Love and Marriage

Introduction

With the election around the corner, there has been an influx of political ads. One of the political ads was quite shocking to me.

If you don’t know, the state of Alabama has forced adult websites to require age verification so that only adults are accessing them. You would think that this would be common sense legislation, perhaps even non-partisan. But that’s not the case.

And to put things into perspective, the most popular adult website publishes statistics every year, and ever since 2020 they stopped publishing how many visitors come to their site. In 2019, there were 42 billion visits to just one such website. In January 2023 the NYT published an article with the headline that a majority of teens have visited adult websites. The average age of the first view is 12.

The political ad I saw depicted a young man viewing such a site on his phone. Then, an older gentlemen—claiming to be a senator—appears and tells him he can’t do that. I don’t quite understand the messaging. Is it “vote for such-and-such candidate so that minors can have access to adult material?” That doesn’t seem to be common sense, but then again this is the same party that right now would be happy to take away parental rights in favor of chemical castration of minors.

We now live in a society where access to adult material has increased exponentially. We know all the studies. Think about this for a moment: a site that profits on destroying the image of God, on making humanity into a object for the pleasure of another to be used then tossed away. An industry that generates more income than the combined revenues of ABC, NBC, and CBS and more than the combined revenues of NFL, NBA, and MLB. And yet the majority of people have believed the lie that this fantasy will have no effect in reality. Jesus teaches the exact opposite.

Matthew 5:27–30 ESV

“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 is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. 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.

Discuss:

Me Too movement?

Amount of pastors falling?

Purity Culture?

Democratic Ad?

The Lustful Look

Remember that as we go through these laws, Jesus is setting himself against the way the Pharisees and the Scribes would teach the law. Jesus was going to the heart of the law. Jesus says, “You have heard that it was said. . .” and they heard it from these teachers of the law. The he quotes the law that he is explaining.

So again, to be clear, Jesus is not going against the law of the Old Testament. He’s going against the way it was misinterpreted in his day. He’s going against people who interpret the letter without looking at the spirit of the law. And Jesus brings us past the letter to the heart of this law.

The teachers of the law in Jesus’s day reduced the act of adultery to merely the physical act. This would mean anything up until the point of that physical act was okay. In fact, some may argue that committing such an act with a prostitute would be okay as long as this person was unmarried. They even went further. According to one commentator, “They argued, for example, that adultery was a sexual act with the wife of one’s neighbor, that is, the wife of a fellow Israelite. Thus a sexual act with the wife of a Gentile would not technically constitute an act of adultery”

Charles L. Quarles, Sermon on the Mount: Restoring Christ’s Message to the Modern Church (Nashville, TN: B&H Academic, 2011), 115–116.

My goodness. You know, I’ve always pictured the pharisees as creating extra rules around the rules to make sure the actual rules were not broken. And to some extent that is true. However, in some cases, they so distorted and misapplied laws, they drew the line in the sand, erased it, drew a new one, erased it. They made the law so much about this letter, this one thing, that you could do anything around it, but not this one thing.

And then get onto Jesus about not ritually washing his hands, or healing on the Sabbath. It’s laughable.

But Jesus get at the heart of the law.

Matthew 5:28 “But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”

You see, the Pharisees had out the checklist and were calculating: “Well, for something to truly be adultery, the woman has to be married, she has to be of Jewish descent, etc.. . then, I guess that counts as adultery.” Jesus throws all that out the window. It’s not the status of the woman that matters. It’s the status of our hearts.

The phrase there, “everyone who looks” should be understood as “who goes on looking.” This is not referring to the fleeting glance that triggers a thought that is immediately dismissed. This is a stare.

In fact, it could include this fleeting glace, if that thought is nurtured later. This gets us to our point as we are trying to define our terms:

The lustful look uses another for fuel for fantasy (vv. 27-28)

That’s the main point. By saying “looks at a woman” Jesus is not trying to say that women cannot commit this sin. The point is not that “Well, as long as I’m not looking at a woman, I’m looking at something else to fuel this fantasy so it’s okay.” It pains me in a day and age to have to even say this, but the use of anything and anyone to fuel sexual fantasy is sin. The only permissible thing in this category is your spouse.

You see, we too want to be so focused on the letter of what Jesus says, that we can ignore the heart. And there are people out there that do that. We look at the heart of what Jesus is saying then it excludes the use of any adult website. Whether it’s live action or cartoon drawing—real or fake people—does not matter. Even if AI generated the images it’s still sin. What Jesus is trying to get across is that the status of the object of our lust is not the main concern. Our heart is the main concern.

Humans are twisted, the fall has perverted us. Our society has corrupted us even further. There are parallels in my opinion between the sexual appetite and the appetite for food. Americans, we have a certain appetite for certain foods. Here in south Alabama, we eat different things than people eat in New York City. In fact, we want to eat different things. We enjoy different things. We have different things on our menu. I believed that camp stew was something only my family did. I didn’t even know other people knew about it until I moved here. You don’t find that stew on the menu most other places because they never heard of it, they haven’t tried it.

We live in a culture and society where more sexual perversions than ever are on the menu thanks to the sexual revolution in the 60’s. The norm that natural law and God himself set was one man and one woman for life. That should have been the only thing on this particular menu, but now it’s sadly expanded beyond anything I would even want to know. And when it comes to Christ’s teaching we have the tendency to excuse and vilify. We either excuse our sin, “Well, I wasn’t lusting after a women—or I wasn’t lusting after a real woman. . .” Or we vilify, “I cannot believe that man would lust after another man! That’s sickening!” That’s like a bunch of people who got fat off of ice cream excommunicating the person who got fat off of cake.

Jesus’s point again is not to classify the object of our lust, but the call out the condition of our hearts. But the Bible as a whole does classify the objects of our lust. It depicts homosexuality as the picture of worsening perversion in Romans 1. So Jesus is saying all types of lust are equally bad, but he’s not saying all types of lust are equal.

There’s so much to say on this, but let me sum it up quickly. Society and perverted movements have made sexual identity the number 1 thing that makes you who you are. This is what young people are bombarded with constantly. I just want to say a few things here:

1. You personhood is more than just your sexual appetite.

2. Your sexual appetite can be trained, just like a person’s diet of food.

3. If you’re in Christ, the Holy Spirit enables you to obey Jesus’s teaching in regard to lust.

Self-Deprivation

Jesus goes on: Matt. 5:29

Matthew 5:29 ESV

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.

We lust with our eyes. We look and desire. We see and want. But Jesus is not naive. Eyes cause us to see, but it’s not the eye that causes the lust. It’s the heart. When I say heart, I don’t mean the physical organ that pumps blood, but rather the mind, will, and emotions; our inner being. But the point of what Jesus is saying is this:

Any self-deprivation is worth avoiding this sin. (v. 29)

We live in a day and age where we have given up on self-deprivation. This just came out this week: “New Barna research says a majority of practicing Christians are consumers of pornography. 54% admitted in the survey to regularly viewing pornography, trailing behind 68% of the regular population.” “Add to this the fact that nearly a majority (48%) of self-professed believers think porn can be a positive thing.”

Jesus says, “tear it out.” And we say, “This is fine”

You know Christians from long ago struggled with just how to follow Christ commands. Jerome who lived in the 300’s was so consumed with the dancers in Rome that he moved to Jerusalem and devoted his time to studying Hebrew to get the lustful thoughts out of his mind. Origen was a Christian who lived about a hundred hears before him. When he was a young man he dealt with lust by rolling around on briars naked. He eventually castrated himself. Later in life, he repented of this and realized it was a wrong interpretation of Jesus’s words.

But the point is: what are you wiling to give up to stop this sin? And for some of us the first thing we have to give up is pretending we don’t have a problem. Maybe it’s time to confess. Confide in someone this struggle and seek accountability. Maybe it’s time to cut off internet access. Maybe even give up your smart phone.

And by the way, Jesus is not recommending for us to fight sin with sin. Though the language is strong and hyperbolic, Jesus is not recommending self-harm. I have to say this because in 2021, a man went around to various spas and committed murder.

“According to the police, Long described his actions as being the result of a sex addiction that conflicted with his religious beliefs.[47][49] Long had been a customer at two of the massage parlors, and saw them as sources of sexual temptation.[49] Police records show that two of the massage parlors had been the site of 10 prostitution arrests, the latest of which took place in 2013.[50] All three targeted spas appeared on an online guide to brothels.[51] Long claims to have initially thought about killing himself but instead decided to target the businesses to "help" others dealing with sex addiction.[48][49] According to the Cherokee County Sheriff's Department, Long wanted to "eliminate the temptation" by targeting spas”

Eliminating temptation by murder does not stop the heart from lusting. Tearing out the right eye will not prevent the left eye from lingering looks. Tearing out both eyes won’t prevent the mind’s eye from wrong fantasy. The point is not to commit self-harm. The point is that we should be willing to make extreme decisions, depriving ourselves of this sin. What will stop our hearts?

Knowing Christ. Meditating on his gospel and word. Being truthful to yourself about your weaknesses and temptations. Seeking accountability from like-minded believers.

Destruction

And this is important because in both of these examples end in hellfire.

Matthew 5:30 ESV

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.

A lifestyle of lust leads to destruction (v. 30)

This leads not only to destruction in hell, but destruction in this life as well. Lust dehumanizes others and uses them for objects of selfish gratification. Objectification of humanity leads to justifying acts of violence. Why have violent crimes increased? When a young man stares at a woman on the screen to get whatever he wants, then is done; it’s much easier for him to go on the street with a gun a shoot another woman and have no prick of the conscious.

Lust also messes up our definition of love. Most people in our culture since the 60’s defines love as being sexually satisfied by another person. Or its just a feeling that comes and goes. Now young people in elementary in middle school start “dating” and enter into an exclusive relationship that lasts for days, sometimes even weeks. Then it’s over. No problem, “we just fell out of love” What? I told my students most dating relationships are divorce practice.

Monk story with playboy mansion.

Marriage

Ant it’s natural that Jesus leads right into the discussion of marriage.

Matthew 5:31–32 ESV

“It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

According to one commentator, here are the appropriate reasons for divorce in Jesus’s day: a man could divorce his wife if she ate something he had forbidden her to eat, if she visited the home of her parents, or if, against her husband’s wishes, the in-laws moved into the same city to be near their daughter. The husband had the right to divorce his wife if she broke the laws of Moses or if she transgressed Jewish custom by going outdoors with her hair unbound, spun cloth in the street, or spoke to any man other than her husband. She would also be divorced if she cursed her husband’s parents or yelled at her husband so loud that her voice could be heard outside the house. A man could divorce his wife if she had a bad reputation (m. Giṭ. 4:8), if she burned his supper, or if he simply found someone that he thought was prettier

Charles L. Quarles, Sermon on the Mount: Restoring Christ’s Message to the Modern Church (Nashville, TN: B&H Academic, 2011), 126.

Jesus flips all that on its head. None of these reasons are legitimate. Then Jesus gives one exception: the ground of sexual immorality. Of course there’s debate on if this is the only biblical exception. I’ve known marriages that have healed through sexual immorality. I’ve known marriages that have ended, I think legitimately, based upon physical abuse.

Jesus’s teaching is succinct here. He is not trying to list every exception or give a full ethical discussion of divorce. His point is clear:

No divorce certificate based on minor grounds can absolve the marriage covenant in God’s eyes (vv. 31-32)

It’s almost as if they were treating marriage then like we treat dating relationships now. There’s nothing sacred or eternal about it. We just use this person until we’ve had enough and move on to the next person we fancy.

For almost 200 years in this country, divorce was a difficult procedure. Marriage was something sacred not just because it was from God, but to get out of a marriage was so difficult, you’d want to make sure you were serious going into it. 1969 introduces no-fault divorce laws. Divorce became an easy thing to attain. Then marriage became casual. By 2010, every state had some form of no-fault divorce. In 2015 the federal government redefined marriage, but it’s hard to say they redefined marriage when the institution already didn’t mean anything to us.

Marriage is sacred. It’s God’s ordained means to bring about the family which is a foundational unit to society. Marriage is the foundation of society. But it’s also for our individual good. “It’s not good for man to be alone” was what God declared in the garden of Eden. And so he gave us marriage. We have the privileged to have such closeness and oneness with another person. Surely this unity is sacred. And yet again we attempt to trivialize the sacred.

Separate my life from “religion”

Love and marriage point to the gospel

The only way we know what love is