“I am a sexual sinner,” pastor and author Ray Ortlund told his church one Sunday morning. There was a shocked silence. “I’m not cheating on my wife. I’m not looking at porn. But I am a sexual sinner. If all of the thoughts that went through my head this week were put up on the screens this morning, none of you would want to be my friend.”

Rev. Ortlund understood the high standards for sexual purity taught by Jesus. Here Jesus quoted the seventh commandment: “You shall not commit adultery” (Exod. 20:14). But in Matthew 5, Jesus raised the bar: To even look at a woman lustfully is morally equivalent to committing adultery (v. 28). The “look” is a sustained “stare” that turns her into a sexual object.

We are to fight temptation, and other sins, passionately and fiercely (vv. 29–30). The exaggerated actions suggested here were used to make a point: If your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out; if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. Sin is serious because the destiny of our souls is at stake. We should do whatever it takes, with God’s help, to resist temptation and pursue righteousness (Matt. 5:6). Frederick Bruner puts it this way: “Take decisive action against that habit, thing, or person that, though pleasurable and perhaps even seemingly indispensable for living, is in fact ruining our lives.”

God called Job “blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil” (Job 1:8). To uphold his sexual purity, Job “made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at a young woman” (Job 31:1). He understood that sin often begins with the eyes.

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