Questions & Answers with Dr. Bob Burrelli


Is sin that I commit only in my mind just as bad as when I live it out?


According to Jesus’ teaching in his Sermon on the Mount, a man commits adultery by sheer lusting and murder by simply thinking it. How can lust be adultery and hate be murder? God judges our hearts. His law, the Ten Commandments, holds our thought life accountable. This explains why the religious leaders of Jesus’ day wanted to kill Him; He brought the right meaning to the Law and, in so doing, condemned them along with everyone else. This is also why we need to preach the Law to unbelievers before we given them the good news of the gospel; they must know they are lawbreakers and condemned if they will ever see their desperate state before God and need to be saved from His wrath.

The prophet says that the heart is deceitful and above all things desperately wicked (Jeremiah 17:9). Jesus taught his disciples “Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and is expelled? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and these defile a person. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person” (Matthew 15:17). As a result of this heart condition, Paul declares, “None is righteous, no not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one” (Romans 3:10-12). “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).

In summary, we are guilty for entertaining sinful thoughts. Just because we might never commit them to the work of our hands, the desire is nevertheless there. The idea is that we would if we could get away with it. It is like the child who is made to sit down and says, “I’m sitting down on the outside, but standing up on the inside”. Sin in the heart is just as damning before God as if it were carried out, and we must repent to God immediately for it.

There is an important distinction that we should make at this point between sin that stays in the heart and sin that comes out in practice. The two have different consequences. A man cannot get AIDS from lusting after a prostitute. The consequences to sin lived out can have a devastating impact on our lives as well as on the lives of others and can, in many instances, be lasting or even stay with us for the rest of our lives, if they don’t prove fatal! But this is not to minimize sin committed only in the heart. And to believe that as long as we are not hurting anyone, we can entertain sinful thoughts in our minds all day long is to believe the devil’s lie. May it never be! God is grieved when He is not the object of our desires. May we find God’s grace sufficient to live each day putting to death whatever draws us away from thinking God’s thoughts after Him.