Most people in our culture today don’t often associate the word "God" with the word "sex". In fact, for most people, the only thing they think they know about God and sex is that God is against it. Often Christians are thought to be hung up about sex, accused of viewing the human body as dirty and human sexuality as shameful. Words like "repressed," "Victorian," and "prude" are the words that our culture uses when they think about the Bible’s view of sex.
Most people don’t know that this is closer to the ancient Greek view of sex popularized by the philosopher Plato centuries before Jesus was ever born. So there’s been a bit of confusion between the ancient Greek view of sexuality and the Christian view of sexuality.
And we Christians have often just encouraged the confusion. Most followers of Jesus today don’t talk about sexuality with nearly as much openness and honesty as the Bible itself does. Often our own confusion and struggles in this area has led us to reinforce the stereotype our culture has about Christians and sex.
But if Christians have sometimes been slow to address sexuality, our culture seems to obsessed with it. Of course, this is nothing particularly new, because human history is filled with examples of sexual indulgence. From the child molestation that swept through ancient Greece to the temple prostitution in the ancient Near East, from the orgies of the Roman empire to the American sexual revolution of the 1960s, every generation has struggled to control and understand sexuality. Today our media portrays most sexual behavior as harmless and morally neutral so long as it occurs between two consenting adults and doesn’t hurt anyone. Sex is used to sell everything from toothpaste to sportscars, a membership at the gym to a Caribbean cruise. People turn to sex to find excitement, fulfillment, spirituality, intimacy, adventure, and a host of other reasons. Our magazines seem obsessed to find the perfect sexual experience, and millions of Americans watch as people disclose their deepest, darkest sexual secrets on daytime TV.
So with all this sexual confusion, it seems that a discussion of the seventh commandment--God’s commandment against adultery--is particularly relevant. We’ve been in a series through the 10 commandments called LANDMARKS FOR A NEW MILLENNIUM. Today as we look at the seventh commandment we’re going to try to answer four questions. First, what does the seventh commandment actually address? Second, why is adultery wrong? Third, what leads people to adultery? And finally, how can we follow Jesus in an adulterous culture?
1. What Does the Seventh Commandment Address?
Let’s begin by looking at the seventh commandment together: "You shall not commit adultery" (Deu 5:18 NIV).
Now at first this commandment seems is pretty clear. After all, we all know what adultery is...right? Usually this word describes married people having sex with people other than their spouse; that’s it’s normal meaning (Tigay 71). But this same word can also refer to other kinds of immoral sexual conduct (NIDOTTE 3:2). So before we jump to conclusions, let’s let the rest of the book of Deuteronomy tell us what the seventh commandment is addressing.
I’ve mentioned before that the heart of the book of Deuteronomy--chapters 12 to 26--is an explanation of how the 10 commandments apply in the nation of Israel. We find specific case laws applying the seventh commandment in chapters 22-25, and you don’t have to turn there, but let me just describe some of the areas Moses applied the seventh commandment to. Of course, we find in-depth explanation of literal adultery: How to investigate it, and what to do if a person is found to have committed adultery (22:22). But a close reading of this section also reveals that pre-marital sex, prostitution, rape and incest are also forbidden on the basis of the seventh commandment. So this leads me to think that the seventh commandment covers more than just literal adultery.
So what does the seventh commandment address? THE SEVENTH COMMANDMENT FORBIDS ALL VIOLATIONS OF GOD’S BOUNDARIES FOR OUR SEXUALITY.
This is evident from how the seventh commandment is applied in the law of Moses. This is also how the Protestant Reformers Martin Luther and John Calvin understood the seventh commandment as well (Willimon and Hauerwas 94).
We find "no trespassing" signs throughout the Bible around various kinds of sexual activity. These "no trespassing" signs warn us that by stepping over these sexual boundaries we’ll short-circuit our relationship with God, undermine our relationships with those around us, and ultimately destroy ourselves in the process. So these "no trespassing" signs are for our own welfare, an expression of God’s love toward us.
Now what are some of these boundaries God has set up? An obvious boundary is literal adultery. Literal adultery is whenever a married person engages in any sort of sexual activity with a person other than his or her spouse. Next to the sin of idolatry--which is a violation of the first commandment--no other sin is as condemned more in the Bible than the sin of adultery. A University of Chicago study in 1996 found that 23% of married men and 15% of married women have committed adultery. Now the vast majority of Americans believe adultery is morally wrong. In fact, more people today believe adultery is morally wrong than twenty years ago. In 1977 75% of Americans said they thought adultery was morally wrong, but in 1997 that number was up to 86% (Handy). Yet our culture still glorifies adulterous relationships in popular movies like "The English Patient" and "The Bridges of Madison County."
Another violation of the seventh commandment is premarital sex. Now even though more people believe adultery is morally wrong today than in the 1970s, the same thing can’t be said for pre-marital sex. According to that University of Chicago study, in the 1970s 36% of Americans believed that "sex between an unmarried man and woman is always morally wrong," but by 1996 that number had dropped to 24%. The vast majority of people today see nothing wrong with sex between two unmarried consenting adults, yet the Bible is very consistent in its condemnation of this activity as displeasing to God and destructive to our relationships.
A third kind of sexual boundary addressed in the Bible is homosexuality. Now by homosexuality I’m not talking about same sex attraction, but I’m talking about same sex sexual behavior. Leviticus 18:22 says, "Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman..." In 1 Corinthians 6:9 the apostle Paul lumps "male prostitutes" and "homosexuals" along with other kinds of sexual sin forbidden by the seventh commandment. Now the Bible doesn’t mention homosexuality a lot simply because it wasn’t nearly as prevalent as adultery was in the ancient world, but it is mentioned about a dozen times. Of course homosexuality has been a huge issue in our culture the last few years or so. Many TV shows now have characters who are gay or lesbian, along with characters who are involved in pre-marital sex and adultery. According to Princeton University’s National Opinion Research Counsel only about 1% of the population is actively homosexual (Schmidt 102-3). According to that same study 74% of male homosexuals have more than 100 partners in their lifetime; 41% have more than 500; and 28% have more than 1000 (Schmidt 107). According to Christian author Tom Schmidt, "Promiscuity among homosexual men is not a mere stereotype, and it is not merely the majority experience--it is virtually the only experience" (108). But of course this is nothing new. Homosexuality permeated ancient Greek society (Barclay 143). Fourteen out of the first fifteen Roman Emperors were actively homosexual, with the Emperor Nero himself publicly marrying his male lover Sporus with an imperial wedding in Rome (Barclay 147-48). The Bible consistently calls same sex sexual activity a violation of God’s boundaries for our sexuality.
Finally, a fourth boundary is incest. Perhaps this goes without saying, but the mosaic law in the Bible condemns sex between close family members, as well as sex between adults and children.
So the seventh commandment isn’t just talking about literal adultery, but it’s actually forbidding all violations of God’s boundaries for our sexuality.
2. Why is Adultery Wrong?
That brings us to the question of why God forbids these things. Is God just a prude? Does God get mad when people have fun? Does God view our sexual desires as unnatural and dirty?
Well part of the problem is that we tend to focus too much of our attention on what God says not to do, and not enough attention looking at what God originally intended sex to be.
So let’s look at God’s original plan for sex. "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame" (Genesis 2:24-25 NIV).
Now remember that this passage occurs before there’s any sin in the world, so this is human sexuality in its most pure, undefiled form. What we have here is sex before sin, and this passage is foundational for understanding biblical human sexuality.
We learn here that God created what we call marriage, where a man and a woman leave their own families and enter into a special relationship. The word "be united" here is a technical word in Hebrew for establishing and maintaining a special covenant relationship (NIDOTTE 1:910-11). This is far more than a social contract, but it’s a covenant relationship, where the man and the woman literally "cleave" to each other in mutual commitment and faithfulness. This word expresses a state of loyalty, affection, and closeness. This results in the two being one flesh, which certainly includes the sexual union. Finally, we read that they were nude and without any embarrassment, inhibition or shame.
The picture of v. 25 seems to be what all the secular books and magazines about sexuality are trying to achieve, but here we find this experience of sexual fulfillment and enjoyment is something only achieved in relationsihip with God.
Here we learn why sexual sin is wrong. GOD DESIGNED OUR SEXUALITY TO BE ENJOYED IN THE COVENANT OF MARRIAGE.
God created marriage to be a covenant relationship. This is a creation ordinance that’s given to the entire human race. It doesn’t say, "For this reason a Christian man will leave his father and his mother" or "for this reason religious people will leave their parents." This is something God gave to all of humanity.
You see, it’s not true that God is against homosexual behavior and in favor of heterosexual behavior. What God is in favor of is marriage between a man and a woman, and because of that God is against any sexual activity that undermines marriage, whether it’s homosexual or heterosexual. God knows that men and women are never so vulnerable as when they lie naked in bed with each other, so God created a covenant relationship for that vulnerability to be expressed in (Hybels 83).Why did God create our sexuality in the first place? God created our sexuality for reproduction. Part of God’s commission to men and women is to produce the next generation of people, and God gave us our sexuality to do this.
Now in the Roman Catholic church this is believed to be the only reason for sexuality, but when the Protestant Reformation swept through Europe in the sixteenth century, the Reformers went back to the Bible to see what the purpose of sex was. They found that although reproduction was one of the reasons why God made sex, it wasn’t the only reason. God also made our sexuality for intimacy. The sexual union is the closest expression of intimacy in the marriage bond, where we’re not only united in body, but we’re also united in soul and spirit. No matter how much people might try, when they sleep with someone, they don’t leave their soul at home, but they’re united not only physically, but also spiritually. This is why sexual sin deeply wounds people far more than any other kind of sin. This is also why the husband/wife relationship in marriage is a picture of the intimacy God wants with his church (Eph 5). Finally, God created our sexuality for our enjoyment. Sex is God’s wedding gift at every marriage, for them to enjoy with each other in the strongest and most serious of all covenant relationships. The Old Testament book Song of Solomon is an entire book that celebrates the enjoyment of erotic love in the context of marriage. Of course in some extreme cases the marriage becomes a place of violence and fear, but this falls far short of the covenant relationship God intended. And although the single life is an entirely acceptable way to serve God, there’s something about the marriage union that’s especially blessed by God.
All of us fall short of the ideal expressed in Genesis 2 because of our own sinfulness and the sinfulness of others, but this is the model, the paradigm.
Sex outside of God’s boundaries isn’t sinful because it’s dirty or shameful. Homosexual activity isn’t sinful because it’s gross or because many people find it repulsive. According to the Bible, every sex act that’s called a sin is sinful because it’s a violation of marriage (Schmidt 52-53). God’s not against sex, but he’s for marriage.
3. What Leads People To Commit Adultery?
That brings us to the question of what leads people to sexual sin. Robert Wright’s book "The Moral Animal" suggests that men are genetically predisposed to sleep around (Jones). According to Wright, it’s in a man’s best interest from an evolutionary perspective to impregnate as many women as possible to ensure that he passes his genes to the next generation. I wonder what Mrs. Wright thinks of that idea.
And of course all of us are familiar with the current debate about what causes people to be attracted to members of the same sex. Some claim that gay men and women are born with a same sex attraction, that its genetically determined. Others claim that same sex attraction is a result of environmental factors.
Jesus addressed the issue of what causes us to sin sexually in his Sermon on the Mount.
"You have heard that it was said, ’Do not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart" (Matthew 5:27-28 NIV).
Jesus quotes the seventh commandment, but then he gets to the heart of the issue. Now let’s rule out some things Jesus is not saying first. Jesus is not saying that sexual attraction is sinful (Carson 44). Jesus is not saying that if you’ve already lusted, you might as well follow through, as if physical adultery is no different than adultery in the heart.
Jesus is saying that lust is the root of adulterous behavior. The text literally reads in Greek, "If anyone looks at a woman for the purpose of lust." So again, this isn’t attraction, but it’s mentally undressing another person, dwelling in the inward fantasy of what it would be like to be with that person. Robertson McQuilkin defines lust here as "to desire any kind of sexual pleasure...with anyone who may not legitimately provide that pleasure...Any thought that would be immoral to act out is sinful lust" (217). This of course makes all of us guilty of adultery.
So Jesus tells us what leads people to adultery. We are lured into adultery--or any other kind of sexual sin--WHEN WE ALLOW LUST TO RULE OUR LIVES.
When we allow lust full reign over our thoughts and emotions, it’s just a matter of time until we start acting it out. A life ruled by lust makes our bodies the slaves of our desires, and the more we feed our sexual desires with lustful thoughts and images, they more out of control they become. A person who continually feeds his mind with pornographic images and sexual fantasy ultimately becomes entangled by those desires like a fly in a spider web. The more we indulge in our desires without any sort of self-control, the more our lusts rule over us, and in some cases it becomes a full blow sexual addiction. For men in particular this is a danger, and many Christian men struggle with recurrent sexual fantasies and pornography. But the root cause of sexual sin is a life that’s ruled by lust.
4. How do we Follow Jesus in an Adulterous Culture?
This leads us to our final question: How can we follow Jesus in an adulterous culture? Does it mean reenacting adultery laws and homosexuality laws? I don’t think so, because I’m not sure those kinds of laws ever worked, and we certainly don’t see the early church responding to the sexual depravity of their own age that way. Bible teacher William Barclay reminds us, "The moral problems which face our own generation are far from new. The fact that they are not new does not make them any less serious, but it does remind us that Christianity is not facing anything which it was not called upon to face before" (125). We’re in the same boat first century Christians were in.
Jesus addresses how we are to follow him in a culture that encourages us to indulge our sexuality indiscriminately.
"If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell" (Matthew 5:29-30 NIV).
Now obviously Jesus isn’t being literal here. Jesus is using a teaching devise called hyperbole, where he deliberately exaggerates to make his point. We know that because our eyes and our hands aren’t what cause us to lust. The primary sex organ is the mind, not our eyes, our hands, or any other part of our body. There’s no evidence that one-eyed people lust any less than two-eyed people (Robinson). There’s no study to suggest that one handed people are less sexually promiscuous than two handed people.
Jesus is using this extreme example to teach us that sexual sin is serious, and we ought to be ready to take extreme measures to deal with sin. New Testament scholar Don Carson says Jesus’ point here is "we are to deal drastically with sin. We must not pamper it, flirt with it, enjoy nibbling a little around the edges" (44). The German Christian Deitrich Bonhoeffer says this teaching reminds us "No sacrifice is too great if it enables us to conquer a lust which cuts us off from Jesus" (148).
How can we follow Jesus in an adulterous culture? Jesus calls us to a lifestyle of sexual faithfulness. I’ve always loved the motto for the United States Marine Corps: Semper Fi, always faithful. That’s what calls us to in the area of our sexuality.
For the Christian attracted to members of the same sex, this teaching means that this person is committed to living a single life of sexual abstinence in his or her commitment to Jesus. For the single person, this means that he or she is willing to go against the grain of our culture and live a morally pure, virtuous life. For the married couple, this means that even though their marriage surely falls short of the ideal, that they’re committed to being faithful to each other. Jesus doesn’t call us to be homosexual or heterosexual, but he calls us to first and foremost be his disciples, and as his disciples to only live sexually within the bounds he’s set up.
That means saying no to some things our body wants to say yes to, refusing to indulge in sexually indiscriminate behavior, being faithful first and foremost to Jesus as our Lord and Master.
Until we become committed to this kind of radical life, we’ll lack the credibility to address the horrible sexual confusion and destruction in our culture.
Every person struggles with their sexuality, and for every Christian it’s a battle to place his or her sexuality under the Lordship of Jesus. Some struggle to even think a positive thought about sex. And others struggle with sexual temptations that entice them beyond God’s boundaries for sexuality. Every follower of Jesus struggles. But until we’re committed to living a countercultural life of discipleship to Jesus, we’ll find our voice about sexual sin muted and dismissed because we lack the credibility to speak with moral authority.God is calling us to a lifestyle of sexual faithfulness.
Conclusion
The bottom line of the seventh commandment is this: Our sexuality is a good gift from God, to be treasured, protected and enjoyed in the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman. I didn’t make this up, and sometimes my desires seek to rebel against this reality. Yet this is what God has spoken, and this friends is where real life, real fulfillment, and real enjoyment is truly found.
Sources
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. 1937. The Cost of Discipleship. New York: Macmillan Publishing.
Douma, J. 1996. The Ten Commandments: Manual For the Christian Life. Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing.
Handy, Bruce. "How We Really Feel About Infidelity" Time (8/31/98).
Hughes, R. Kent. 1993. Disciplines of Grace: God’s Ten Words for a Vital Spiritual Life. Wheaton: Crossway Books.
Hybels, Bill. 1985. Laws that Liberate. Wheaton: Victor Books.
Jones, Stanton. "My Genes Made Me Do It" Christianity Today (1995)
Louw, J. P. and E. Nida (editors). 1989. Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains. New York: United Bible Societies. CD-Rom edition.
Mehl, Ron. 1998. The Ten(der) Commandments. Portland: Multnomah.
NIDOTTE = VanGemeren, Willem A. (editor). 1997. The New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis. Grand Rapids: Zondervan.
Schlessinger, Larua with Rabbi Stewart Vogel. 1998. The Ten Commandments: The Significance of God’s Laws In Everyday Life. New York: Harper Perennial.
Schmidt, Thomas E. 1995. Straight & Narrow? Compassion & Clarity in the Homosexual Debate (InterVarsity Press).
Smith, Tom. 1997. Changes In Families and Family Values (University of Chicago National Opinion Research Center).
