“You shall not commit adultery.” (Exodus 20:14)
Just as with last week’s commandment on not murdering, this one may seem like an easy commandment to follow for some people. If you’re not married and haven’t been romantically involved with a married person, you may think you’re definitely in the clear on this one. Or if you are married and haven’t had an affair with someone else, you may think you’re doing just fine on this. But as we’ll see, the truth of this commandment goes deeper than that.
Jesus elaborates on the meaning of this commandment in Matthew 5:27-30: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to stumble, 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 stumble, 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.”
That seems a bit harsh, right? Even looking at a woman (or a man) lustfully means you’ve committed adultery. This commandment is not quite so easy to follow now, especially in our culture today where it seems that so many advertising campaigns are trying to get people to look at others in a lustful manner, just to sell their product.
While we know that breaking any of the commandments is sin and punishable by death (Romans 6:23), we see in the Old Testament that adultery specifically carried that consequence. Leviticus 20:10 says, “If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife—with the wife of his neighbor—both the adulterer and the adulteress are to be put to death.” Similarly, Deuteronomy 22:22 says, “If a man is found sleeping with another man’s wife, both the man who slept with her and the woman must die. You must purge the evil from Israel.”
Why is adultery, or any sexual sin for that matter, to be dealt with so harshly? All other sins are committed outside a person’s body, while sexual sins are committed inside one’s own body. 1 Corinthians 6:18 tells us this: “Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body.” For more on this, check out this post or this post.
As with the other commandments I’ve written about so far, I’d like to look at what Luther’s Small Catechism says about this one’s meaning: “We should fear and love God so that we lead a sexually pure and decent life in what we say and do, and husband and wife love and honor each other.” This is a good paraphrase of what we should do, instead of simply hearing what we’re not supposed to do. It all comes back to loving and honoring God and therefore loving and honoring one another - in this case our spouses. To learn more about this, check out what the Bible says about sexual relationships both before marriage and after marriage.
How are you doing at staying pure on this commandment? Are you making intentional steps to keep your eyes away from the things that may cause you to break it? I encourage you this week to look at your life and what you allow yourself to see, and examine where you may be breaking this commandment.
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