Matt 5.21-30

a deeper obedience (2) : anger & lust

(matthew 5.21-30)

Jason Procopio

I want to start by thanking you all for your prayers; I’m doing much better. (Thanks as well to Joe and to Matthew Sanders for replacing me during my absence.) For those of you who don’t know, I caught Covid and was out of commission for almost two weeks—it’s no joke. I’m vaccinated too, so it could have been worse. At any rate, thank you all for praying for me, I’m thrilled to be back.

But all this means it’s been almost three weeks since our last trip into the Sermon on the Mount, so let’s recap what we’ve seen so far. In the first twenty verses of this sermon, we see Christ’s overall game plan for his people. He’s laid out a brief description of Christian character in the Beatitudes—his people are to be humble and gentle, not seeking power for their own gain, but seeking righteousness for the glory of God. He called his disciples to be salt and light in the world: to preserve and to display the message and the character of the kingdom of God in the world. And he said that we do this by allowing ourselves to be formed by a deeper obedience than that of the scribes and Pharisees. V. 20:  

For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. 

Now, this verse is important for what comes after. The scribes and Pharisees were two separate religious groups; the scribes’ job was to interpret the Law of Moses for the people, and the Pharisees were an outside group of men who prided themselves in rigorously applying the Law of Moses. 

A classic example can be found in Mark chapter 2—Jesus’s disciples are walking one Sabbath. They pick some grains to munch on during their walk (the same way you can pick and eat wild strawberries during a hike). The Pharisees condemn the disciples for doing the “work” of picking grain, because according to the Law, no work is to be done on the Sabbath.

The point is that these two groups knew the law well, and applied the law scrupulously. But in so doing, they completely missed the point of the law, which was to make God’s people like God himself.

So Jesus is going after the point—he’s not calling his disciples to less than the scribes and the Pharisees, but to more. The scribes and Pharisees aren’t wrong to meticulously obey the Law; they are wrong in thinking that obeying the Law is all they should be doing.

Until the end of this chapter, Jesus will give several examples of how his disciples are called to go even deeper. To go after both the fruit and the root of sin in our lives. To be salt and light to the world by not just doing the right kinds of things, but by being the right kinds of people.

He’s going to give two examples in the verses we’ll see today, and in both examples he’ll do the same thing: he’ll lay out a principle, and then he’ll give an application of that principle.

Jesus is going to start every example for the next thirty or so verses in this same way—by saying, “You have heard it said that...” and then giving an example. Each time, he’s going to take one of the commandments of the Law of Moses, and then he’s going to say, “But I say to you...” And he’s going to interpret that law rightly. When he does this, he’s not contradicting the commandment, but going deeper: he’s saying that if you stop at the commandment—the way the scribes and Pharisees do—you haven’t actually understood the commandment.

The first example he gives is that of interpersonal conflict.

Anger & Murder (v. 21-26)

21 “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’

So this is a rule everyone agrees on: murder is bad. Don’t murder other people. If you murder someone, you deserve judgment for that.  (I think that’s probably why he starts with this example.)

But then he goes further. V. 22: 

22 But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire. 

Now, if you struggle with anger, don’t panic yet—the emotion of anger isn’t a bad thing in itself. Jesus himself was angry, when he saw the moneychangers doing their business in the temple. The apostle Paul quotes David in Ephesians 4.26-27: Be angry and do not sin… So it is possible to be angry and not sin. The problem isn’t the emotion of anger. 

Look at the examples Jesus gives. He talks about anger that manifests itself through insult. He talks about calling someone a fool out of anger. He talks about people who let their anger go, and allow themselves to say or do things they have no business saying or doing. Whenever we allow anger to motivate our actions and our reactions, we give sin a place to thrive.

And if you pay attention to what he says, he places anger in a specific context. He’s not talking about anger towards an enemy—not yet anyway, he’ll come to that in v. 43. For now, he’s placing his command in the most familiar of settings: in the context of conflict with a brother—another Christian.

The familiarity of the context is important, because when we are close with someone, our anger and frustration becomes harder to rein in: we allow ourselves to say things to our spouses, our kids, our close friends or family members, that we’d never say to a stranger. 

Think about the last time you got angry, and said something so simple as, “What’s wrong with you?” or, “What, are you stupid? I don’t understand what’s so hard about this.” These are just modern, familiar versions of calling someone a “fool”—because the implication is that there is something wrong with the other person, and that he is stupid, because this isn’t that hard. (Ask anyone who’s been on the receiving end of it: that’s how it feels.)

When we allow our anger to control our tongue or our actions, we are guilty of the same sin as a murderer, and deserving of the same judgment. If that sounds extreme, I’m sorry—I know of no other way to interpret v. 22. He’s not diminishing the seriousness of murder, but rather elevating the seriousness of uncontrolled anger. Murder and uncontrolled anger deserve the same judgment, not because they have the same serious consequences, but because they both come from the same source. Sin is not only—or even mainly—the act, but the heart that brings us to the act.

If you’ve made it to insult, you’re already on the road to murder. At least spiritually, in terms of our own righteousness before God, whether or not we arrive at that horrible final destination is irrelevant: we’ve still stopped living as the peacemakers we are called to be (cf. v. 9, Blessed are the peacemakers…).

So the first thing we need to realize is that, yes, this sin which seems so simple and “normal”—this sin which we excuse in ourselves all the time—is far more serious than we think. 

The second thing we need to know is what to do about it. V. 23:  

23 So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, 24 leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. 25 Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison. 26 Truly, I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny. 

It’s interesting, isn’t it, that Jesus shifts the focus here. Before, he was talking to the one who is angry. Now, he’s talking to the one to whom that anger is directed. It’s not the one who is angry who is called to make the first move, but the one who sinned. 

(And that’s why I don’t think the addition “angry without cause” in v. 22, which we find in some manuscripts, is correct. The example Jesus gives in v. 25-26 seems to suggest that the person who is angry has good reason to be angry—that he really has been sinned against.) 

But even if I’m wrong about that, it doesn’t change the final outcome: the one who is accused is to go toward the one who is angry, and make every attempt to reconcile. Will it always work? Of course not. But every attempt should be made.

Now, an obvious question here is, why shouldn’t it be up to the one who is angry to initiate this exchange?

There are two reasons I can see. Firstly, assuming the angry person is right to be angry, he didn’t do anything wrong (at least not at first). The one who sinned should make the first step. Secondly, even if the angry person is in the wrong, everyone knows that anger clouds our judgment. If someone is angry—even with just cause—he may not be thinking clearly enough to do the right thing. 

So you, as his brother, as his sister, are called to help your brother to not stumble. Jesus has just told us the danger of unchecked anger in v. 22; if you see your brother in danger of that, you should make every effort to help him. And on top of it all, his anger could have disastrous consequences for you as well, if you’re too stubborn to take the first step toward reconciliation.

Do you see the echo of what’s come before? Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth… Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God… Being meek, being peacemakers, often means taking the high road and making the first step toward reconciliation, even if you don’t think it should be your responsibility.

This is a call away from self-righteousness, and towards humility. He’s calling us to not fall into this dual trap: of being so self-righteous that you’ll call a sinner a fool (when you’re no better), and of being so self-righteous that you’re not willing to make the first step toward reconciliation—whether you did anything wrong or not. Do not let your anger control you; and if your brother thinks he has cause to be angry against you, make it your first priority to help him diffuse that anger by asking for forgiveness.

Lust & Adultery (v. 27-30)  

After illustrating his point with anger, Jesus turns to another sticky subject: that of disordered sexual desire.

27 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ 

Marriage in the Bible is a big deal. The first marriage we see is instituted by God himself in Genesis 2. Later on, in Ezekiel 16, we see described, in pretty shocking detail, the horrors of adultery (we’ll come back to why in a minute). Still later, in Ephesians 5, Paul gives us the definitive explanation of why marriage is what it is: because the union between a husband and wife is meant to be a picture of the union between Christ and his church. 

For this reason, the covenant of marriage is very important in the Bible, and the horror of breaking that covenant is very great.

This is disputed now—adultery in our society has gone the way of smoking: frowned upon perhaps, but still enjoyed by most people at some point or another—but it wasn’t at the time of Christ. Everyone agreed that when the Law said, You shall not commit adultery, that’s because adultery is unequivocally wrong.

And yet, Jesus does what he did before: he takes this commonplace truth, and digs deeper. V. 28: 

28 But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 

Now let’s just be clear for a moment on what he’s talking about here. Firstly, he’s not talking about sexual thoughts about your spouse. We are encouraged to have sexual thoughts about our spouse; the very definition of adultery is that you’re thinking these things or doing these things with someone who isn’t your spouse. (So this holds even if you’re single—whoever the woman or the man may be, he or she is not your spouse.)

Secondly, he’s not talking about the kind of sudden, unexpected thought that can pop into anyone’s mind if they see a pretty person on the subway. We can’t control that, and we can fight it. Temptation to sin is not sin. 

Rather, this is the look that lingers; the look back once the temptation has come—looking with lustful intent. It’s not just the act of sexual sin, but disordered sexual desire, looking with lustful intent…even if you never actually touch another woman or another man. 

Jesus says—shockingly—that looking with lustful intent isn’t just like adultery; it is adultery. 

If you’re just looking at consequences, of course you’ll see a difference between adultery and lust. If you cheat on your spouse, that could break up your marriage. If you look at someone with lustful intent, more than likely no one will ever know about it. So if the seriousness of a sin is judged by its consequences, it’s apples and oranges.

The problem is that the seriousness of a sin isn’t judged by its consequences, but rather by the sinful heart that motivates it. And, Jesus says, as far as your heart is concerned, there is no difference between the two. If you look at a woman to lust after her, your heart is in exactly the same place it would be if you were sleeping with her—just like what we said before about murder and anger, you’re already on the road, you’re just not as far down it yet.

So you see what he’s doing, once again—he’s not diminishing the seriousness of adultery, but rather elevating the seriousness of disordered sexual desire, which isn’t just the foretaste of sexual sin, Jesus says, but which is itself sexual sin.

So the question is, what do we do about it?  V. 29:  

29 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. 30 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. 

Let’s be clear here: Jesus is using hyperbole—he’s not being literal. We don’t actually expect anyone to tear out your eyes or cut off your hand, and Jesus doesn’t either. (After all, you can tear out your eyes and still have lustful thoughts.) He’s giving this extreme illustration to show just how serious this is.

He’s saying, in essence, Do absolutely ANYTHING that is necessary to put this sin to death.

And this is the main reason we talk about this so often. Several people over the years have leveled this criticism against us. They say, “It seems like you treat sexual sin with more severity than other sins. Why do you talk so much about sex and sexual sin?”

So let me answer that question really quickly. The first thing to say is that what you might see and speak about amongst yourselves isn’t all that goes on in the church. We hope every time we bring these things up, we do so in a loving and gentle manner, but it’s true that we do sometimes have hard conversations with people regarding sexual sin. The thing is, we have similar conversations, with similar language and tone, regarding other things too—for example, the use of harsh language in conflict or disagreement. But people don’t talk about those conversations as often, because asking someone to be kind to others is less shocking than suggesting that God doesn’t approve of their sexual choices.

Secondly, we, the elders, often have to help people navigate sin and repentance—that’s part of our job. Most of the time, these situations don’t come to our attention until they’ve reached a certain level of seriousness. And of all the sins in our members which have been brought to our attention, easily 90% of them have been sexual sins. Just about any pastor will tell you that sexual sins are among the top two or three sins they have to deal with most regularly; sexual sin has always been one of the most difficult to fight. (We did an entire series on why that’s the case, called Dieu et le sexe.) So yeah—we feel like we need to talk about it a lot because it’s the sin which comes up the most frequently in our church, and by a pretty wide margin.

Thirdly, we talk about these sins a lot because the Bible talks about them a lot. Kevin DeYoung wrote in an article for The Gospel Coalition: “Every sin is serious, even the ones that look respectable. But that doesn’t mean some sins don’t deserve more attention than others. In fact, when the Bible rattles off a series of sins, it tends to mention many of the same ones. And while we don’t want to do ethics by list making, it is instructive to note what sins are mentioned, how often, and in what place.” He goes on to note that sexual immorality appears in some way or another on all eight of the major lists of sins in the New Testament. If the Bible feels something bears repeating, it’s probably a good idea to repeat it ourselves.

Lastly: what I’m about to say applies to other sins as well, like the type of anger Jesus mentioned above; but although sexual sin is no more spiritually serious—no more “sinful” before God—than any other, the real-world consequences of sexual sin can be disastrous. (We’ll talk about this more next week, and the same is true, by the way, of the kind of unbridled conflict Jesus mentioned before.) Impatience is sinful, and it can be hurtful; but a marriage probably won’t be destroyed because one spouse sometimes loses his patience. The same thing can’t be said of a marriage in which one spouse sometimes sleeps with other people. So because we love you, and because we want to protect you, we also want to be particularly on the lookout for patterns of behavior which threaten to bring down these kinds of consequences on your life.

To put all of that simply, we talk about sexual sin so often, and we treat it very seriously, because it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.

We can see why one would speak with this kind of seriousness about, say, rape, or sexual abuse, or murder for that matter. But improper sexual thoughts? Why would he say something so extreme about the way we look at someone else?

Because, just like uncontrolled anger and murder, improper sexual thoughts and adultery both have the same root. They’re different steps on the same road. 

Or if I can put it another way: you don’t start treating cancer only once it’s reached stage 4. You start treating it—with aggressive therapy—the moment you discover it. 

Now, what would this look like, concretely?

I've had this discussion with several men and women, and I have always told them the same two things: tell a brother, and look to Jesus. Tell a sister, and look to Jesus.

There are of course many more things you can do—good things. There are filters you can put on, apps you can download which regulate the things you’re able to see online, or which can tell someone if you’re into something you shouldn’t be. Those are definitely useful tools, and should be used if possible. The problem is that if you’re really determined to get around those tools, you can always find a way. Sin is a slippery beast—it will not go down without a fight.

And in the end, no software, no website is going to get to the root of the problem. Pruning the tree isn’t enough; it must be uprooted. For that work, the most important things you can do are also the simplest. (And by the way, this goes for all sin, not just sexual sin.) 

First of all, don’t try to fight alone. Confess to a brother or sister, or a small group of brothers and sisters, about your struggle. And give them all the details. Let them know in what situations or contexts you tend to give in to temptation. Give them permission to ask you difficult and frank questions, to call you during times when they know you might be susceptible. Call them or send them a message when you’re tempted, so they can pray for you and check up on you. I know this sounds extreme, and it will require you to be very vulnerable. But it is essential. You can’t do this alone. Sin thrives in the dark; keeping the fight to yourself is just feeding the sin you’re trying to kill. Tell a brother, tell a sister, and get help in the fight.

Secondly, look to Jesus. It’s good to work hard to fight your sin; but on its own, it’s not enough. The hole left by your sin must be replaced by something better.

We saw this a couple weeks ago: what will make you righteous? It’s not working hard, but rather hungering and thirsting for righteousness. (V. 6: Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be SATISFIED.) The thing is, you won’t hunger and thirst for righteousness if you don’t clearly see, in the face of the only righteous human being who ever lived, why righteousness is better and more beautiful and more satisfying than your sin.

So look to your Savior, who has given you his righteousness. Christ didn’t die to keep us from being murderers and adulterers; he died to put our sin to death. Our sin’s power was killed at the cross; and our sin’s roots and fruit are killed now, in our lives, by the power of his Spirit. Don’t try to fight without keeping your eyes firmly fixed on him, without constantly seeing why he is so much better.

Conclusion

Remember what Jesus is doing here. He laid out the basics of godly character in the Beatitudes; then he called us to be salt and light in this world: to preserve and to display the message and character of the kingdom. And then he said that this will not happen if our obedience remains superficial—if we content ourselves with not killing, or not committing adultery. We won’t be salt and light by doing the right things; we need to be the right kind of people.

We need to be transformed by the power of God. 

You see, in targeting our hearts (and not just our behavior), he’s pointing out the hallmarks of our new nature. When God saves us, he changes us: he gives us new hearts and new desires which are in tune with his own. And that change is far bigger than most of us realize. Not just murder and adultery, but also uncontrolled anger and lustful intent, are so far from God’s character that doing these things, feeling these feelings, is unthinkable for him. 

When he saves us, he gives us a new nature, and starts making us more like him.

Having a new nature, then, means being the kind of person for whom such behavior isn’t just forbidden, but unnatural. 

So trust in the gospel which has saved you, and which has transformed you. Trust that there is now no condemnation in him—no matter what kind of condemnation you want to throw at yourself. Trust that Christ really did kill your sin at the cross, that sin really has no more power over you. 

Pray that God will continue this work in you, of transforming you to become like his Son. And while you trust in his promise to leep answering that prayer, fight.

Does a brother have something against you? Reconcile. Go to him and seek peace.

Do you have something against a brother? Forgive him. Don’t let your anger drive you.

Do you make a habit of entertaining lust? Confess it, and seek help to put that sin to death—whatever it takes.

We talked about being salt and light… What kind of church will we be, if we allow the gospel to do its work in us? If we are so secure in the gospel that we’re not afraid to confess our sins to one another, to make peace when there is conflict? How shocking will it be for the outside world to see a group of people who have nothing to hide, because they are so free in Christ, and because their love for one another is so strong, that there’s no longer any danger in letting others see us as we really are? 

This is how we do it. This is how we let our light shine before others, so that they may see our good works and give glory to our Father who is in heaven.

Let’s get to work.