Matthew 5:29 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Matthew 5:29

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Sin is serious, Christ teaches; the sin of adultery is very serious. As with the sin of murder, the consequences of adultery are that we will be cast into hell if we give way to it, therefore we must avoid it at all costs. We must avoid all that leads up to it, not just because the final act is deadly, but because like murder, adultery starts in the heart, and God sees it there as it is conceived, and then grows, and finally brings forth its poisonous fruit.The seriousness with which Christ would have us to treat temptation and sin, is seen in the extreme measures that he wishes us to use in dealing with it. Even if we say that these measures cannot be taken literally but must be figurative, yet the choice of such a strong illustration tells us that sin has fearful consequences. Christ wants us to think about the possibility of hell when he says this. He also wants us to think about the strong measures we can take to prevent sin leading us there. He tells us the method. ‘If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee.’ Why only one eye? Obviously this shows the command is not literal. After all you would have to pluck out both eyes for the remedy does not else make sense, for the other I can still look. Furthermore, the imagination can still work even when both eyes are plucked out. But if any are inclined to think of this in literal terms, there is a calculation here which is irrefutable. If any are inclined to blame their eye for looking and to say, it was my eye’s fault, then pluck it out. Which would you rather lose, your eye, or your whole body? Because yes, that is the choice you face, given all that Christ says. But after all, self-mutilation is not the answer, for what really must be done is to first obtain a new heart from the Lord, and then to follow diligently his precepts to get as far from sin as we possibly can.

Application

Pluck out your right eye, says the Lord: we could understand this to mean that only part of our thinking is polluted. The mind is vast, but that wicked part must be taken out. It shows also that there is a constant source of danger. All the time corruption is relentlessly trying to get in. The word ‘offend’ suggests that you stumble into a trap. By looking at the wrong things you can come into a state that will take hold of you. Looking, dreaming, lusting, is not something you can get out of easily. Abstain from thinking those thoughts; don’t roll them around in your mind; don’t stoke up your desires; don’t daydream on paths that are unwholesome. It has been said that ‘the first look is a temptation; the second look is a sin.’ How foolish we can be. You read today of even professing Christians who fall. How did it happen? They daydream and they were in the trap. They had begun to desire and want these things.

Philippians 4:8 is the classic statement on this. We must discipline the mind. Our thoughts have to be directed. What is sanctification? Is it just bowling along and letting Christ take over? No, it starts at the level of the mind. Don’t entertain or allow those thoughts in; instead switch your thoughts. You cannot just turn off your mind, when Satan lobbed something in. What you must do is switch your thoughts; put a different though into the mind instead. What will you dream about? If wrong things invade, you had better have something else at the ready. There are all sorts of things we need to process. It may not be unclean or covetous, but it may have you at centre stage. Divert your thoughts. Christian sanctification is not throwing thoughts up in the air and letting them fall like autumn leaves. And, of course, pray for help.

Pluck it out; put a solid wall in place. When you look at people, members of the opposite sex, then look at the person and not the body. If you are plagued then turn away, do something else. But will I have to do this all my life? No. ‘Pluck it out ‘, there is in this illustration a certain finality, and an assurance of success. It does not pop back into the mind whenever you blink. Temptation may not be gone altogether, but every time you resist it, it becomes weaker. Cast it away from you; don’t just get a little satisfaction from it before you do so.

Questions

There is no hint in all that Christ says that, because someone is his disciple, because he is born again, justified by faith, sin is therefore any less serious. How should the believer think of sin? Should he think of it as somehow less harmful for him because he is a believer, or should he fear the consequences of sin? Certainly, the believer is secure; he cannot lose his salvation; he is kept by the Father and the Son, and yet to sin with presumption is to place oneself in extreme danger. The believer will be kept by God, but the means by which he will be kept include solemn warnings such as those given here. If he does not take them to heart, then they are emptied of their real force. When it comes to dealing with sin and temptation, the believer cannot afford to rationalise and tell himself that he can always repent afterwards, so it is all right to go ahead and sin. To do so would not just result in a loss of privileges, or communion with the Lord: it would be fatal. The devil is much too subtle to play games with; God’s warnings are far too serious to be treated lightly. The person who thinks like this, finds that he is not converted after all and never was. Temptation carried him away because he failed to heed Christ’s warning, and though he escaped for a time, he was swallowed up by sin in the end. We remember that Judas was there among the disciples hearing these things. Does that mean that the believer can draw no comfort from his salvation, and must fight each battle with sin as if he was on the brink of losing all that God has ever given him? No. We need the encouragement of knowing that we belong to the Lord and that he will keep us, but the use we make of this is that we strengthen our determination to live holy lives, not that we ‘[turn] the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ’ (Jude 1:4). We are dead to sin; how shall we live any longer therein? (Romans 6:2). Because we have salvation, we will prevail over sin, and if we fall through weakness or foolishness, God will restore us, but let no one plan to sin. Those who are unsaved are those who will not exercise this discipline. Christ says, this is the standard of the Christian life.

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Introduction

Matthew 5:29 Commentary and Bible Study