“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.” (Matthew 5:27-30)

The secret sins are the most deadly sins.  I want to be efficient with this blog post not because this topic of lust is not important and not because lust does not affect many people, because it does.  And, not because lust isn’t powerful, because it is.  Not because lust does not ruin lives, because left alone, it will.  I want to shoot straight to the point in the same spirit of Jesus’ teaching on lust.  In four verses, Jesus makes lust synonymous with the sin of adultery.  Looking at a woman “with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matt. 5:28).  In the next two verses Jesus answers the number one question everyone should ask, “If lusting after someone means you are committed the sin of adultery, then what will it take to make me stop?”  Jesus’ answer is the same in verse 29 and verse 30.  This answer in fact, is the biggest brake pedal that Jesus could possibly use to get someone to stop lusting.  Jesus basically says, that when you are about to lust you face the choice of either stopping yourself or facing the prospect of one day, “having your whole body thrown into hell” (v. 29).  Verse 30 repeats this horrible reality, either you stop lusting, pictured as “cutting your right hand off” and then “throwing it away” or “your whole body” goes “into hell” (v. 30). 

I am planning to unpack this topic and these verses in their entirety when I preach this on Sunday but suffice it to say, Jesus’ remedy for lust is boiled down to one thing.  Hell.  You either slam on the brakes or you will one day be flung into hell.  There is no question that lustful appetites are powerful.  Most everything the world markets is laced and laden with evocative allurements to ensnare a consumer’s heart.  People now walk around in a zombified state expecting to yield to temptations grazing and feeding the next unholy morsel they see.  The lust culture we are immersed in is so pervasive, it seems odd to even call it out as wrong.  As if we are saying, “Our world is now irreformable, so why even talk about it?” 

There is one reason to talk about it and that reason is the reality of hell.  No matter how involuntary lust and lusting is within our day-to-day world Jesus calls us to remember that it violates God who is holy and that this holy God will punish it accordingly.  For those who are unwilling to repent and turn away from the sin of lust, their “whole body” will “be thrown into hell” (v. 29).  One clear observation from this discussion is that there are a whole lot of people who fit the category of being unwilling to hit the brakes on lust.  Most people these days are cavalier about their lust.  Gone are the days when admitting to being lustful would be taboo or undignified.  Even married people (and I mean both males and females) will openly admit they lust after certain actors or actresses or certain people in their sphere of life.  They may follow an admission like this with a comment like, “Oh I would never act on my lust…” making what happens inside of their heart completely categorically different than what he or she would every do.

In Jesus’ sermon on the mount, he targets someone’s heart and does so in view of eternity and this raises the stakes immeasurably.  Let me summarize my point in a way that at first glance might sound offensive but I think gets at what Jesus is doing here in Matthew 5:27-30.  If someone (male or female) is married and strays in his or her heart, commits adultery with another person and then experiences all of the loss and fallout from committing this sin but then repents in this lifetime, this person is far better off than someone harboring lust while never acting on it in physical adultery.  Though not crossing a physical line, if this person never repents of his or her secret sins of lust in this life, then this person will be condemned and separated from God and everyone in heaven, cast in hell forever. 

Practically speaking, someone who commits adultery who loses their spouse and even access to his or her children who then genuinely seeks and receives forgiveness through the grace of Christ is immeasurably better off than someone who commits adultery in the secret of his or her heart and never genuinely seeks and receives forgiveness through the grace of Christ.  This is because the person who never repents of the sins of the heart is not truly born again and is still under God’s eternal penalty for sin and will consequently suffer this penalty being cast into hell forever. 

I think a lot of times we overcomplicate things to our own detriment.  Hell is real.  Hell is forever.  Hell means torture for the whole body forever and most people are going there.  Most people ignore this reality and this warning altogether though they should not.  Put another way, the only way to truly kill a sin that is this powerful is to fully recognize that you need a brake pedal that is this massive.  The brake pedal is hell.  When a child touches a hot stove, the child knows not to do it again.  By touching the stove, you are now informed that if you were to press your hand down on a hot burner and keep it there, your hand would feel excruciating pain.  If you were forced to keep your hand, there it would ultimately melt from the heat and cause dire consequences to your life and health.  This information at varying levels becomes immediately encoded into a child’s mind as soon as he or she simply touches the stove.  These verses should serve as Jesus’ hot stove lesson.  We touch the flame of hell to warn us to never put ourselves in a position to end up there.