I am a Jesus pusher!!! “Those of old” proposed, “You shall not commit adultery” (Matthew 5:27). Jesus said, “But I say to you that whoever looks” (Matthew 5:28). But “those of old” DISREGARDED physical sight. The highest state of righteousness they could conceive was abstinence from sexual involvement with another man’s wife. Then Jesus introduced the idea of “looks”! Seeing is not a negative in the Scriptures. The writers of the Scriptures emphasized God’s looking. In the Old Testament, God rejected Saul as king and informed Samuel of His plan to find a king among the sons of Jesse. Samuel was to take a heifer to Bethlehem to offer a sacrifice and invite Jesse and his sons. Samuel chose Jesse’s son, Eliab, as the most likely candidate to be the new king. “But the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Do not look at his appearance or at his physical stature, because I have refused him. For the Lord does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart’” (1 Samuel 16:7).
Hundreds of years later, Jesus reminds the Jews of how God sees! They want a god who “looks,” measures, and judges them by their physical acts. That kind of judgment is more comfortable to them than God probing the depths of their heart motive. God requires from us only what is in His life. Could Jesus’ challenge be to see as God sees? Our passage is not an intensified rule about sexuality. The old law was, “You shall not commit adultery” (Matthew 5:27). Is the new rule to not “look at a woman to lust for her” (Matthew 5:28)? Jesus’ call to the Kingdom person is not that of maintaining a new level of physical activity. Still, He proposes a change in our nature where He controls our perspective! I am a Jesus Pusher!!!