It is possible to keep the letter of a commandment and still break it. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus quoted two of the ten — “You shall not murder” and “You shall not commit adultery” — and then went straight to the heart.
Anger and contempt toward a brother already stand under judgment (Matthew 5:21-22). Looking at a woman to lust after her is adultery in the heart (Matthew 5:27-28).
This is not a new law replacing the old. Jesus had just said, “I didn’t come to destroy, but to fulfill” (Matthew 5:17). He was showing what the commandments were reaching for all along — the same thing God promised through Jeremiah: a law written not on stone, but on the heart (Jeremiah 31:33; Hebrews 8:10).
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