Why Do Men Cheat On a good women?
Why Do Men Cheat On Good Women?
Do Not Covet Others Sexually (5:27–30) Jesus’ warning against lust would have challenged some ancient hearers’ values. Many men in the ancient Mediterranean thought lust healthy and normal
Yet Jesus is not challenging his hearers’ ethics; the scribes and Pharisees may have agreed with his basic premise, but Jesus challenges their hearts, not just their doctrine. Many Christians today similarly profess to agree with Jesus’ doctrine here but do not obey it.
Jesus offers an implicit argument from Scripture, not just a cultural critique. The seventh of the Ten Commandments declares, “You shall not commit adultery” (Ex 20:14), while the tenth commandment declares, “You shall not covet [that is, desire] … anything that belongs to your neighbor” (Ex 20:17).
In the popular Greek version of Jesus’ day the tenth commandment began, “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife,” and used the same word for “covet” that Jesus uses here for “lust.”
Jesus does, however, go beyond his contemporaries’ customary views on lust. Jewish men expected married Jewish women to wear head coverings to prevent lust. Jewish writers often warned of women as dangerous because they could invite lust (as in Sirach 25:21; Ps. Sol. 16:7–8), but Jesus placed the responsibility for lust on the person doing the lusting (Mt 5:28;
Lust and anger are sins of the heart, and rapists who protest in earthly courts, “She asked for it!” have no defense before God’s court. Jesus says that it is better to suffer corporal punishment in the present—amputating one’s lustful eye or other offending appendages—than to spend eternity in hell after the resurrection of the damned (5:29–30*; 18:8–9).
Jesus is declaring in a graphic manner that by whatever means necessary, one should cast off this sin (compare Col 3:5). One must repent to be ready for the kingdom of heaven (Mt 4:17).
Lust is antithetical to true love: it dehumanizes another person into an object of passion, leading us to act as if the other were a visual or emotional prostitute for our use. Fueled by selfish passion, adultery violates the sanctity of another person’s being and relationships; love, by contrast, seeks what is best for a person, including strengthening their marriage.
Adultery usually involves considerable rationalization, justifying one’s behavior as necessary or loving; but lust is the mother of adultery, the demonic force that allows human beings to justify exploiting one another sexually, at the same time betraying the most intimate of commitments where trust ought to abide secure even if it can flourish nowhere else. Lust demands possession;
love values, respects and seeks to serve other persons with what is genuinely good for them. Lust is always incompatible with acknowledging God as the supreme desire of our hearts, because it is contrary to his will.
Once we begin to appreciate our brothers and sisters in Christ as members of our spiritual family, we are less apt to dehumanize them as temptations—whether temptations to be avoided or indulged. Our video culture has cheated us by reducing the meaning of gender to sexual gratification, as if we could relate to members of the other gender best as sleeping partners. God ideally gave people families in part so we could learn how to relate to other people in a variety of ways (motherly, fatherly, brotherly, sisterly—1 Tim 5:1–2); our Christian family is no different (1 Tim 5:1–2; see also Mt 12:49; 23:8; 25:40).