Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount”. . . Matthew 5:27–32
“Adultery and Divorce”
Our two previous studies have developed a sequence that leads naturally into today’s challenging passage:
• Matthew 5:17–20: Jesus fulfills the Law and calls for righteousness from within.
• Matthew 5:21–26: That inward righteousness confronts anger, contemptuous speech, broken fellowship, and delayed reconciliation.
• Matthew 5:27–32: Jesus exposes the heart-level roots beneath adultery and addresses God’s design for covenant faithfulness.
This progression helps us see the Sermon on the Mount not as a collection of isolated moral rules, but as Jesus’ searching call to lives that are transformed by God from the heart outward.
In this portion of his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus continues to reveal the heart-deep righteousness of God’s kingdom. Having shown that the command against murder reaches into anger, contempt, and broken relationships, he now addresses adultery and divorce. Jesus doesn’t lessen God’s moral standard; he exposes the desires, choices, and attitudes that lie beneath outward actions.
Matthew 5:27–32 contains the second and third of Jesus’ six “You have heard . . . but I tell you” illustrations. In vv. 27–30, Jesus teaches that adultery begins not only with a physical act, but also with a deliberate, lustful way of looking that turns another person into an object for personal gratification. In vv. 31–32, he confronts the casual use of divorce, calling his listeners to honor the seriousness and faithfulness of the marriage covenant. The passage is searching and sobering, but it’s also deeply pastoral: Jesus calls his followers away from hidden sin, self-deception, and relational harm, toward purity, faithfulness, repentance, and wholeness.
Jesus tells us, Don’t commit adultery — that is, don’t engage in sexual intimacy with someone other than your spouse. But he goes further, addressing the core of a person’s desires and intentions: “Do not even look at a woman, or a man, lustfully.” Sexual sin is serious, and Jesus calls us to take every wise and faithful step within our power to avoid it. Our bodies are precious as temples of the Holy Spirit.
The Old Testament laws concerning adultery and divorce reveal God’s wisdom about human dignity, sexual faithfulness, and covenant commitment. Jesus explains these laws by confronting the desires that drive behavior and the choices that can deeply wound others. Here you can watch an excellent video clip from BibleProject titled “Murder, Adultery, and Divorce” (8 minutes).
The Heart Behind Adultery (5:27–28)
“You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (vv. 27–28, NIV).
These two verses form a decisive moment in Jesus’ teaching about kingdom righteousness. By addressing the seventh commandment — “You shall not commit adultery” — Jesus reveals that God’s concern reaches beyond the outward act to the domain of the heart, mind, and intent. An importance element of this passage lies in the way it exposes the limitations of Pharisaic legalism described here. Jesus’ teaching exposes the inadequacy of a righteousness that evaluates morality only by visible behavior.
Jesus asserts that God’s standard of holiness is comprehensive. The root of sexual sin isn’t merely the outward crossing of a boundary, but also the desire deliberately entertained and cultivated within. The Greek word epithumēsai, translated in this context as “lustfully,” carries the idea of focused desire, longing, or coveting. Jesus isn’t speaking about noticing another person’s appearance, experiencing an unwanted temptation, or recognizing that someone is attractive. He’s addressing the intentional, self-gratifying look that nurtures a desire to possess another person sexually.
This is an important warning: Temptation may come suddenly, but Jesus calls his disciples to refuse the second, deliberate look that welcomes temptation and feeds it.
By declaring that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully “has already committed adultery with her in his heart,” Jesus dismantles the self-righteous illusion that a person remains blameless simply because he lacks the opportunity, courage, or social freedom to carry out an illicit act. Jesus’ words connect the seventh commandment against adultery with the tenth commandment against coveting. God’s law has always concerned the heart as well as outward conduct; external obedience is insufficient when the inner life is being corrupted by unholy desire. Exodus 20 prohibits both adultery and coveting one’s neighbor’s wife.
For practical application today, vv. 27–28 provide a searching call to ethical discipline, stewardship of the mind, and the protection of human dignity. In an environment saturated with visual stimulation, sexualized media, and the consumer-like objectification of people, Jesus’ words challenge believers to guard what they willingly allow their eyes and minds to dwell upon.
Think of your eyes as the front door to your mind. Whatever you intentionally invite through that door — whether it’s a movie, an image, a social-media post, pornography, or a prolonged look at someone in daily life — enters your thought life and can take up residence there. What’s repeatedly entertained in the mind gradually shapes character, weakens moral resolve, and damages relationships.
Rather than treating sexual ethics merely as a list of legalistic boundaries, these two verses call for radical inward purity. Jesus calls his followers to resist desires that turn another person into an object for private gratification. He calls us instead to see others as image-bearers of God, worthy of dignity, honor, and self-controlled love.
Jesus speaks with uncompromising seriousness about sexual sin, yet his purpose isn’t to drive repentant people into despair. Thankfully, he brings hidden sin into the light so that it may be confessed, forsaken, and transformed by the grace of God.
Taking Sin Seriously (5:29–30)
We’ll see in the next two verses Jesus’ urgent follow-through to vv. 27–28: Once he’s exposed lust as a heart matter, he commands his disciples to deal decisively with whatever repeatedly draws them into sin. The language is intentionally shocking, but its purpose is not self-harm; it’s wholehearted repentance and real separation from sin’s access points.
“If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell” (vv. 29–30, NIV).
Jesus’ words are deliberately strong. After teaching that adultery can begin with a lustful look and a cultivated desire, he warns his disciples not to treat sexual sin casually. Sin isn’t harmless entertainment, a private escape, or a minor weakness to be managed without repentance. It dishonors God, corrupts the heart, damages relationships, and, if it’s cherished rather than forsaken, leads a person away from the life God desires.
Jesus isn’t commanding literal self-mutilation. The problem of lust doesn’t originate in an eye or a hand; it arises from the sinful human heart. Removing an eye or a hand couldn’t remove inward desire. Rather, Jesus uses forceful, memorable language to teach that his disciples must take radical and decisive action against whatever causes them to stumble. His concern isn’t bodily injury but spiritual rescue. His graphic language shows that no pleasure, habit, relationship, possession, screen, or source of temptation is worth preserving if it repeatedly leads a person into sin.
The “right” eye and “right” hand represent what may be especially valued, useful, familiar, or difficult to surrender. The right hand was commonly associated with strength and ability. Jesus’ point is that even something that feels essential mustn’t be allowed to become an instrument of sin. A disciple must be willing to surrender a cherished habit or a convenient access point rather than allow it to draw him or her away from faithful obedience to God.
For men today, this teaching calls for honest self-examination. What does someone repeatedly look at, return to, search for, or hide? What feeds temptation rather than weakening it? The answer may involve pornography, sexualized entertainment, social-media accounts, private messaging, fantasy, secret patterns of internet use, an unhealthy emotional attachment, or a setting in which temptation predictably grows. Jesus isn’t calling his people merely to feel regret after falling; he’s calling them to remove whatever repeatedly creates an occasion for sin.
For women today, Jesus’ teaching offers both dignity and responsibility. No woman is responsible for another person’s lust, and no one should be reduced to an object for someone else’s private gratification. At the same time, women, like men, are called to guard their own hearts and minds from cultivated lust, fantasy, sexualized media, secret emotional attachments, and any habit that feeds impurity rather than weakening it. Jesus calls every disciple to treat others as image-bearers of God and to pursue a purity that honors God, protects relationships, and seeks the good of others.
Jesus repeats the warning about being “thrown into hell” because eternal realities matter. He isn’t trying to terrify a repentant disciple into despair; he’s exposing the deadly seriousness of continuing comfortably in sin. His warning is loving because he refuses to minimize what sin does. Jesus brings hidden sin into the light so that it can be confessed, turned from, and overcome through God’s grace.
Marriage Is a Sacred Covenant (5:31–32)
Jesus calls his followers to honor marriage as a sacred covenant of faithful union. He doesn’t treat divorce as a casual solution to marital disappointment or difficulty. Instead, he points his listeners back to God’s intention for marriage: a lifelong, covenantal union in which a man and woman become “one flesh”
Marriage isn’t merely a private arrangement between two people, nor is it a relationship to be ended whenever one spouse becomes dissatisfied. It’s a covenant established by God and intended to reflect faithfulness, commitment, and love. Later in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus grounds his teaching in God’s design at creation: “The two will become one flesh.” He then declares, “Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate” (Matt. 19:5–6).
“It has been said, ‘Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, causes her to become an adulteress, and anyone who marries the divorced woman commits adultery” (vv. 31–32, NIV).
Jesus now turns from the hidden desires that threaten sexual faithfulness to the outward breaking of the marriage covenant. In his day, some people treated the provision of a certificate of divorce as though proper paperwork made divorce morally uncomplicated. Jesus confronts that casual approach. A legal document may record a divorce, but it can’t erase the covenantal seriousness of marriage or remove the wounds that a wrongful divorce can inflict.
Jesus’ words in vv. 31–32 are strong because he refuses to minimize the human cost of divorce. In a culture where a husband could dismiss his wife with devastating social and economic consequences, Jesus’ warning holds the man responsible for treating marriage vows carelessly. The NIV’s phrase, “makes her the victim of adultery,” highlights that a wrongful divorce doesn’t affect only the person who initiates it; it leaves another person exposed to painful and unjust consequences.
At the same time, Jesus includes an exception: “except for sexual immorality.” His teaching makes clear that sexual unfaithfulness is a grave violation of the marriage covenant. The exception isn’t a command to divorce, nor does it make reconciliation impossible. Rather, it recognizes the tragic reality that covenant-breaking sexual sin can so damage a marriage that divorce may be permitted. Jesus later repeats the exception while pointing back to God’s original intention for marriage.
This passage should be taught with both conviction and compassion. Divorce touches real lives: people who’ve sinned, people who’ve been sinned against, people who’ve been abandoned, and people who came to faith after a divorce had already occurred. Jesus doesn’t speak here to shame the repentant or make wounded people carry burdens he hasn’t placed on them. He calls his followers to honor marriage, take faithfulness seriously, seek reconciliation where it’s wise and safe, and bring past failures, present pain, and future decisions honestly before God.
Application message: Jesus’ teaching here calls us to honor God with both our hidden lives and our visible commitments. He addresses lust that can be cultivated in the heart, the practical sources of temptation that must be removed, and the sacred covenant of marriage that mustn’t be treated carelessly. God’s concern isn’t merely whether we avoid public scandal; he desires integrity, purity, faithfulness, and love that begin within.
For men, women, married people, single people, and those carrying the pain of a broken marriage, this passage calls for honest self-examination. Is there a pattern of private thought, media use, emotional attachment, secrecy, or sexual compromise that’s weakening your commitment to purity? Is there a relationship, marriage, or covenant promise that needs renewed faithfulness, truthful conversation, repentance, forgiveness, wise counsel, or practical protection?
A person who walks with Jesus learns to value inward purity over private pleasure, covenant faithfulness over personal convenience, and repentance over concealment. He or she trusts that God’s commands aren’t meant to crush us, but to lead us toward freedom, holiness, and love that honors God and protects others.
Personal response: This week, where do I need to bring my heart honestly before God, receive his help and forgiveness, and take a concrete step toward purity and faithfulness?
- Q. 1 What access point, habit, form of entertainment, online pattern, or private situation most often weakens your pursuit of purity?
- Q. 2 What would radical but wise action look like in your situation — not self-punishment, but a real step that removes or reduces the opportunity for repeated sin?
- Q. 3 Is there a mature, trustworthy Christian brother or sister with whom you need to share a struggle and establish meaningful accountability?
Are you ready to take Warren’s 25-question Sermon on the Mount quiz? Answers with Bible references are included with your grade.
† Watch this video of chapter 5 created by Jesus Film Project (vv. 1–48; 8 minutes).