You have heard that it was said, You shall not commit adultery.
But I say to you,
everyone who looks at a woman with lust
has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
It is probably at least the case the most people avoid committing adultery in actual fact. But there are perhaps fewer who have any measure of control over the more subtle aspects of their relationships with the opposite sex. Do our actions correspond fully with the dignity that should be accorded to others made in the image of God? Or are they rather ways of signaling what we would do if we could get away with it? Do we act in accord with the larger moral norms and yet gaze with desire at someone in a way that is a violation of her dignity, regarding her merely as a means rather than an end in herself? Or do we act as though we wouldn't dream of cheating on our husband while still acting toward others in ways that are flirtatious, using them as a way to feel validated ourselves? Do we dress in ways that bespeak our dignity, or do we make ourselves the source of temptation to others? There are so many ways to dance around the line of what is permissible and what is sinful. But it is often the case that such dancing is itself sinful at least because it fails to avoid the occasion of further temptation.
If your right eye causes you to sin,
tear it out and throw it away.
If we have triggers that lead us, if not to adultery, at least in that direction, then we need to re-architect our lives in order to remove them. It might be easier to lose an eye than for us to give up watching a certain show. It might seem easier to lose a limb than to find some way to add content filtering or accountability to our use of the internet. But if these things are leading us closer to sin, even a little, then they are, by definition, also leading us further from God. As we have said, it is not enough to have merely been liberated from Egypt if our hearts are still in Egypt dominated by her idols.
It might seem as though we are obviously obligated to continue to interact with an individual whom we can't help but look at with lust in our heart. And in some cases maybe we are. But how much of that is of our own creation? There will always be occasional individuals in our path that we find attractive. But we are not meant to seek them out repeatedly merely on that basis. When we do cross paths we are meant to maintain what tradition calls the custody of our eyes.
And if your right hand causes you to sin,
cut it off and throw it away.
It is better for you to lose one of your members
than to have your whole body go into Gehenna.
Jesus emphasized that it is appropriate to take drastic action for the sake of our souls. Small sins tend to snowball into bigger ones. Even venial sins, freely chosen, are a step in the direction of hell. We are meant to prioritize our long-term and indeed eternal happiness over the fleeting pleasures that sin affords. The trouble is not so much that we don't fight sin in our lives as that we don't take it as seriously as we should. We think of spiritual growth more in terms of self-improvement than salvation. Then we surprise ourselves when our efforts fail and we fall into sin. But should we be surprised when our only efforts to fight against it are feeble and halfhearted?
It is important to remember our own weakness so that we can also remember to rely on God for grace and strength. We might be stuck in our own status quo, unable to prune certain things from our lives, even if they have repeatedly proven to lead to temptation and the near occasion of sin. Our identity is often so invested in these habits of ours that to give them up would feel like breaking ourselves to pieces. But God is a gardener who can prune from us what does not bear fruit (see John 15:1-3). He delights to do this because he sees the treasure that we all possess underneath the earthly exterior. We tend to prioritize and value the earthen vessels over the treasure. But God himself values the treasure more, and will help us to do so as well. This often involves "carrying about in the Body the dying of Jesus" but only "so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our body". Clearly even for Paul this was a difficult process. But it never overwhelmed him, drove him to despair or destroyed him because God never abandoned him. May we too cling to God so that the life of Christ can be in us and shine through us the sake of our neighbors and the glory of God.
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