Matthew 5:27–32
Beloved,
whenever Jesus speaks, two streams of grace flow from His words.
First, there is His deep compassion for the sinner—not a soft indulgence, but a fierce concern that we not harm ourselves.
And second, there is His firm challenge to the self-righteous—those parts of our hearts that imagine we can sit in the judge’s seat, as though purity were our possession and mercy our optional gift.
Nowhere is this clearer than in Jesus’ teaching on adultery and divorce.
We often hear these verses as if Jesus suddenly turned harsh or legalistic. But the same Lord who welcomed sinners, who raised up the brokenhearted, who healed the guilty and touched the unclean, is the one speaking here. So we must hear His voice through that same heart. Jesus never warns to condemn; He warns to protect. He never confronts to shame; He confronts to save. And what He saw in His own generation—and what He still sees in ours—are two dangers that threaten the human soul: the danger of self-harm through unfaithfulness, and the danger of self-righteousness through false judgment.
Let us begin with the first.
1. Jesus warns the sinner because He loves the sinner
In the ancient world, adultery was not viewed as a small matter, and not only because it hurt families or offended social customs. People understood something we often forget: that God entrusted to every person—not just biologically but spiritually—a capacity for future, a seed of continuity, a way of extending one's life into the world.
When Jesus warns that lust and unfaithfulness begin in the heart, He is not scolding us; He is sounding an alarm for our sake. He is saying:
“Do not throw away the treasure I placed within you. Do not squander your own future. Do not waste what was meant to become eternal fruit.”
You see, in His culture people understood that adultery was like spilling life into the ground, like pouring out what is precious into a place where it cannot bear fruit. We could use a more modern phrase: it is wasting what God gave you to become your joy, your legacy, your future self.
Jesus’ compassion is here:
He warns because He sees what we cannot see.
He sees the future we endanger when we take lightly the sacred gift of love and fidelity.
He sees what becomes of a heart that treats its own future as disposable.
Christ does not want to condemn the adulterer; He wants to rescue them from their own harm.
He does not shame us; He calls us back to ourselves.
He says, “Your life is too precious to waste. Your future is too holy to throw away.”
But then Jesus turns to another danger.
2. Jesus exposes the self-righteous because they endanger themselves
In Jesus’ time, some believed they had the authority to dismiss their spouses casually. They believed they could “divorce” someone—send them away—and remain spiritually untouched. They imagined that the power to cut others off was a right that belonged to them.
But Jesus reveals a deeper truth:
The moment you push someone aside in self-righteousness, it is you who becomes separated—not from them, but from God.
When a person says, “I dismiss you,” heaven hears, “I dismiss myself from mercy.”
When a heart becomes hard enough to cast another away, it quietly casts itself away from the God whose heart is soft with compassion.
When a person believes they stand above another, they unknowingly descend below the very grace that could have saved them.
Jesus’ message is piercing and tender at once:
“Do not imagine you can sever yourself from a spouse without severing yourself from the God who unites. Do not think you can exile another without exiling your own heart from mercy.”
The self-righteous believe they are protecting themselves.
Jesus teaches that they are cutting themselves off from the only protection that matters—God’s compassion.
This is the same Christ who said, “Judge not, lest you be judged,” and, “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.”
A self-righteous heart is a divorcing heart: it divorces itself from God’s mercy even as it imagines itself holy.
And so we see: Jesus’ warning is not legalism—it is love.
His confrontation is not condemnation—it is rescue.
3. The Good News: Jesus restores what we waste and heals what we break
If Jesus’ words were only warnings, they would be heavy.
But every warning from His lips carries the seed of restoration.
To the one who has squandered their gift through sin, Jesus does not say, “Too late.”
He says, “Come home. What you lost, I can restore. What you wasted, I can redeem. The future you fear is gone—I can give back to you in a greater way than you imagine.”
And to the self-righteous heart that has cut itself off from others, Jesus does not say, “You are condemned.”
He says, “Return to mercy. Come back into communion. The door you closed I can reopen, if you will only turn and receive the mercy you once refused.”
For the God who gives these warnings is the same God who raises the dead.
If He can give life back to a corpse, He can give the future back to the sinner.
If He can pull Lazarus out of a tomb, He can pull the self-righteous out of their own pride.
Conclusion: The God Who Warns Because He Loves
So let us hear Jesus’ teachings on adultery and divorce not as stones thrown at us, but as hands reaching toward us.
He calls out to the sinner because He loves the sinner.
He unmasks the self-righteous because He wants to save them from themselves.
He warns to protect, exposes to heal, and commands to redeem.
Let us therefore return to the God who does not cast us away,
and let us hold fast the precious gift of fidelity—
not out of fear,
but out of gratitude to the One who guards our future and binds our lives in His mercy.
Amen.