Ye have heard that it has been said, Thou shalt not commit adultery.
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The heart, not just the act
When the Lord declares, "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" (Matt. 5:27-28), He is lifting the covering off the seventh commandment to expose the fountain from which the outward act proceeds. The law forbade the deed; Christ reaches the desire.
William Kelly sets this word within the two great channels of human corruption that the Sermon on the Mount addresses — violence and lust:
William KellyThere is another thing besides violence: there is the corrupt element in the heart of man — the heart lusting for that which it has not. This is taken up in the next word of our Lord: "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."
Kelly then draws out the practical force of the verses that immediately follow (the right eye and right hand), showing that the Lord is demanding a heart thoroughly exercised against itself:
That is, whatever in our walk, or in our ways, or in our service, whatever it might be that exposes a soul to the danger of yielding to these unholy feelings, should never be spared, but departed from at any cost. There must be the excision of everything that is hurtful to the soul; the members of the body, such as the eye desiring and the hand which would take, being used as showing the various ways in which the heart might be entangled. The cutting off of these members sets forth a heart thoroughly exercised in self-judgment; not prompted to excuse itself by saying that it had not actually committed the sin, but whatever exposed to it must be given up.
State of soul, not mere conduct
In a separate reading on the same passage, W. Kelly insists that the whole demand of this section is for a condition of soul, not a tally of acts. It presupposes one already born of God:
Throughout it is not mere acts the Lord demands, but state; the spiritual condition suitable for the kingdom of the heavens. As in the verses immediately preceding the Lord insists on a spirit of lowly grace, going immeasurably beyond Thou shalt not kill, so now on a purity as far beyond the non-commission of adultery. … The state of soul that befits entrance into the kingdom of the heavens exclusively occupies the Lord. He is teaching the disciples what suited the Father's name which He made known to them. All that He laid down therefore manifestly presupposes that one is born of God, as the essential requisite for His kingdom, not acts merely if they could be good, but renewal of heart. Christ Himself was the blessed pattern of perfection.
Kelly places the command in the context of Scripture's whole witness to fallen humanity — violence and corruption — and shows the Lord drawing a sharp line between Pharisaic outwardness and the purity His disciples must carry:
Violence and corruption are the sad characteristics of man's fallen estate. … And the Lord did not lower the standard but raised it, clearing it of letter and of all accretions or diminutions. … As violence then was judged and excluded in any shape for the disciples, so was impurity. The avoidance of the extreme act might satisfy a Pharisee or Scribe; but the Lord could not dispense with anything short of truth in the inward parts. To look at a woman lustfully was to commit adultery with her already in his heart; and it is not the outside only that God regards but the heart above all. It is only a new nature that delights in holiness; and he who has it by grace answers to the will of God his Father; and abhors himself if he slip even into a wrong look, as unworthy of his calling and hateful to Him who loves him.
He then shows why the Lord immediately proceeds to the cutting off of the right eye and right hand — these are not hyperbole, but urgent warnings to deal decisively with every incentive to sin:
But the Lord follows up His stringent condemnation by the call to deal promptly and unreservedly with anything that acted as an incentive. Therefore He specifies that which is part of ourselves, and when rightly used of the greatest value. Not even the right eye, or the right foot, can be allowed in presence of His displeasure which the saint fears, because he is a believer and God's child. … The right eye and the right hand present forcibly the mortifying of our members that are on the earth, to hinder sin against God. At all cost must the believer deny self.
Not setting aside the law, but going deeper than it
A. J. Pollock, in a conversation between a Christian and a Jewish enquirer, uses this very verse to answer the objection that Christ swept the law aside when He said "But I say unto you." Pollock shows the opposite — that the Lord upholds the commandment and pushes it down to the root:
A. J. PollockLet one instance suffice out of the seven occasions in that discourse when our Lord said, "I say to you." "Ye have heard that it was said of them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: but I say to you, That whosoever looks on a woman to lust after her has committed adultery with her already in his heart" (Matt. 5:27-28). Where is there the setting aside of the law? Nay, He upheld it. The law was content to forbid the actual act, the Lord went further, and not only forbad the outward act, but the inward desire.
The framework of the Sermon on the Mount
J. N. Darby, in his Synopsis of Matthew 5, does not comment on verse 27 in isolation, but he sets the framework within which the Lord's word falls. He observes that the Sermon is not a general spiritualising of the law, but a treatment of the two great moral evils among men, with Christ contrasting what the law required with what He Himself required:
J. N. DarbyIt is important however to remark that there is no general spiritualisation of the law, as is often stated. The two great principles of immorality amongst men are treated of (violence and corrupt lust), to which are added voluntary oaths. In these the exigencies of the law and what Christ required are contrasted.
Darby adds the larger principle that governs the whole discourse — that the disciples are to "act, on the one hand, according to a judgment of evil which reached the heart and motives, but also, on the other, according to the Father's character in grace." The Lord's word on adultery belongs to that first side: a judgment of evil that reaches the heart and motives rather than stopping at the surface.
Synthesis
The Lord is not softening the seventh commandment or relaxing its demand; He is doing the very opposite. The scribes had been content to define adultery as an external deed, so a man who had not physically committed it could pronounce himself innocent. Christ goes straight past the deed and locates adultery already accomplished the moment the eye entertains the lust. His standard is not conduct only, but the state of the heart from which all conduct flows — and because that standard is so exacting, He immediately commands the most decisive dealing with every incentive that would draw the heart toward evil. This is why the teaching is followed by the language of plucking out the eye and cutting off the hand: nothing short of uncompromising self-judgment is adequate to a purity that belongs to the Father's kingdom. The verse therefore exposes every man as guilty under a standard none can reach in his own strength, and drives home the need of a new nature, born of God, in which the heart itself delights in holiness and refuses even the inward consent of lust.