify their great principles in thought, word, and character, which is genuine sanctification. When the commandments come home in their real force sin appears exceedingly sinful, self-righteousness, self-esteem, self-honor, and self-security end, sin is cleansed from the soul temple, and deep conviction of sin and self-loathing in a desperate sense of peril lays hold on the blood of the Lamb as the only remedy from the condemning power of sin.

Lust is adultery just as anger is murder and covetousness is idolatry, showing the law's full spiritual reach. People cannot meet its demands by their own power, but faith in Christ cleanses the sinner from guilt and enables obedience. Christ by His blameless life and perfect obedience showed the law's excellence.

Marriage Covenant Protected

Adultery exists first in the heart, and a lustful look is already adultery committed in the heart. Those who cherish lascivious thoughts and deliberately indulge lustful desire are as guilty in heart as shameless outward violators of the seventh commandment, even while priding themselves on outward purity. The command strikes at the primary cause of lax views of marriage by condemning unholy passions that resent the marriage institution as a barrier to the gratification of lust. It hedges the marriage relation about so that there can be no legal separation between husband and wife save for adultery, condemning the putting away of a wife for trivial offenses as a practice leading to great wretchedness and crime.

Fidelity to the marriage vows must be guarded not only in actions but also in thoughts, and pursuing another woman in thought, word, or deed violates those vows and God's law. A married man must guard his thoughts and affections and remain faithful to his marriage vows in thought, word, and deed, not seeking another woman's affection or placing his wife second. A married person who continually looks on another woman with lust, cultivates lustful affection for her, or dwells on her with desire after making the marriage vow has already committed adultery in mind and heart, even if no outward act follows. Accepting favors improper for a married person is likewise sinful, and lust or adultery cannot be made lawful by claiming sanctification; calling such conduct sanctified is fatal self-deception, and those who persist in such thoughts and practices need repentance and conversion.

Entertaining unchaste thoughts about women other than one's wife is guilt of adultery before God, and indulging personal inclination in attentions to other women violates the commandment. Unchaste thoughts are the root that leads to improper attentions and advances and then to improper actions, and the danger is very great; while bad in men with only common work, it is a hundredfold worse in men who have accepted sacred positions of trust. Married men who cultivate attention and improper intimacy with young women are adulterers in heart, and their conduct deceives and harms inexperienced youth, defiles their own character, and corrupts the institutions entrusted to them. A married man's lustful looking requires guarding against temptation and avoiding conduct that gives the appearance of evil, and a divorced wife does not in this application make him free to marry again. Entertaining even the thought of marrying a man still bound to his wife violates God's law before any marriage takes place and should be rejected as soon as it arises.

Call to Guarded Purity

Sexual desire deliberately entertained for another is adultery in the heart, not purity or sanctification, and the command calls for practical purity and a faith that works by love and purifies the soul. Claims of faith or sanctification cannot excuse adultery or make lust lawful, and to call such conduct sanctified is fatal self-deception. True sanctification obeys God's commandments and does not excuse lust as sinless, and dwelling on another with desire after the marriage vow, cultivating lustful affection, and accepting favors improper for a married person are sinful. Those who entertain such thoughts and persist in such practices need repentance and conversion, for purity and sanctification through truth require resisting lust.

Obedience requires having the spirit of the law in the heart, not outward conduct only, for the state of the heart regulates life and character. Teaching this heart obedience to new converts is the greatest and most difficult lesson, and unless it is impressed upon them labor for them is lost.

The verse calls for control of the thoughts, imagination, passions, affections, and senses, since entertaining corrupt thoughts leads to corrupt actions and purity of thought is essential to a life of service to God. Indulging the mind in impure thoughts is sinful even when not acted upon, when only lack of opportunity prevents the act, and a person is guilty before God in a degree as if the thought had been acted on. Cherishing impure thoughts is itself sin without words or actions to bring condemnation, defiles the purity of the heart, and means the tempter has succeeded. Such self-control over thoughts and senses requires God's grace, and allowing the mind to dwell on corrupt things can ruin character and endanger salvation. Its standard requires guarding the senses and refusing to indulge impure thoughts, and Christ's grace enables moral control over thoughts, words, and actions.

The warning applies to men who minister in sacred things and to married men with children who are not satisfied, who place themselves where they invite temptation, approach danger, look with lust, and take liberties with others that belong only to lawful wives. Impure thoughts and unholy desires are adultery in the heart even without outward act, bring God's rebuke, and have Adultery written opposite the name in the books of heaven. Entertaining vile thoughts almost constantly, even carrying them into the house of God and into the sacred desk, breaks the command and shows corruption in the soul. Safety comes only when thoughts are stayed upon God with meditations of the soul upon truth and the precious promises of God and the heavenly reward for the faithful. Unless the soul temple is cleansed by the blood of Christ, God's judgments long deferred will come, and there will be apostasies that startle.

Ignorance of the law's demand on the mind can lead people to regard themselves as innocent while violating it, for the law of chastity governs the mind as well as words and actions. Deliberately cherishing amorous fantasies or lustful daydreams is adultery in the heart even when no outward act occurs. God's command reaches beyond outward acts to the thoughts and purposes of the heart, so marriage loyalty requires guarding not only conduct but also the thoughts one encourages in others. God holds people accountable for impure heart imaginings and for encouraging them in others even when they have high status, talent, or influence. Those who care for women patients must guard hearts and minds from impure thoughts and need God's power to do this work faithfully. Showy, extravagant dress can awaken lust and base passions in a beholder, for lustful desire in the heart is already adultery in the heart.