NOTES for Mat 5:27-32
Jesus' attitude toward sexual immorality and adultery is the same as His attitude toward murder: just as He equates hatred with murder, so He equates lust with adultery. Evidently, the causes and logic are the same here as in the case of murder and hatred: for the Kingdom, intention proves even more important than the act itself. As in the case of hatred, Jesus proposes a kind of “working ahead of the problem”; this, apparently, is how His words about the hand and the eye that cause one to stumble should be understood. Just as, in the case of hatred, it is better to be reconciled with one's opponent while still on the way to court than to inflame passions, so it is better not to let things reach the point of lust. Of course, this is a development of a tradition that already existed at the time and was based on the understanding that passion is easier to prevent than to fight afterward. It is enough to recall the words, then well known to everyone, of Hillel, one of the great teachers of the Torah: at first passion looks into your house like a passerby, then enters it like a guest, and finally settles there like the master. It was impossible to acquire the inner Torah without working specifically to prevent sinful passions and intentions from arising. But acquiring the inner Torah was not the only issue: the inner Torah itself was only a means to a full life in the Kingdom. For the Kingdom, where the quality of relationships determines everything, preventing sinful passions and intentions is extremely important. Of course, if we speak of the Kingdom revealed in all its fullness, the problem of sinful intentions will no longer exist there, for the human nature of its inhabitants will also be completely transformed, so that nothing sinful can have any place in the lives of these transformed people. But on the way to the fullness of the Kingdom and the fullness of transformation, the problem remains, and Jesus reminds us of what can help to resolve it. He sets the spiritual standard absolutely high: for example, the prohibition of divorce, which He states quite unambiguously, presupposes a quality of relationship unimaginable in our still untransformed world. Jesus, of course, understands perfectly well that the right to divorce given to human beings by the Torah is a concession to human sinfulness, one that may offer an additional occasion for the very sinful intentions that must be resisted. He does not want to leave this loophole to His followers. In the Kingdom there are no trifles, and compromises are impossible.