Jesus' Teaching on Adultery (Matthew 5:27-30)

5:27 "You have heard that it was said, 'YOU SHALL NOT COMMIT ADULTERY'; 

5:28 but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 

5:29 "If your right eye makes you stumble, tear it out and throw it from you; for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body, than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.

5:30 "If your right hand makes you stumble, cut it off and throw it from you; for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body, than for your whole body to go into hell. (Matthew 5:27-30)

→ This section deals not with a specific sexual sin, but sexual sin in general.

→ “Adultery does not begin in the neighbor’s bedroom, Jesus says, but in the craving in one’s heart . . . .” (Gardner, 106). For this reason, lust equals adultery.

→ The plucking of the right eye and the cutting off of the right hand is phenomenal language.

→ “Because Jesus repeated this pattern twice, we may take from it another underlying principle: It costs less to address the root of a sin early on than to carry the weight of the consequences of the sin fully developed as well as the weight of judgment before God. The earlier sin is dealt with, the better” (Stuart, Matthew, vol. 1, Holman New Testament Commentary, 67-68).