Matthew 5:28 But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.

One of the most absurd comments I ever heard after this passage was read came from a man sitting in the pew next to me.

“Well if I am guilty anyway, I might as well go ahead and do it.”

That is tantamount to saying Jesus encourages us to sin. How absurd is that? Jesus was reaching into the hearts of men that felt pious because they had not acted on their deepest desires. Piety is not a matter of curbed desires, it is a matter of a pure heart. Any who think that they can escape justice just because they didn’t commit the crime do not understand the righteous demands of His justice.

Hebrews 4:12 For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

Dividing by the sword is judgement and if thoughts and intentions were not important in judgement, then His Word would not have included them.

Who among us can stand up to that kind of scrutiny? I cannot, but that fact does not give me the right to act unseemly. We should view this in light of the righteous demand of that court.

Philippians 3:9-10 And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith: That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death;

My Righteous Judge, find me in Christ.

Psalm 25:3 Yea, let none that wait on thee be ashamed: let them be ashamed which transgress without cause.

Yesterday I ended with Psalm 25:1-5 and in doing so I was struck by the phrasing of the third verse, without cause. Is a transgression with cause acceptable? It should not be since it is still a transgression. A sin is a sin is a sin. So here again, I give pause for a correct understanding.

From a grammatical standpoint allow me to address the colon as a dividing point. There is a comparative between the two sides of the colon. The only word that exists on both sides is shame. Who is to be ashamed and who is not to be ashamed.

If we go about thinking that all we have to do to justify our transgression is to assign blame; we will only find ourselves guilty of another transgression, judgement.

Matthew 7:1-2 Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.

This goes to a weakness within ourselves which is as old as sin itself and that is in finding fault in others to rationalize our own failures.

Genesis 3:12 And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.

The judgement of Adam was not simply that the woman had played her part in his mistake but that God had set all this in motion by creating her in the first place. “If you had not made her, she would not have tempted me, and then I would not have sinned.”

I cannot tell you how many times I have heard it said, “Don’t blame me, God made me this way.” Blaming God for our own weakness is a prescription for conviction. What defendant ever won a court case by blaming the judge?