Unpacking the Baggage
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27 “You have heard that it was said, Don’t commit adultery.
28 But I say to you that every man who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery in his heart.
29 And if your right eye causes you to fall into sin, tear it out and throw it away. It’s better that you lose a part of your body than that your whole body be thrown into hell.
30 And if your right hand causes you to fall into sin, chop it off and throw it away. It’s better that you lose a part of your body than that your whole body go into hell.
Unpacking the Baggage
Unpacking the Baggage
If you travel by air, you will recognize this. A bar-coded tag is placed on your checked bag at their airport counter and you watch it as it heads down a conveyor belt, presumably to be loaded onto the same plane on which you are about to fly.
Some hours later, you arrive at your destination, and make your way to baggage claim. There, you stand with 200 other passengers, waiting as the carousel went round and round almost magically spitting out piece after piece of luggage. One by one each passenger spotted their luggage, pulled it off with a smile and heads for their hotel. The last bag appears on the carousel—and it is not yours.
There you stand in the airport. No clean clothes, no toiletries, no underwear, nothing but the clothes on your back. Before you think you are somehow unique, realize that airlines lose about 26 million bags each and every year. So despite the terrible inconvenience, the reality is that you are just a small part of a much bigger statistic.
You might feel like the guy who was standing in line to buy an airline ticket. He stepped up to the counter with three pieces of luggage. He said, “Ma’am I want this first suit case to go to Phoenix, the second suitcase to go to Seattle, and the third one to go to New York.” Dumbfounded, the attendant said, “Sir, I am sorry, but we can’t do that.” The man said, “I don’t know why not. You did it last week.”
There is nothing worse than losing baggage… unless it is baggage you need to lose. The truth of the matter is most of us have some type of baggage we carry around with us all the time that we need to lose.
It weighs down our relationships with our friends, family, co-workers and neighbors. Often, it destroys marriages, dissolves friendships, and damages our abilities to relate properly to God.
Every time you bring two people together you are going to add baggage. Everybody brings some baggage into a relationship. The key to building and maintaining a healthy relationship is:
Being able to recognize you have baggage
Being willing to lose it (Merritt)
We come to texts like today's with all of our baggage, which often makes these things hard to read. Sometimes we automatically shut down because of how the words have been used to perpetuate damaging patriarchal ideas about modesty. This baggage can cause us to look at this text through a lens of unnecessary-yet still very real-debilitating shame.
Or sometimes we come to a text like today's with an overwhelming sense of guilt over things we've done or the ways we've failed. Maybe it's something from a distant past that is still close enough to cause unease.
Sometimes we come to this text with immense anger because we carry the baggage of watching a marriage fall apart due to adultery. Or maybe because we are a child who was born from an affair, which makes it so hard to read this text without feeling some sort of weight.
The truth is, this is a text that is hard to separate from our baggage. We should try because there is something here for us to wrestle with, something that is important for us to know. And maybe it is even more important for us to wrestle with because of the ways it has been misused, so we can discover the way this passage should truly be about restoration, love, and respecting the image of God in others. If we take the time to work through this text and what it truly means, maybe we will begin to unpack some of the unnecessary baggage we've been carrying as well.
Defining Lust
Defining Lust
The Greek word translated as "lust" here is a verb, not a noun. We typically use nouns and adjectives to describe emotions, but a verb describing the action of lusting emphasizes the fact that it is more than just having certain feelings or emotions.
In fact, the root of the word is the same root as the word for "covet," which is a strong, sinful desire to have something that does not belong to you-and often the willingness to do whatever it takes to get it.
Our culture often thinks of lust as the beginning of love, but that is a mistake. If lust is linked to coveting as the Greek root implies, then lust cannot lead to love; it can only lead to sin.
One pastor wrote:
Living with lust is like being shackled to a lunatic. Lust is the craving for salt by a person who is dying of thirst. Lust confuses intensity with intimacy. Lust does not call for condemnation. Persons sitting in this Sanctuary today struggling already feel enough shame. I'm not coming to shame anybody but I've come to say to you, there is a better way. I've come to say to you there is a way of liberation; there is a way of freedom; there is a way of meaning. It's called Love. (Olds)
Reexamining what lust means is incredibly important for deconstructing the baggage we bring to this text. Jesus is trying to humanize women in a culture that often dehumanizes them.
A helpful story for us, in wrestling with this text, is the narrative of the woman caught in adultery in John 8. The religious leaders bring a woman to be stoned for committing adultery. We all know it takes at least two people to commit adultery, yet only the woman is held accountable according to this text. Jesus says the famous words, "Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her," and in response, the leaders drop their stones.
Another helpful story to contextualize this text is the Old Testament story of Judah and Tamar in
1 At that time, Judah moved away from his brothers and settled near an Adullamite named Hirah.
2 There Judah saw the daughter of a Canaanite whose name was Shua, and he married her. After he slept with her,
3 she became pregnant and gave birth to a son, whom she named Er.
4 She became pregnant again, gave birth to a son, and named him Onan.
5 Then she gave birth to one more son and named him Shelah. She was in Chezib when she gave birth to him.
6 Judah married his oldest son Er to a woman named Tamar.
7 But the Lord considered Judah’s oldest son Er immoral, and the Lord put him to death.
8 Judah said to Onan, “Go to your brother’s wife, do your duty as her brother-in-law, and provide children for your brother.”
9 Onan knew the children wouldn’t be his so when he slept with his brother’s wife, he wasted his semen on the ground, so he wouldn’t give his brother children.
10 The Lord considered what he did as wrong and put him to death too.
11 Judah said to Tamar his daughter-in-law, “Stay as a widow in your father’s household until my son Shelah grows up.” He thought Shelah would die like his brothers had. So Tamar went and lived in her father’s household.
12 After a long time, Judah’s wife the daughter of Shua died. Then, after a period of mourning, he and his neighbor Hirah the Adullamite went up to Timnah, to those who were shearing his sheep.
13 Tamar was told, “Your father-in-law is now on his way up to Timnah to shear his sheep.”
14 So Tamar took off the clothing she wore as a widow, covered herself with a veil, put on makeup, and sat down at the entrance to Enaim on the road to Timnah, since she realized that although Shelah had already grown up, she hadn’t been given to him as a wife.
15 Judah saw her and thought she was a prostitute because she had covered her face.
16 He turned to her beside the road and said, “Let me sleep with you,” because he didn’t know she was his daughter-in-law. She said, “What will you give me for sleeping with you?”
17 He said, “I will give you a kid goat from my flock.” She said, “Only if you give me some deposit, as security to guarantee that you will send it.”
18 He said, “What kind of deposit should I give you?” And she said, “Your seal, its cord, and the staff in your hand.” He gave these to her, slept with her, and she became pregnant by him.
19 Then she got up, left, and took off her veil, dressing once again in the clothing she wore as a widow.
20 Judah sent the kid goat with his neighbor Hirah the Adullamite so he could take back the deposits from the woman, but he couldn’t find her.
21 He asked the locals of that place, “Where’s the consecrated worker who was at Enaim on the road?” But they said, “There’s no consecrated worker here.”
22 So he went back to Judah and said, “I couldn’t find her. The locals even said, ‘There’s no holy woman here.’ ”
23 Judah said, “Let her keep everything so we aren’t laughed at. I did send this kid goat, but you couldn’t find her.”
24 About three months later, Judah was told, “Your daughter-in-law Tamar has become a prostitute and is now pregnant because of it.” And Judah said, “Bring her out so that she may be burned.”
25 When she was brought out, she sent this message to her father-in-law, “I’m pregnant by the man who owns these things. See if you recognize whose seal, cord, and staff these are.”
26 Judah recognized them and said, “She’s more righteous than I am, because I didn’t allow her to marry my son Shelah.” Judah never knew her intimately again.
27 When she gave birth, she discovered she had twins in her womb.
28 At birth, one boy put out his hand, and the midwife took it and tied a red thread on his hand, saying, “This one came out first.”
29 As soon as he pulled his hand back, his brother came out, and she said, “You’ve burst out on your own.” So he was named Perez.
30 Afterward, his brother with the red thread on his hand came out, and he was named Zerah.
There are many complex ethical questions worthy of attention in this story, what's important today is the fact that Judah knowingly has sex with a woman he presumes is a prostitute, then seeks to have his daughter-in-law burned to death for her adultery when he finds out about her pregnancy. He only backs down upon discovering the children are his, from his own sin.
This Old Testament story illustrates once again how a patriarchal society is eager to lay blame solely at the feet of women for the sin of adultery.
Jesus in our text seeks to emphasize the shared responsibility of men in adultery in a culture that has a tendency to scapegoat women. These are just a couple of examples, but there are other biblical examples as well. Patriarchal societies often hold women responsible for the sexual ethics of the men around them. In Matthew 5 Jesus shifts that focus from women to the covetous act of male lust toward women. Jesus is calling men to stop treating the women around them as mere objects.
Responsibility for Sin
29 And if your right eye causes you to fall into sin, tear it out and throw it away. It’s better that you lose a part of your body than that your whole body be thrown into hell.
These seem like incredibly harsh words, and they are often interpreted as an exaggeration, but when we examine them in the context of the definition of lust, they seem far less exaggerative.
These are drastic words intended to prevent a tragic act. Coveting another human leads down a path toward rape or other forms of sexual violence, abuse, manipulation, and control. Jesus's harsh words here show the lengths to which someone should go in order to prevent inflicting their own sin upon others.
While the exaggeration isn't meant to be taken literally, the meaning behind it absolutely is.
If your desires are leading you to victimize others, do whatever you need to do to keep that from happening.
This is one area where we struggle as a culture. Instead of helping people find freedom from their sin, we often cause them to push their desires down deeper, repressing them, pretending they don't exist. Then we are caught off guard when "heroes" of ours are found caught up in sexual sin even though we haven't created any sort of "eye-gouging" systems for them.
We must create spaces for people to talk about the places they are struggling, in order to address the root of the problem. These spaces include accountability systems, mental health resources, systems of corporate confession, encouraging true repentance, and systems of restitution. A culture must be created and fostered that humanizes others and roots out the type of toxicity that leads to lust in the first place.
We have struggled with this in the past, evidenced by our tendency to blame victims. Modesty culture that focuses on women is an example. Another example is the way women are shamed and blamed for certain sexual ethics while their male counterparts are applauded and celebrated for the exact same actions. Once again, this is not new. These patterns and systems are evident in biblical narratives too.
It's important to note that the blame for lust lies with the one who is lusting-not the objects or victims of that lust. The verse is speaking to the sinner: "gouge out your eye," not "ask your victim to cover up." This is an incredibly important distinction. We are responsible for our own sins. We are responsible for the consequences of our actions.
If we take following Jesus seriously, we will do what we can to care for others. Jesus affirms repeatedly, with both his words and his actions throughout the Gospels, that women aren't objects or worth less than men but are created equally in the image of God. Thus, they should be treated with the same respect and dignity as men.
28 There is neither Jew nor Greek; there is neither slave nor free; nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
That verse is a helpful reminder for us here.The kingdom of God includes women and men together, as equals.
Lent is a season that is designed to "gouge out eyes." It is a time of self-reflection and examination to root out sin that often goes overlooked. It's important for us to take time to examine ourselves to find where there is sin, and remove it. Fasting, prayer, and Bible reading all help with this, but so do times in community, counseling, and discipleship groups.
When we find sin, it is important not to ignore it but to confess it. Often we view confession as being between us and Jesus, but we also need to rediscover and reaffirm the value of corporate confession. When sin is allowed to be private, it has space to fester and grow. Find others with whom you can confess your sin.
When others confess their sin to us, it's important to be gracious-but also not to ignore it. We can forgive and be gracious while also seeking wholeness and wellness for others. If someone needs counseling (whether spiritual or mental health), that needs to be addressed.
At times, there are deep consequences for sin. If lust has caused someone to harm another person or could cause someone to harm another person, that needs to be directly addressed. It is our responsibility to prevent and keep people safe, as much as is within our power.
There are numerous and terrible stories of the way sexual sin has been the downfall of Christians because of secrecy, dishonesty, and a lack of confessional spaces. These sins, once exposed, must not be dealt with secretly, and there must be consequences. Victims live with immense consequences. We must not protect those who create victims. Offering grace does not mean forgoing consequences.
Living in the Kingdom of God
It's important to read this text in light of Jesus's larger sermon in Matthew 5-7, which is all about what it means to live as a citizen of the kingdom of God. Citizens of the kingdom of God exhibit the fruit of the Spirit. Citizens of the kingdom of God live lives of love.
Sexual ethics is also part of the kingdom of God. These verses are not meant to be separated from the larger conversation about living in the kingdom of God.
The sexual ethic commanded by Jesus includes keeping covenants, and adultery goes against the covenant of marriage.
But at the same time, Jesus's sexual ethic, and what he commands for citizens of the kingdom of God, is broader than fidelity in marriage. It is centered around the humanity of others, respecting others, taking responsibility for our own sin, viewing others as humans worthy of dignity rather than as objects to be obtained and conquered. The kingdom of God values people over individual desires.
The greatest and second-greatest commandments from a few verses earlier should be applied here too. What do sexual ethics look like for those of us who seek to love God with our whole beings, and to love our neighbors as ourselves?
With this kingdom-of-God view in mind, these verses bloom into something more than just a quick comment about keeping our sexual thoughts and actions in check. Instead, we realize they are about what it means to be a disciple of Jesus.
Conclusion
These verses are not meant to shame. They are not meant to give more control to a group of people who already have a lot of control.
These verses are about how we live in light of the kingdom of God, as citizens of the kingdom of God-the love and respect we extend to those around us, and the responsibility we must accept for our own sin. Lent is the perfect season to work through these hard words, to unpack the baggage they may bring up for us, and allow them to challenge us to be better disciples.
Remember that you are worth saving and that not much will happen without your heartfelt surrender. Letting your convictions run your life instead of your feelings and impulses is the only path to maturity.
Jesus Christ is waiting for you to take him seriously. He has more good for you than you can imagine. Only he can make us the kind of men and women we have dreamed about. And, I tell you from experience, once this battle is settled, the Lord will show you the next one!
May we take the time to examine our hearts well so that we may more faithfully live as citizens of the kingdom of God in all aspects of our lives.
Merritt, J. (n.d.). Ephesians 4:17--5:21 - lost baggage: Losing your baggage. Sermons.com. Retrieved March 19, 2022, from https://www.sermons.com/sermon/lost-baggage-losing-your-baggage/1470185
https://www.sermons.com/sermon/from-lust-to-love/1442828