Jesus’ claim that the long story of God’s covenant with Israel is coming to fulfillment, that God’s Heavenly Kingdom that’s touched down here on earth through him and these communities that he’s beginning, that this is what he calls the fulfillment of the Torah and prophets and he calls his followers to what he calls a greater righteousness, a vision of doing right by God and neighbor, that it’s not just that it’s intense, but it’s a version that’s more faithful and more in sync with the wisdom and heart of God than anything on offer, it’s greater than even that of the scribes and the Pharisees.
The command don’t murder, it’s a really good thing not to do, but simply not killing someone is just the surface manifestation of a much deeper set of issues in the heart, which is what Jesus goes after. The issues of contempt and anger and how I can devalue the dignity and worth of another human through how I regard them and even how I speak about them. Jesus sees underneath the command of murder, deeper wisdom from God about what really matters in human relationships.
Do not commit adultery, it’s a good thing not to sleep with another person’s spouse, but the real issues of desire and deep character that command is really pointing at, Jesus goes underneath the command and gets to a deeper wisdom that speaks to issues of character in the heart. In Jesus’ mind, all of the commands given at Mount Sinai through Moses, all link back in some way to a vision or an ideal for human life, that he typically links to the garden of Eden story elsewhere in his teachings and it makes the most sense to try and understand the logic of what he says and to link it back to the garden of Eden.
Matthew 5:27-30, this is a good example of how Jesus’ preference for shocking hyperbole and exaggerate intensity in his sayings arrests our imaginations, this saying has been seizing the imagination of his followers for a couple thousand years now. Whatever the shocking images mean, at least most simply means, that Jesus takes sexual desire and the way sexual desires manifest themselves in our behavior, he thinks it’s really really important thing that his disciples need to do a lot of difficult heart searching in evaluation. For many people, a Christian sexual ethic is seen as having a low view of sexuality, that it’s somehow to be avoided, dirty, it’s beneath proper human behavior in some way and so Jesus would be seen kind of trying to tamp down the desire, like it’s a monster, deal with it, cut it’s head off. The questions is, because of a low view or a view of sex as something to be avoided or is it possible that it’s exactly the opposite, it’s that Jesus is a part of a tradition that has such a high exalted view of sexual desire and sex as sacred and as a window into something transcendent.
The phrase everyone who looks at a woman with lust or looks at a woman lustfully, so the word look, just the one word look is fairly open to lots of different meanings, but Jesus is referring to a present ongoing action, he’s not talking about noticing, it’s the sustained look, to stare, when you focus your gaze on something and you go on looking at it. The language Jesus uses which is not just to notice, but it’s to go on looking and then also the purpose of nature of the look, Jesus makes clear with the phrase in order to, often it gets translated to look at a woman lustfully or with lust, it’s an infinitive, go on looking in order to the prolonged stare for the purpose of cultivating a mental fantasy. What does it do to a human imagination to cultivate this habit?
For Jesus, character formation of an individual, it’s personal, but never private, the cultivation of our character is a deeply personal activity, but it never is private, because it never just affects us, it will spill over to how we regard other people. Jesus says the problem is in the heart, so whatever it means to address an issue of the heart, what you do with an eye or a hand is not actually going to solve the problem. So what that means is these two says about the hand and the eye are metaphorical ways, exaggerative hyperbolic ways to move towards one part of a response or a solution and to take drastic measures to respond to this, this issue of your own body and of your own heart.
Your eye and your hand are the two of the most indispensable parts of a functioning human life, to be able to see where you’re going and to be able to grab and do things with your hands. So to sacrifice an eye or to sacrifice a hand, Jesus is naming things that seem indispensable to us. I can’t actually live the way I want to without this. Even if dealing with this habit of how I view those that I might be sexually attracted to and the narratives I play out with them in my heart, that might be so ingrained and it seems so part of your life gratifying those fantasies and cultivating them. There’s something about what Jesus is saying, that whatever it is that you need to sacrifice, to deal with this, it’s more than worth it, it’s worth more than your eye, it’s worth more than your hand.
The Shepherd’s been trying to lay you down in a pasture you never would have chosen, because restoration begins where self-reliance ends.
The command don’t murder, it’s a really good thing not to do, but simply not killing someone is just the surface manifestation of a much deeper set of issues in the heart, which is what Jesus goes after. The issues of contempt and anger and how I can devalue the dignity and worth of another human through how I regard them and even how I speak about them. Jesus sees underneath the command of murder, deeper wisdom from God about what really matters in human relationships.
Do not commit adultery, it’s a good thing not to sleep with another person’s spouse, but the real issues of desire and deep character that command is really pointing at, Jesus goes underneath the command and gets to a deeper wisdom that speaks to issues of character in the heart. In Jesus’ mind, all of the commands given at Mount Sinai through Moses, all link back in some way to a vision or an ideal for human life, that he typically links to the garden of Eden story elsewhere in his teachings and it makes the most sense to try and understand the logic of what he says and to link it back to the garden of Eden.
Matthew 5:27-30, this is a good example of how Jesus’ preference for shocking hyperbole and exaggerate intensity in his sayings arrests our imaginations, this saying has been seizing the imagination of his followers for a couple thousand years now. Whatever the shocking images mean, at least most simply means, that Jesus takes sexual desire and the way sexual desires manifest themselves in our behavior, he thinks it’s really really important thing that his disciples need to do a lot of difficult heart searching in evaluation. For many people, a Christian sexual ethic is seen as having a low view of sexuality, that it’s somehow to be avoided, dirty, it’s beneath proper human behavior in some way and so Jesus would be seen kind of trying to tamp down the desire, like it’s a monster, deal with it, cut it’s head off. The questions is, because of a low view or a view of sex as something to be avoided or is it possible that it’s exactly the opposite, it’s that Jesus is a part of a tradition that has such a high exalted view of sexual desire and sex as sacred and as a window into something transcendent.
The phrase everyone who looks at a woman with lust or looks at a woman lustfully, so the word look, just the one word look is fairly open to lots of different meanings, but Jesus is referring to a present ongoing action, he’s not talking about noticing, it’s the sustained look, to stare, when you focus your gaze on something and you go on looking at it. The language Jesus uses which is not just to notice, but it’s to go on looking and then also the purpose of nature of the look, Jesus makes clear with the phrase in order to, often it gets translated to look at a woman lustfully or with lust, it’s an infinitive, go on looking in order to the prolonged stare for the purpose of cultivating a mental fantasy. What does it do to a human imagination to cultivate this habit?
For Jesus, character formation of an individual, it’s personal, but never private, the cultivation of our character is a deeply personal activity, but it never is private, because it never just affects us, it will spill over to how we regard other people. Jesus says the problem is in the heart, so whatever it means to address an issue of the heart, what you do with an eye or a hand is not actually going to solve the problem. So what that means is these two says about the hand and the eye are metaphorical ways, exaggerative hyperbolic ways to move towards one part of a response or a solution and to take drastic measures to respond to this, this issue of your own body and of your own heart.
Your eye and your hand are the two of the most indispensable parts of a functioning human life, to be able to see where you’re going and to be able to grab and do things with your hands. So to sacrifice an eye or to sacrifice a hand, Jesus is naming things that seem indispensable to us. I can’t actually live the way I want to without this. Even if dealing with this habit of how I view those that I might be sexually attracted to and the narratives I play out with them in my heart, that might be so ingrained and it seems so part of your life gratifying those fantasies and cultivating them. There’s something about what Jesus is saying, that whatever it is that you need to sacrifice, to deal with this, it’s more than worth it, it’s worth more than your eye, it’s worth more than your hand.
The Shepherd’s been trying to lay you down in a pasture you never would have chosen, because restoration begins where self-reliance ends.