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The Independence Podcast helps everyday people discover that true freedom isn’t found in self-reliance but in total dependence on Jesus Christ. Each episode blends honest conversation, biblical truth, and practical application to help listeners move beyond emotional devotion toward consistent, daily surrender. Whether you’re new in your faith or longing to grow deeper, you’ll find encouragement to trust God fully, live from His grace, and follow Christ with courage in a world that celebrates independence but neglects dependence on the One who truly sets us free.
Bryan Dunham (00:00)
You know, I have a tendency to think that sin starts when I decide to take an action, to do something, to say something I shouldn't do or have done or said. But Jesus says it starts much earlier than that. He says, it's not when you touch, it's not when you move, but when you want. And if that's true, then most of us are a lot less innocent than we think. Welcome to episode 26 of the Independence Podcast.
where we discuss how to live in daily dependence on God. I am your host, Brian Dunham, and today we continue in the Bound for Freedom series in which we are going through the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapters five, six, and seven. And as we've talked about in earlier episodes, Jesus speaks about his yoke
Jesus later says, yoke is easy and my burden is light. What he is talking about there is a rabbi's yoke was their interpretation of the Torah law. Like how to properly live out in relation to God in man, God's instructions for living. And so Jesus's yoke is his, simply his way of interpreting those laws and how to properly live. And so,
This series, we go through the Sermon on the Mount, which I would submit to you, is the largest continuous teaching of Jesus' yoke. And as his followers of Jesus, we should be attempting to live out what he teaches here. And so today we're going to cover Matthew chapter five, verses 27 through 30, and it's on the topic of lust and adultery. Boy, spicy episode. But before we get there, a quick request.
If you have read my book, Questions God Asks, would you please, please, please go leave a review for me? I have had 15 reviews on Amazon. Don't get me wrong. And thank you for those who've left me a review. I love them. But there are many, many, many, many, many more of you who have read this book. So if you wouldn't mind taking the literally two to three minutes it would take to go into Amazon and leave me a review, I would greatly appreciate that. That helps.
the book and the algorithm with Amazon, more than you know, as far as getting the message out in front of other people. So if you wouldn't mind doing that, I would certainly appreciate it. If you've not read the book, feel free to go to the website, questionsgotasked.com. can download chapter one for free there. You can also of course purchase the book, sign up for the monthly newsletter there as well, if you would like to. All right, so let me read Matthew chapter five versus 27.
through 30. 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 lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it's better that you lose one of your members than your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away.
for it is better for you that you lose one of your members than for your whole body to go into hell. Okay. So let's just look at these verses and say, what do we notice just on the surface level? So to begin with, Jesus says, have heard that it was said, but I tell you. And so again, this is a refrain we're going to hear throughout the Sermon on the Mount. It's just a rabbi's way of saying,
This is what you've heard, but I tell you it's the way of introducing their yoke. This is Jesus' interpretation of this particular commandment. And this is one of the Ten Commandments. It is number seven, as we think about it. You shall not commit adultery. So Jesus says, yep, that's commandment number seven. And you've heard that that's not what you should do. But I tell you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent
has already committed adultery with her in his heart. Jesus is now equating the external act of adultery with looking at a woman with lust. And every man that has ever read this verse is like, boy, that is a pretty significant tightening of this commandment to commit adultery. But I want you to notice, just like last week when Jesus says, you've heard that it was said, don't murder, but I tell you, don't even be angry.
Jesus is simply getting to the root of the fruit, right? If anger is where all murder begins, every murder that has ever been committed winds up being the fruit of anger, Jesus is saying here then, the act of adultery actually begins much sooner than that when there is lustful intent.
And then Jesus goes on to talk about gouging out your eye and cutting off your hand as a way of fixing the problem, like as some type of prescription, at least it seems that way on the surface. I remember reading this as a young man thinking, wow, this is a hard teaching. Like not only are telling me not to commit adultery, and I feel like, okay, maybe that's something I can do.
to actually don't ever look at someone with lust because if you've done that, you've already kind of committed adultery. And then you might as well just gouge out your eye and cut off your hand. It'd be better for part of your body to make it into heaven than for all of your body to get thrown into hell. So this is a challenging series of verses on the surface. But I really think when we dig into it, this is...
fairly self-explanatory when we look at some of the Greek words. I think it'll make a lot more sense to you if it's not making sense to you right now. And actually this might be one of the shorter episodes of the podcast that I've done. We'll see. So let's look into some of the Greek words that we see here. The first one is this idea of looking. So, but I say to you, everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent. So this idea, this word for look,
or looks is blepon and it is the present active participle of the Greek word blepo. Blepo just means seeing or looking, but in the way that it's written in the present active participle, this means this is an ongoing continuous action, this look. This isn't a glance. This is a gaze. And then when it comes to how this person is looking, like the quality or the intention of the look,
is lust, which is the Greek word epithomeo. It's a compound word, epi and thymos. Thymos means passionate desire. Like this is a physical desire. And then epi intensifies the thymos word. Epi means to focus intensely on this passionate desire. So it is
a truly great desire for something to long for or to desire very much. this is a not a glance is in a it's ⁓ a gaze with an intent of deep longing. is not merely noticing beauty. This is leering is a word that I think is a pretty good word here. Leering at a woman.
and thinking about all the things that you would like to do in your mind. That is what is being talked about here. Jesus is not condemning attraction, simple attraction or noticing beauty. He is confronting cultivated desire, ongoing, intentional, sustained looking combined with a fixated longing for physical passion.
We think lust starts with a glance, but Jesus says it starts with a gaze. The Greek word, again, isn't accidental looking. It's intentional. It is ongoing. It is cultivated. It is feeding desire. This is a look that lingers because your heart wants to.
Sin here does not begin with the eyes. It recruits the eyes. They thought back then, because the law says you shall not commit adultery, they thought, well, I've not committed adultery, so I'm righteous. But what Jesus is doing here is collapsing the distance between the desire and the deed. We like to believe, well, I've not done anything wrong, least not yet.
But Jesus says, if you're feeding the desire, if you're entertaining the fantasy, if you're waiting for the opportunity, you're not neutral. You're not in morally neutral territory here. You don't become an adulterer when the moment happens. You simply reveal that you already were one. In effect, you're cultivating your desire that when done often enough, like when you do this repeatedly, and this is
a focus of your intent, of your gazing at attractive women as a man. When you do that often enough, especially when it's on a particular person, at some point you're just merely waiting for the opportunity to present itself for you to actually commit the act. Again, you don't become an adulterer when the opportunity arises. You reveal that you already were one in your heart.
Now Jesus is not saying that lust and physical adultery carry the same consequences. I think we can say that isolated lust and then isolated adultery have very different consequences. But he is saying that these actions come from the same source, the same root, the same corrupted desire. And then Jesus says something pretty shocking. He says, if your right eye causes you to sin,
tear it out. your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off. We'll see with that for a moment.
Now, let me ask you, does your right eye cause you to sin?
Does your right hand cause you to sin? Does it cause you to sin? Are you running around going, if I could just control my eyes, then I wouldn't be such a sinner. If I could just control these hands of mine, then I wouldn't be such a reprobate. Of course, if sin were physical, surgery could fix it. And Jesus is saying these extreme things to make that point.
You don't need eyes to lust. You can remove the eye and still have an imagination. Jesus says, if your eyes cause you to sin, cut them off and throw them away. If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. But we all know it's not that simple. You can't amputate lust because the problem isn't your body, it's your heart.
What Jesus is doing here is not giving a strategy for behavior modification when it comes to gouging at your eye, cutting off your hand. He's exposing the insufficiency of behavior modification. And this is part of a larger pattern throughout Matthew chapter five. He's not lowering the standard. He's raising the standard. He's raising the bar so high that external righteousness collapses under its weight.
We have a tendency to keep asking, did I cross the line? But Jesus asks a different question, which is, did you want to? Because sin doesn't start when you act. It starts when your heart leans in what you desire in secret is actually the thing that's ruling you.
Jesus is not intensifying the law so you and I will try harder. He's intensifying the law so that you'll realize you cannot actually make yourself righteous regardless of what you do. Because the real issue is not your eyes and it's not your hands. It is your heart, your desires, the things that you love, the things that you want, and where you go in your mind when no one is watching. And this is why behavior modification
external righteousness, external law keeping will never be enough because you don't just need new habits, you need a new heart. And that's actually the promise of scripture. In Ezekiel 36, 26, God says, I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I'll put in you. It's the reality of life in Romans eight that Paul talks about where the spirit of God begins to reshape not just what you do, but actually what you desire because
our actions flow out of our desires of our heart. Jesus says, it's not about what you do, it is about what you desire. And if your desires are disordered, no amount of external obedience is gonna fix that. You don't just need restraint, you need a new heart. And that's exactly what Jesus came to give.
And that is Matthew chapter 5, 27 through 30. If you found this helpful, please share with a friend and follow the show. Until next week, grace and peace, my friend.