Episode Details

Lust, Adultery, and the Fear of the Lord: Taking Jesus at His Word

We’ve reached Matthew 5:27–30 in the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus confronts lust head-on:

“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 lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye makes you stumble, tear it out and throw it from you, for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. If your right hand makes you stumble, cut it off and throw it from you, for it is better to lose one of the parts of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.”

The plain sense is hard to miss. As anger is to murder, so lust is to adultery; and the stakes are eternal.

For years I resisted that plain sense, assuming it was impossible for men not to lust—so Christ must mean something else, a kind of reverse psychology to push us toward grace. But that reading collapses under two things: the testimony of the early church and the consistency of the rest of Scripture.

What the earliest Christians taught

Before Constantine the church spoke with striking unity about salvation, holiness, and judgment. They believed Jesus meant exactly what He said and that Christians must actually obey Him. Consider these early witnesses:

Justin Martyr (A.D. 100–165): “For not only he who in act commits adultery is rejected by Him, but also he who desires to commit adultery: since not only our works, but also our thoughts, are open before God. And many will be found who have restrained themselves from the commission of adultery; but who have not abstained from adulterous desire. And such will be convicted by this very teaching of Christ, as being sinners, and as possessing adulterous lust.”

c. A.D. 175: “We are so far from practicing promiscuous intercourse that it is not lawful among us to indulge even a lustful look. For He says, ‘He that looks on a woman to lust after her has committed adultery already in his heart.’”

They did not teach sinless perfection or salvation by works; they did teach that a believer can fall away and that “once saved, always saved” was a later innovation opposed by the fathers and associated with Gnostic errors. (For a longer treatment, see my documentary Once Saved, Always Saved on YouTube.)

Lust and adultery: not a clever analogy, but a fact

Part of Jesus’ force here is descriptive: if you indulge lust, your “I’ve never committed adultery” badge is meaningless.

If circumstances aligned—privacy, proposition, timing—you know where a lusting heart wants to go. Everyone recognizes the “dirty old man” who leers yet boasts he’s never cheated; no one calls that righteousness. Lust is adultery of the heart, full stop.

Scripture’s wider witness

Jesus’ warning isn’t isolated. The New Testament stacks passage upon passage with the same seriousness and the same outcome:

* Mark 7:21–23: “For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed the evil thoughts, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries… All these evil things proceed from within and defile the man.”

* 1 Corinthians 6:9–10: “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the Kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither fornicators… nor adulterers… will inherit the Kingdom of God.”

* Ephesians 5:3–6: “But sexual immorality and all impurity and covetousness must not even be named among you… For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure… has no inheritance in the Kingdo