Gouge out your eye and throw it away. Chop off your hand and do the same. Is this a typo? No, it’s not a mistake. It’s called hyperbole and Jesus is using this literary technique to make a very strong statement. Though he is not suggesting sinners resort to self mutilation as some sort of punishment for their evil desires, he is making a bold announcement that followers of the way should do everything they can to avoid this sort of behaviour.

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Jesus sees what is in our hearts and he sees the end result of the behaviour we’re dabbling in. He has seen it play out billions of times over, because Jesus, the Word of God, the Son of God has seen it all. Every human machination and deception and result of the plague of sin on God’s good world. When he teaches us not to do something or think something, in essence allow something, an idea, a pretension, a fantasy to find real estate in our hearts and minds, he is telling us this because he loves us.

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In the same way that it would have been a better idea for Adam and Eve to trust God over the evil one, it’s a really good idea to just take Jesus at his word, Amen?

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The Christian life is a spiritual life, lived in a physical body. What we allow to enter our mind and heart has bearing on our bodily expression of life. Thoughts become actions. What we dwell on dictates the direction of our days.

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Additionally, Jesus is big on treating other human beings with respect and dignity. Lusting over another human being, demeans that person making them less dimensional than God has created them to be. Not to mention the fact that if they’re not your husband or wife, you are in direct disobedience to the teaching of God’s word which tells us in Hebrews to keep the marriage bed pure.

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Once again, as with anger, Jesus in his Sermon on the Mount is establishing some kingdom protocols which ban the making of choices based exclusively on bodily desire. The kingdom of God is fuelled by grace not desire and as such members of this kingdom must learn to make desire subordinate to the will of God. The journey of spiritual formation is the process of automating these responses to desire and making them obedient to Christ. Remember grace is not opposed to effort, rather it is opposed to earning.