The Body: Fallen yet Redeemed

On April 16,1980,John Paul II began the second cycle of his reflections on the human body, sex, and marriage, by reflecting on this passage from the Gospel of Matthew: “You have heard that it was said, “You shall not commit adultery.” But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart” Mt. 5:27-28). This passage forms part of the famous Sermon on the Mount in which Jesus radically corrects the Israelites’ inadequate “way of understanding and carrying out” the moral law of the Old Covenant. It, along with the passage in which Christ refers to the “beginning,” is key for our understanding of the theology of the body.

In order to understand Matthew 5:27-28 properly, John Paul II reminds us that we must place and read these two passages in their wider context. That wider context is given us in Matthew 5:17 where Jesus says: “Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets, I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill them.” This defines the wider context which helps us appreciate better the full import of the words of Jesus about the sixth commandment which prohibits adultery.

What did Jesus mean by fulfilling the law? The Jews knew God’s commands by heart. But the way they have kept them left much to be desired: they did not live the Ten Commandments the way God had intended. Instead, they super-imposed upon God’s laws their own faulty human and legal interpretations. Such is what happened with the commandment about adultery.

Jesus came to fulfill the law by revealing to the Israelites its real meaning, the meaning that God Himself intended. Only by understanding how God intended the commandments to be embraced and lived can we render justice to it, the justice which God willed. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus calls his listeners, and all of us for that matter, to go beyond a merely human and legalistic interpretation of the commandment: You shall not commit adultery. For as Jesus said: “Unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven” (Mt. 5:20).