S.O.T.M. The Exceeding Sinfulness of Sin [Matthew 5:27-30]

Stand for the reading of the word of God [Matthew 5:27-30]

We come now to verses 27–30, our Lord’s second illustration of His teaching with respect to the law. ‘Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: but I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.’ The Pharisees and scribes had reduced the commandment which prohibits adultery to the mere physical act of adultery; and again they imagined that, as long as they were not actually guilty of the act itself, the commandment had nothing to say to them and they were perfectly innocent as far as it was concerned. It is the same thing again. Once more they had taken the letter of the law and reduced it to one particular matter, and thereby had nullified it. In particular, they had forgotten the whole spirit of the law. As we have seen, this is something that is fundamentally vital to a true understanding of the New Testament gospel: ‘the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.’

There is a very simple way of looking at this. The real trouble with the Pharisees and scribes was that they had never even read the Ten Commandments properly. If they had truly considered and studied them, they would have seen that you cannot take each one in isolation. For example, the tenth says that we must never covet our neighbor’s wife, and that, obviously, should be taken in conjunction with this command not to commit adultery.

The apostle Paul, in that striking statement of his in Romans 7, confesses that he himself had been guilty of that very error. He says that it was when he realized that the law said, ‘Thou shalt not covet’, that he began to understand the meaning of lust. Before that he had been thinking of the law in terms of action only; but the law of God does not stop at mere action, it says ‘Thou shalt not covet’. The law had always stressed the importance of the heart, and these people, with their mechanical notions of worshipping God and their purely mechanical conception of obedience, had entirely forgotten that.

Our Lord here stresses that important truth and to impress it upon His followers. Those who think they can worship God and obtain salvation in terms of their own actions are always guilty of this error. That is why they never truly understand the Christian way of salvation. They have never seen that ultimately it is a question of the heart, but think that, as long as they do not do certain things and as long as they try to do certain good works, they can put themselves right in the sight of God. To that, as we have seen already, our Lord replies always, ‘Ye are they which justify yourselves before men; but God knoweth your hearts: for that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God.’ Our Lord is concerned here to bring out that principle once more. They said in effect, ‘As long as you do not commit adultery you have kept this law.’ He says: ‘Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.’

Here again we have our Lord’s teaching with regard to the nature of sin. The whole purpose of the law, as Paul reminds us, was to show the exceeding sinfulness of sin. But by misunderstanding it in this way the Pharisees had nullified it. Nowhere, perhaps, do we have such a terrible exposure of sin as it really is as in the words of our Lord at this particular point. What our Lord is talking about here is sin, in fact we could say from verses 21-48 that’s what Jesus is talking about…sin. I know the doctrine of sin is not a popular topic of today, but we need to have a good understanding of sin in order to really understand the gospel.

The doctrine of sin

I know people don’t like to talk about sin, even Christians don’t like to discuss it, but I do believe that this is urgently necessary that we have a good grasp on the biblical doctrine of sin. I would say that most of our failures and troubles in the church and in the world as well are due to the fact that we have not really understood sin. We’ve all probably been introduced to the thought that man is getting better with our education, and technology, and advancements. Our culture will say, man is basically good, and many Christians have bought into the mindset. How often do you hear from people, “just be a decent person”? And while I know man may not be as bad as they possible can be all the time but the reality is man is wicked by nature. The bible addresses this from beginning to end.

I suggest that unless we are clear about the doctrine of sin we shall never truly understand the New Testament way of salvation. Take, for instance, the death of our Lord Jesus Christ upon the cross. Look at all the misunderstanding with regard to that. The great question one has to face is; Why did He die upon the cross? Why did He set His face steadfastly to go to Jerusalem and refuse to allow His followers to defend Him? Why did He say that, if He desired, He could command twelve legions of angels to protect Him, but that if He did so He could not fulfil all righteousness? What is the meaning of the death upon the cross? Now if we do not understand the doctrine of sin, we shall never really know the answers to these questions. There is only one way to understand the death upon the cross and it is this as one writer put it: There was no other good enough To pay the price of sin; He only could unlock the gate Of heaven, and let us in.

It is the problem of sin that accounts for it. Indeed the incarnation would never have been necessary were it not for sin. The problem of sin is as profound as that. To tell mankind what to do is not enough. God had done that in the law given through Moses, but no-one had kept it. ‘There is none righteous, no, not one.’ All the exhortations to men and women to live a better life had failed before Christ came. The Greek philosophers had all lived and taught before His birth. Knowledge and information and all these things are not enough. Why? Because of sin in the human heart. The only way to understand the New Testament doctrine of salvation is to start with the doctrine of sin. Whatever else sin may be, it is at least something that could be dealt with only by the coming of the eternal Son of God from heaven into this world and by His actually going to the death of the cross. That had to happen; there was no other way. God would never have allowed His only-begotten, beloved Son to suffer in the way He did unless it was absolutely essential: and it was essential because of sin.

But the same is true of the New Testament doctrine of regeneration. Consider all the teaching about being born again, and the new creation, which is to be found right through the Gospels and Epistles. That is meaningless unless you understand the New Testament doctrine of sin. But if you do understand it, then you can see quite clearly that unless a man is born again, and given a new nature and a new heart, he cannot possibly be saved. If you don’t like the NT doctrine of sin you may not be a Christian. For you cannot be a Christian without believing that you must be born again and without realizing that nothing but the death of Christ upon the cross saves you and reconciles you to God. All who are trusting to their own efforts are denying the gospel, and the reason for that is always that they have never seen themselves as sinners or understood the New Testament doctrine of sin. This is a crucial matter.

This also affects our proclamation of the gospel i.e. evangelism, i would even say...

There is no true evangelism without the doctrine of sin

We live in a day of easy believe-ism, where there are calls to just come to Jesus and all will be good. Want a better life just come to Jesus, but many of these appeals never face the fact of sin and the depravity of man. The bible is clear, man is confronted with a holy God and there are consequences for sin. Go through the ministry of our Lord Himself and you get the impression that at times, far from pressing people to follow Him, He put great obstacles in their way. He said in effect: ‘Do you realize what you are doing? Have you counted the cost? Do you realize where it may lead you? Do you know that it means denying yourself, taking up your cross daily and following Me?

Christ taught more on Hell than anyone else in the bible, because he knew the condemning power of sin, so He didn’t avoid the topic put pressed it often. Evangelism must start with the holiness of God, the sinfulness of man, the demands of the law, and the punishment and consequences for sin and disobeying God. It is only the man who is brought to see his guilt in this way who flies to Christ for deliverance and redemption. Any belief in the Lord Jesus Christ which is not based on that is not a true belief in Him. You can have a psychological belief even in the Lord Jesus Christ; but a true belief sees in Him one who delivers us from the curse of the law. True evangelism starts like that, and obviously is primarily a call to repentance, ‘repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ.’

The doctrine of sin is vital to understand holiness

I think we see its urgent relevance at the present time. Not only has our evangelism been superficial, our conception of holiness has been superficial also. Far too often there have been people who have been smug and satisfied with themselves because they are not guilty of certain things—adultery, for example—and therefore think that they are all right. But they have never examined their heart. Self-satisfaction, smugness and glibness are the very antithesis of the New Testament doctrine of holiness. We should never be satisfied with just our conduct. Here we see holiness as a matter of the heart, and not merely a matter of conduct; it is not only a man’s deeds that count but his desires; not only must we not commit, we must not even covet. It penetrates to the very depths, and thus this conception of holiness leads to constant watchfulness and self-examination. The apostle Paul said to the Corinthians. ‘Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves.’ Search your own heart and discover whether there is any evil there. That is New Testament holiness. How much more disconcerting it is than that superficial conception of holiness which thinks only in terms of action.

Above all, this doctrine of sin leads us to see the absolute need of a power greater than ourselves to deliver us. It is a doctrine that makes a man run to Christ and rely upon Him; it makes him realize that without Him he can do nothing. So again I would say that the New Testament way of presenting holiness is not just to say, ‘Would you like to live life with a capital “L”? Would you like to be permanently happy?’ No, it is to preach this doctrine of sin, it is to reveal man to himself so that, having seen himself, he will abhor himself and become poor in spirit and meek, he will mourn, he will hunger and thirst after righteousness, he will fly to Christ and abide in Him. It is not an experience to be received so much as a life to be lived and a Christ to be followed.

The doctrine of sin gives us a greater realization of God’s love

Do you feel that your love to God is weak and faint and that you do not love Him as much as you should? Let me remind you again that this is the ultimate test of our profession. We are meant to love God, not only to believe certain things about Him. These men of the New Testament loved Him and they loved the Lord Jesus Christ. Read the biographies of the saints and you will find that they had a love for God which became greater and greater. Why don’t people love God as they should? It is because they have never realized what He has done for us in Christ, and this itself is because they have not realized the nature and the problem of sin. It is only as we see what sin really is in the sight of God, and realize that, He did not spare His only Son, that we begin to understand and to measure His love. When we realize our great sinfulness we will have a greater appreciation of Christ’s love for us. So if you want to love God more, grasp this doctrine of sin, and as you realize what it meant to Him, and what He has done about it, you will see that His love is indeed ‘so amazing, so divine’.

There is no true understanding of the gospel of salvation, no true evangelism, no true holiness, no true knowledge of the love of God unless we realize what sin is

Sin is a disease that affects everything a person is. You need diagnosis before you can begin to think of treatment. The first thing our Lord emphasizes is what we may call the power of sin. ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery.’ He does not say ‘As long as you do not do the act all is well’; rather ‘I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.’ Sin is not merely a matter of actions and of deeds; it is something within the heart that leads to the action. In other words the teaching here is the characteristic teaching of the Bible everywhere about this subject, namely, that what we must really concentrate upon is not so much sins as sin. Sins are nothing but the symptoms of a disease called sin and it is not the symptoms that matter but the disease, for it is the disease that kills and not the symptoms.

That is the truth which our Lord here impresses upon us. The fact that you have not committed the act of adultery does not mean you are guiltless. What about your heart? Is there disease there? And His teaching is that what matters is this wretchedness that is in human nature as the result of sin and the fall. Man wasn’t made that way, God made man perfect, but man fell from his perfection when he disobeyed God, and as a result of that fall all man has this sin in them which desires it’s own and lusts and covets, etc. Our Lord said, “it is out of the heart that proceeds evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, etc. Sin must be understood this way, it has power over man…but there is also..

The subtlety of sin. Sin is a terrible and powerful thing which corrupts but also deludes and fools us to make us feel quite happy and content so as long as we haven’t committed the act. ‘Yes’, I say, ‘I was tempted, but thank God I did not fall.’ That is all right up to a point, so long as I am not too content with that. If I am merely satisfied with the fact that I did not do the thing, I am all wrong. I ought to go on and ask: ‘But why did I want to do it?’ That is where the subtlety of sin comes in. It affects the whole make up of man.

It’s very easy for us to be content with ourselves and say, “I have not committed adultery, so this is not relevant to me.” Maybe so, many men and women would never dream of committing adultery, but enjoy sinning in their minds and imagination. Why do so many advertisements use the female body to sell their product? Why do many novels aimed at women use seductive material to grab their interests? Why do look at and buy these things??? Because we like it. Because sin is a heart condition, we are drawn to these things that entice the flesh.

There is a perverting effect of sin. This is why our Lord says, “if your right eye causes you to sin pluck it our, if you right hand causes you to sin cut it off.” It’s not that our Lord was saying there is a physical solution to a spiritual problem. Because the perverting effect of sin that has devastated man and takes what God made and intended for good to be corrupted and used for evil we should metaphorically pluck out, cut off, get rid of anything that comes between us and God. Sin destroys man; it introduced death into the life of man and death into the world. It always leads to death, and ultimately to hell, suffering and punishment. That’s the biblical doctrine of sin…do not commit adultery…of course not…but is it in our hearts? Is it in our imagination? Do we like sin? God forbid that we should ever take this doctrine lightly and feel satisfied in ourselves we have not done this or that. What is in our heart?

Remember that children song we used to sing, “be careful little eyes what you see, be careful little feet where you go, for the Father up above is looking down in love, be careful.” That song is good, but before my eyes, feet, and hands will cease from sinning, my heart has be on guard, because that’s where it all starts…the heart. Sin doesn’t come from looking at the thing, or going to the place, at that point we’ve already given over to what was already in the heart. I like the advice Sinclair Ferguson gives for dealing with the sin and the sin of lust.

He says,

realize where yielding to sinful lust will lead you hell

Deal with the real cause of your sin. It is an impure heart that settles for God substitutes. This is simply idolatry. What is there in our life that you are putting in the place of God? That you desire and long for more than anything?

act decisively, immediately, even if it must be painful. Remember, obedience cannot be negotiated, nor can heaven and hell. Now is always the right time to do the right thing.

Realize your lust is not the whole of your life, even the main or most important part of you life. Think and understand what you gain by abandoning it. You get Christ and heaven thrown in! Sin is a cruel taskmaster and lust is one of its favorite instruments to keep you enslaved and in bondage. Jesus came to rescue you, to set you free from this never satisfied tyrant. Treasure Him above all else. What you gain will put to shame what you give up. You will wonder why you stayed so long at Vanity Fair in the first place.

Friends, Jesus certainly wants to lead and guide your behavior, but first and foremost, he wants our hearts. Treasure Christ above all in your heart, and the eye, the hand, and the rest of the body will happily follow its lead.