Matthew 5:27-32

Matthew 5:27-32 
English Standard Version (ESV)

  If I told you today that you would wake up tomorrow with your heart's greatest treasure having been granted to you, what would you have?  A big house?  A great marriage?  Eleven billion dollars?  World peace?  The Kingdom of God?
  Here, Jesus is teaching us to be careful what we desire.  It's easy to think that the desirous wanderings of our mind often have no real effect, but Jesus is warning us -- our mind can lead our heart places if we're not careful.  Spend enough time idly dreaming of something, and it'll train your heart to desire that thing, whether you mean for it to or not. 
  We also have to be careful how we treat one another.  We can treat each other within the letter of the Law without honoring them.  Jesus is teaching the crowd that the Law may permit divorce, but that to do so in that day and age left a woman perilously isolated and in danger of having to scrape out a meager existence, perhaps by illicit means.  Perhaps a divorce was permitted within the Law, but it didn't honor the other person.  Jesus calls us to consider whether our actions honor the other person to the highest degree possible.  Are your actions honoring the other person?  How do we root out every bit of selfishness in our actions?  This is one of the hardest challenges we have -- to do nothing selfishly, but to always think of the other.
 
  It's a high bar Jesus sets for us -- and this is the wonder of Christianity.  There is always more we can do.  We are always taking another step on the narrow way of discipleship.  We never make it to a point where we can coast -- we're always growing, always learning, always sinning and coming back for forgiveness, always finding grace and love and being re-energized to serve and to love.