Fight for purity

[AI translation] In our Friday Bible study, we will now study the Sermon on the Mount, one after the other, as it follows the great teachings. The day before yesterday, we discussed Matthew 5:21-26, and I bring to the church congregation the passage immediately following it, which I just read from the Bible. First of all, let me note that in the original Greek text, the word translated "fornication" in our Hungarian Bible literally means adultery. In German, Dutch and English Bibles it is also translated "Do not commit adultery." And I say to you that if anyone looks on a woman for evil desires, he has committed adultery with her in his heart" (Mt 5,28), Jesus is explaining the seventh commandment, the commandment by which God protects the sanctity of marriage.Let us first look at the divine interpretation and purpose of marriage itself. At the dawn of creation, God said to man, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it under your kingdom" (Genesis 1:28). Marriage is therefore a precious gift from God. And since human reproduction is in God's plan for the world, he has also given it special protection through the institution of marriage. Marriage, therefore, is nothing more than a fence protecting and securing the divine law of procreation. It is not only there to allow new life to be born, but also to protect the care, nurture and education of that new life. The young child needs the protection and nurturing that marriage provides. Even later, in his adolescent youth, the child needs to know his mother and father and to see them together in communion until death. Some children do not know their father or mother. This not knowing leaves a lifelong mark on the child's soul. To lose a parent through death is also difficult. But it is much more bearable to know your father or mother in a cemetery than to know them unknown somewhere in the hustle and bustle of life. It is not something a child can bear without greater psychological damage. That is why God created the marriage of two people to last a lifetime.
We have said that marriage is a protective fence for the procreation and nurture of offspring. This fence is not to be pulled down or torn down! Whoever, being married, breaks out of his fenced garden, or, being unmarried or unmarried, enters a strange garden, is breaking the seventh commandment, committing adultery. "You have heard that it was said to the ancients: "Thou shalt not commit adultery"! Jesus therefore proclaims again this law of the ancients in its full force. What he is saying is that marriage alone is the place where the multiplication of the human race and the nurturing of new, small seedlings can take place, according to God's will. It means, therefore, that all sexual intercourse outside marriage is also adultery. Even if it is between an unmarried woman and an unmarried man, it is adultery. This is because any such act is tantamount to pulling the fence of marriage! It results in the mockery of the divine institution of marriage, in the loosening, disregarding and defiling of the whole divine order and purpose of marriage. The commandment, therefore, not to commit adultery, applies both to those within and those outside marriage.
In fact, Jesus goes even further in explaining the law. He says: It is not only by breaking out of or entering into the garden of matrimony that the sin of adultery is committed, but also when one looks out over the fence from his own garden or peers from outside into a strange garden. For, says Jesus, "Whosoever looketh on a woman for a cause of evil concupiscence hath committed adultery in his heart". So even to look longingly over the fence is adultery! With this gaze, Jesus then goes right to the root of the sin forbidden by the seventh commandment, where all uncleanness begins. This is how the first sin began in Paradise. We read, "And the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and that it was a tree of wisdom: and she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave to her husband that was with her, and he did eat." (Genesis 3:6) The sinful desire for the forbidden fruit entered through the eyes of Eve. In one place St Augustine calls the eye the door of the heart through which temptations enter. So sin begins at the eye, enters the heart, where it kindles a fire, and from the heart it finally becomes action. That is why Jesus says: "Whosoever looketh on a woman for a cause of evil desire hath committed adultery in his heart".
The biblical King David's ugly adultery also began when he saw Bathsheba from the roof of the palace, who was bathing. It was from this glimpse that the terrible fire broke out in which two men, David and Bathsheba, were severely burned and the third, Bathsheba's lawful husband, died. How harmless it seems to look at someone, yet out of it arose a terrible great tragedy of adultery. This modern life, with all its leisureliness, its shamelessness, its innocent 'flirting opportunities', offers a thousand opportunities at every turn for one to commit adultery with one's eyes and heart, almost unnoticed!
Jesus speaks this warning with reference to the man, perhaps because he is the more dangerous and vulnerable party in the sin of adultery.
But in no way does this mean that the woman has less responsibility in this matter. For if she deliberately draws the man's dangerous glance or gaze to herself in any way, she has already assisted in the commission of adultery. Bathsheba should also have known what she could and could not do, how to dress and behave in her garden, on the street or in company. If Bathsheba does not do everything in her power to avoid giving David a dangerous look, then Bathsheba is also a party to adultery! And today, Bathsheba is a real pyromaniac! They are deliberately kindling, or at least trying to kindle, the evil fire in the eyes and hearts of the Davidic people!
Jesus' severity on this issue is astounding. He refuses to budge from the law one iota! He goes on to say, "But if your right eye offends you, gouge it out and cast it away; for it is better for you that one of your members should perish, than that your whole body should be thrown into the flame. And if thy right hand offend thee, thou shalt cut it off, and cast it away from thee: for it is better for thee that one of thy members perish, than that thy whole body perish. Jesus is not talking about self-mutilation here, but about the hand and the eye, to express something that is very dear and dear to you. And by stumbling, he means that it is to your detriment. So if you realize that something or someone is harming your body or your soul, harming your imagination or your eyes, harming your total physical and spiritual purity, cut it out, cut it down, and put it away. Even if it is as dear to you as your hand or your eye! Purity is a struggle, and the struggle requires sacrifice and renunciation. Even if the sacrifice and renunciation is so great, it is still worth it. It is better for you, says Jesus. Because for a temporary "good" your eternal salvation is at stake! In fornication there are terrible forces that can drive the body and soul to hell. So if some reading or film is harming you, if your friendship or acquaintance with someone is harming your purity, cut it out, cut it off, and cast it away! It is better for you that such a thing or person should perish from your life, than that your whole body should be cast into the pit of hell!
The peril that threatens the body and soul through adultery, Jesus calls hell. As if there were no other word that would be serious enough to express the danger! And anyone who knows the crisis of modern marriages knows that the word hell is not an exaggeration! Because it is! The only trouble is that the sin of adultery does not show its true face from the beginning, but only later! In fact, it offers itself as if it were a paradise on earth. It only becomes hell later, and usually when it is already too late! Hence the harsh warning: cut it out, cut it off, throw it away!
Jesus protects the fence of the marriage berm with an almost flaming, fiery bullet. He almost shouts the seventh commandment at us as if he were saying it: Beware! Hell! He who crosses this fence will go to hell! Hell awaits anyone who breaks through this sacred fence from the inside or breaks through from the outside. And even to him who thinks of such a breaking in or out! Because Jesus condemns and hates this sin so severely, the tenderness with which He welcomes the adulterous sinner before Him is touching. "Let him who is without sin among you cast the first stone" (Jn 8,7), he says gently, but with a very sad seriousness. He does not cast stones at us or at the adulterers of today, for He did not come to destroy, but to heal and save sinners. There is also healing and cleansing from the sin of adultery committed with the eyes, the heart, or even with the deed, but only through the cleansing power of the blood of Christ! I have seen such cleansing many times! So there is, there is such a possibility for you too! If you really want it, if you hate and repent with all your soul of the many kinds of impurity that are and have been in your eyes, in your heart and in your deeds, and stand before Christ the Saviour with the full weight of the sin of your impurity!
We have said that our struggle for purity will cost us sacrifice and renunciation. What a sacrifice is this compared to what it cost, not in the cutting off of a hand, or the gouging out of an eye, but in arms and legs pierced with rusty iron, in a head crowned with thorns and soaked with blood, in the life of the Most Holy One! Let us take our lives, which have fallen at the seventh commandment, to the place where God has made the greatest sacrifice for our purification: to Calvary, to Christ the Saviour. There we will know that Jesus Christ is to the soul wallowing in the most hopeless depths of adultery who God has revealed Him to be - that is, Saviour!
Amen.
Date: 8 February 1948.