Matthew 5:27Ye have heard that it was said, Thou shalt not commit adultery: 28but I say unto you, that every one that looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. 29And if thy right eye causeth thee to stumble, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not thy whole body be cast into hell. 30And if thy right hand causeth thee to stumble, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not thy whole body go into hell.

Jesus continues to unmask the self-righteous externalism typified by the scribes and Pharisees by showing that the only righteousness acceptable to God is purity of heart.   It is clear they were confused

The sixth commandment, Do Not Murder,  protects the sanctity of life and the seventh the sanctity of marriage. Those who rely on external righteousness break both of those commandments, because in their hearts they attack the sanctity of life and the sanctity of marriage, whether they do so outwardly or not. When they are angry or hate, they commit murder. When they lust sexually, they commit adultery. And when they do either of those things, they choose to despise God’s law and God’s name.

Adultery was punished by death for the two found in the act. Jesus expanded the meaning of adultery to include the cultivation of lust: “Whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart”

In 18 B.C., the Emperor Augustus turned his attention to social problems at Rome. Extravagance and adultery were widespread. Among the upper classes, marriage was increasingly infrequent and, many couples who did marry failed to produce offspring. Augustus enacted laws to encourage marriage and having children, including provisions establishing adultery as a crime.

The law against adultery made the offence a crime punishable by exile and confiscation of property.

Fathers were permitted to kill daughters and their partners in adultery. Husbands could kill the partners under certain circumstances and were required to divorce adulterous wives. Augustus himself was obliged to invoke the law against his own daughter, Julia, and relegated her to the island of Pandateria.

The philosophy of sexual hedonism is not new to our day. It was common in New Testament times, and Paul faced it full force in Corinth. His comment “Food is for the stomach, and the stomach is for food” (1 Cor. 6:13a) expressed the common Greek notion that biological functions are just

biological functions and have no moral significance. It was a belief many of the Corinthian believers had reverted to, or had never given up, in order to justify their sexual misconduct.

The body is more than biological, as divine judgment will reveal. For Christians it is a member of

Christ, a temple of the Holy Spirit, and belongs to the Lord rather than to us (vv. 15, 19). It is therefore never to be used for any purpose that dishonors the God who made and indwells it.

Jesus moves on to the moral root of the command, sexual purity is more than mere abstinence from physical immorality, it is a purity in body and mind, Mt   5:28 But I say to you, That whoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.

JESUS here is not condemning people for temptations that come our way independent of our wills, he is saying there is no excuse for mentally indulging in a fantasy that if physically acted out would constitute immorality under O.T. law.

People usually never fall into adultery. The adulterer’s heart is always shaped and prepared by lustful thoughts before the actual deed occurs. Likewise, the heart of the thief is bent by covetousness. And murder is the product of anger and hatred. All sin is first incubated in the mind.

Jesus taught this truth to His disciples: “The things that proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and those defile the man. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders. These are the things which defile the man; but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile the man” Matt. 15:18–19,

Sin Preparation

Mt 5:28 But I say to you, That whoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.

Lust is a consuming often obsessive passion that focuses on some attractive object which in its self is morally neutral but becomes a tool for evil, food, alcohol, drugs, or money,  here it is sexual, lust and sexual desire are not synonymous, lust here is wrong in that it violates god’s standard and when cultivated and allowed to exercise a controlling force upon the mind. Lust is obessive.

Appetites God created for our good become tools for evil when they dominate our lives.

Keeping a Pure Mind

No sin is more destructive to the conscience than the sin that takes place in the arena of the mind. Sins of the mind assault the conscience like no other sins, because the conscience is their only deterrent. After all, who but God and the sinner ever knows about them? Ralph Venning

To indulge in sins of thought, therefore, is to molest the conscience directly. Those whose thoughts are impure cannot have pure consciences; the guilt is inherent in the evil thought. When the thoughts are defiled, the conscience immediately is, too. That is why nothing is more characteristic of unbelief than an impure mind combined with a defiled conscience:

“To the pure, all things are pure; but to those who are defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure, but both their mind and their conscience are defiled” (Tit. 1:15).

In fact, nothing damages the conscience more than the habit of indulging in evil thoughts.

Unfortunately, once begun, the practice becomes all too easy. This is a sin that does not have to wait for an opportunity; the mind can sin anytime, anywhere, under any circumstances. So the habit is quickly and easily established

The Danger of a Sinful Thought Life

By engaging the inner faculties, mind, emotions, desire, memory, and imagination, thought-sins work directly on the soul to bias it toward evil.

Sow a thought, reap an act. Sow an act, reap a habit. Sow a habit, reap a character. Sow a character, reap a destiny. Evil thoughts thus underlie and lay the groundwork for all other sins.

Jesus is not speaking of unexpected and unavoidable exposure to sexual temptation. When a man happens to see a woman provocatively dressed, Satan will surely try to tempt that man with lustful thoughts. But there is no sin if the temptation is resisted and the gaze is turned elsewhere. It is continuing to look in order to satisfy lustful desires that Jesus condemns, because it evidences a vile, immoral heart.

David was not at fault for seeing Bathsheba bathing. He could not have helped noticing her, because she was in plain view as he walked on the palace roof. His sin was in dwelling on the sight and in willingly succumbing to the temptation. He could have looked away and put the experience out of his mind.

Arthur Pink says, If lustful looking is so grievous a sin, then those who dress and expose themselves with the desire to be looked at and lusted after … are not less but perhaps more guilty.

Here Jesus points the way to deliverance from heart sin. At first His advice seems incongruous with what He has just been saying. If the problem is in the heart, what good is plucking out an eye or cutting off a hand? If the right eye were lost, the left would continue to look lustfully, and if the right hand were cut off, the left would still remain to carry on sinful acts.

We can be saved from the heart sin of adultery.

Does he really mean cut off your hand if your eye is the problem, the other one would carry out the act wouldn’t it, the right faculties were precious, considered the best.

The eye and the hand are only avenues or instruments by which temptation is encountered and sin committed.  My main problem is in my heart ant my mind not my body.

The right was a  place of honor or authority That is the willingness of one to give up their very best in order that righteous is done, and lived out, anything that would trip us or trap us should be done away with as soon as possible.

Obviously Jesus is speaking figuratively of those things, physical or otherwise, that cause us to be tempted or make us more susceptible to temptation. In Jewish culture, the right eye and right hand represented a person’s best and most precious faculties. The right eye represented one’s best vision, and the right hand one’s best skills. Jesus’ point is that we should be willing to give up whatever is necessary, even the most cherished things we possess, if doing that will help protect us from evil.

Nothing is so valuable as to be worth preserving at the expense of righteousness. This strong message is obviously not to be interpreted in a wooden, literal way so that the Lord appears to be advocating mutilation. Mutilation will not cleanse the heart. The intent of these words is simply to call for dramatic severing of the sinful impulses in us which push us to evil action.

The message of this hyperbolic statement of our Lord is clearly that sin must be dealt with radically.

Paul said, “I buffet my body and make it my slave, lest possibly, after I have preached to others, I myself should be disqualified” (1 Cor. 9:27). If we do not consciously and purposefully control what is around us, where we go, what we do, what we watch and read, the company we keep, and the conversations we have, then those things will control us. And what we cannot control we should discard without hesitation.

Obviously getting rid of harmful influences will not change a corrupt heart into a pure heart. Outward acts cannot produce inner benefits. But just as the outward act of adultery reflects a heart that is already adulterous, the outward act of forsaking whatever is harmful reflects a heart that hungers and thirsts for righteousness. That outward act is effective protection, because it comes from a heart that seeks to do God’s will instead of its own.

Throughout history some Christians have reacted to sexual temptations and sins in ways that are unbiblical.  Origen (A.D. 185–254), one of the outstanding early church Fathers, was so convicted of his own sinfulness by reading Matthew 5:27–30 that he had himself castrated

Saint Anthony sought to escape immorality and lust by separating himself from the rest of society.

He became a hermit in the Egyptian desert, where he lived in poverty and deprivation for thirtyfive years. Yet by his own testimony he was never freed in all that time from the cares and temptations he sought to escape. Because his heart was still in the world he could not escape the world, and he quickly discovered that Satan, the god of this world, had no difficulty finding him in the desert.

But geographical escapism, physical mutilation, or any form of forced celibacy violate God’s purpose (see Heb. 13:4) and are just as unscriptural as sexual immorality. The Lord wants His people to be in the world but not of it (John 17:15–18).

The solution to sexual impurity cannot be external because the cause is not external.

Nevertheless, even we who are Christians are besieged with constant temptation. It seems overwhelming at times. We might pose the question—is it really possible to overcome temptation in any meaningful sense? How can we be triumphant?

With Satan, the world, and our own flesh against us, is there any hope for us to overcome sin’s pull? Our enemies are so subtle and their strategies so sophisticated, how can we fight them? Aren’t we sometimes confronted with temptations that are so effective that we frankly have no hope of defeating them? Isn’t Satan so wily that we cannot possibly overcome some of his schemes? And isn’t our own heart so deceitful and desperately wicked that it leaves us without a proper defense? Isn’t it really folly for us to dream of victory over our sin?

Scripture clearly answers that question. In fact, it answers all those questions in one verse: “No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, that you may be able to endure it” (1 Cor. 10:13).

That verse is surely one of the most welcome and comforting promises in all of Scripture. No temptation can be so overpowering that we are left helpless to resist. Satan is not so powerful; demons are not so effective; the evil conspiracy

1Thess  4:3 For this is the will of God, [even] your sanctification, that yeshould abstain from immorality:1Th  4:4 That each one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour;

1Cor  9:27 But I keep under my body, and bring [it] into subjection: lest by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.  2) to make a slave and to treat as a slave i.e. with severity, subject If we are not aware and control what is around us, where we go, what we look at, what we read, the company we keep, then those things will control us. The idea that sin is an external thing only is the devils deception.

 LUST IS PREOCCUPATION WITH THAT WHICH GOD HAS NOT INTENDED FOR SOMEONE

Don’t think this problem is unique to sexual sins. Some people like to rehearse memories of the time they got angry and poured out vengeance on someone. Some enjoy thoughts of the time they lied and got away with it. All kinds of tempting memories lodge themselves in us and become new sins every time we remember them with pleasure.

That is why David cried out for God to help him at the very front line of defense: “Create in me a clean heart, O God” (Ps. 51:10). It was an appeal for a sound conscience arising from a pure mind.

Taking Every Thought Captive to Obedience

How can we deal with the problem of evil thoughts? The process is like mortifying any other sin; it involves taking the following steps:

First confess and forsake the sin. “Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return to the Lord, and He will have compassion on him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon” (Isa. 55:7, emphasis added). If your thought life harbors sins of immorality, sins of anger toward someone, sins of vengeance, sins of bitterness, sins of covetousness, or whatever—confess them to God. Repent and ask forgiveness. If we confess, He is faithful and just to forgive and keep on cleansing (1 Jn. 1:9).

Refuse to entertain those thoughts. Purpose to abandon your wrong thought patterns immediately and begin to build new, righteous habits. If you find yourself slipping into old ways of thinking, confess your sin and refuse once again to give place to evil thoughts. Consciously direct your mind to fix itself on pure things: “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, let your mind dwell on these things” (Phil. 4:8). In other words, reprogram your mind with truth and righteousness.

Feed on the Word of God. “Thy word I have treasured in my heart, that I may not sin against Thee” (Ps. 119:11). The Word insulates the mind. It strengthens the heart. It occupies the soul and fortifies it against evil thoughts. Only as we use the sword of the Spirit skillfully can we mortify our fleshly imaginations (Eph. 6:17).

Avoid evil attractions. Don’t expose yourself to activities, images, or conversation that provoke evil thoughts. Like Job, make a covenant with your eyes (Job 31:1)—or with your ears, or with whatever sensations lead you into evil thoughts. Refuse to feed any tendencies that draw your imagination into wickedness. This is what Jesus meant figuratively when He said, “If your right eye makes you stumble, tear it out, and throw it from you; for it is better for you that one of the parts of your body perish, than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand makes you stumble, cut it off, and throw it from you; for it is better for you that one of the parts of your body perish, than for your whole body to go into hell” (Matt. 5:29–30).