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Lust and Adultery of the Heart
Matthew 5 does not present Jesus as throwing away the Old Testament. He says the opposite: he has not come to abolish the Law and the Prophets but to fulfill them. Then he takes familiar commands about murder, adultery, truthfulness, justice, and neighbor-love and drives kingdom righteousness into the heart, relationships, speech, retaliation, and even love of enemies.
Jesus quotes the adultery command and moves from the act to the coveting gaze and intention that violates covenant faithfulness before the act occurs. His severe eye-and-hand imagery stresses decisive resistance to sin. He then addresses divorce within the same faithfulness movement.
Where this fits in the story: the Decalogue forbids adultery and coveting, while Deuteronomy 24 regulates a divorce certificate without presenting divorce as creation’s ideal.
Where Scripture takes it next: in Matthew 19 Jesus returns to divorce and explicitly reaches behind Moses’ concession to Genesis 1–2: “from the beginning it was not so.”
Evidence boundary: the meaning and scope of porneia in the exception clause are disputed. A responsible reading should present the serious interpretive options without pretending a difficult pastoral/legal question is linguistically simple. Hyperbolic body-part language should not be read as a command to self-mutilate.
Proverbs warns against lusting after another woman’s beauty and shows adultery as self-destructive; Jesus intensifies the command against adultery by addressing lust in the heart.
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