November 5, 2006

The Seventh Word: Do Not Commit Adultery
Exodus 20:1-2, 14

I have often heard it said that John 11:35—“Jesus wept”—is the shortest verse in the Bible. While this might be true in our English Bibles, Exodus 20:13, 14 and 15—the sixth, seventh and eighth commandments—are actually all shorter based upon the original languages. “No killing.” “No stealing.” And now, two brief but no less important words: “No adultery.”

Before even considering the wider implications of this seventh commandment, it is striking simply to reflect on its inclusion and positioning in the Ten Commandments themselves. To include a commandment prohibiting adultery, for one thing, elevates our sexuality and sexual practices to the level of the sacred. In a day and age when many people are obsessed with sex and play around as though sexual activities were a mere sport, the Bible says otherwise. Sex is sacred, and God cares deeply about how we manage and express our sexuality.

It is likewise significant to notice that this adultery commandment appears between the commandments prohibiting killing and stealing. According to American law, both killing and stealing are, under most circumstances, illegal activities. Adultery, however, is not. Just this past June, 22 year-old Dustin Weigel of New Cumberland allegedly killed William Burnham of Carroll Township when he discovered Burnham in bed with his wife. While Weigel has been charged with murder, his wife walked away free. Murder is illegal. Adultery, once again, is not.

But the Bible looks at this matter of legalities quite differently. When people protest to me that something they might be doing is not illegal, I typically respond that they are not asking the right questions. The calling of Christ’s followers is not simply to obey the laws of our government, but to do what is right and honoring in God’s sight. The follow-up question to “Is it legal,” then, is “Is it moral?” “Is it right?” One can certainly follow the laws of our land and still disregard the wishes of God. According to these commandments, Weigel’s wife would be considered no less guilty than Weigel himself. “Jealousy arouses a husband’s fury,” we read in Proverbs 6:34, “and he shows no restraint when he takes revenge.” And so the seventh word announces with simplicity and clarity: “No adultery.”

But what, precisely, is wrong with adultery? In considering this, it is important to first point out that adultery specifically refers to sexual activity between a married person and someone other than his or her spouse. While the Bible has much to say about other sexual sins, including rape, pre-marital sex, incest and homosexual behaviors, this particular commandment zeroes in on sexual activities that compromise a person’s marriage vows.

Adultery, fundamentally, is a violation of trust at three levels. Adultery, first of all, reflects a lack of trust in God’s intentions for marriage so beautifully expressed in Genesis 2:18-25. Whatever deviations and short-comings we might find elsewhere in Scripture—Samson’s fling with a woman in Gaza, David’s affair with Bathsheba, Solomon’s stable of wives, or Amnon’s rape of his half-sister, Tamar—Genesis 2:18-25 establishes a marital ideal—one man and one woman leave their parents, come together and form one flesh. The resulting relationship supersedes in importance all other human relationships, and it is to be cherished and guarded. To commit adultery is to shun God’s intentions and to suggest that we know better than he does as to how to experience joy and contentment. So offensive, in fact, is adultery in God’s sight that he uses this same image over and over again to describe those who leave him in favor of other gods.

Adultery, furthermore, is a violation of a person’s own integrity. The Bible, as you well know, places a great deal of importance on the dependability of a person’s word. True signs of godly character include honesty and trustworthiness. Of the words that we speak and the vows that we make, few are of greater significance than those that we say when we promise our fidelity to our husband or wife. To break these vows by committing adultery shatters our consciences—unless they have been sufficiently destroyed and now lie dormant—and leaves us haunted by guilt—running, lying, and hiding. Many a person has discovered through adultery that a moment of immoral pleasure is hardly worth a ruined lifetime.

And finally, adultery violates a sense of trust in our families, our churches and society as a whole. Throughout history, the family has served as the core social unit, and that was certainly the case for the people of Israel who were receiving these commandments in the first place. In the same way that dishonoring one’s parents leads to the eventual dissolution of the social fabric, so too does adultery destroy the trust and confidence that lie at the very heart of social stability. Adultery wounds, sometimes almost irreparably, the forsaken spouse. Adultery shatters the confidence and security of the affected children. Adultery hinders the mission and witness of the church—just think for a moment about the wide-spread effects of sexual misconduct on the part of church leaders—and adultery eats away at the fibers of society. In short, adultery is no private matter, no secret sin between an isolated man and woman. Adultery is a violation of trust at every level that leaves broken lives, broken families and broken communities in its path.

This seventh commandment, however, offers far more than a simple warning concerning adultery’s evil outcomes. It is, like the other nine, rooted in grace, and it provides with this warning a resounding challenge for us to take responsibility for our sexuality, as difficult as that might sometimes appear to be. Given that adultery is such a destructive sin, we must guard ourselves against it. We must be cautious, wise and sensitive to both our own weaknesses and those of others. Demonstrating sensitivity to the weaknesses of others requires that we avoid acting, speaking and dressing in particularly suggestive ways. Israel’s sages described this very thing in Proverbs 7:10-27. In this case, a married woman went out of her way to entice another man while her husband was away. She dressed immodestly, spoke seductively, and eventually led this otherwise unknown man to her house and into her perfumed bed—“like an ox led to slaughter.” Keeping this seventh commandment involves our evaluating our behaviors in light of those around us.

This challenge, however, also requires that we be sensitive to our own weaknesses, our own vulnerable points. The Ten Commandments were originally given, as you perhaps know, to a rather tight-knit group of people. Isolated individuals, I suppose, were relatively few and far between in ancient Israel. People, at least in the various tribes, tended to know each other. They had a sense of each other’s where-abouts, much like the days when I was a student at Messiah in the 70’s. If you so much as talked with a young woman somewhere on campus, everyone soon knew about it!

Now, if committing adultery was a temptation in a tight-knit society—and an offense punishable by death!—how much more tempting is it in our disjointed culture, a culture that gladly displays adulterous relationships over and over again in television shows and films? We live in a world of increased mobility, driving cars that soon take us to unfamiliar places. We go off to college, attend out-of-own conferences in far-away hotels, and book cheap flight to other countries. To make matters worse, we can with the simple click of a button travel via the internet to anywhere in the world and engage in virtually any cyber activity. We can create with little effort imaginary worlds in which we can live out what we mistakenly assume to be our own, private fantasies. Bombarded by sexual stimulation via all of our senses, we are called by this commandment to guard ourselves against this onslaught and against these proliferating opportunities.

This call to protect ourselves is all the more important given Jesus’ comments on this commandment in his so-called Sermon on the Mount. In addition to physical adultery, Jesus referred to emotional or psychological adultery when he said, “…everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away;…” Adultery, in Jesus’ view, involves not only immoral acts, but immoral thoughts. We can, so it seems, be unfaithful in our minds—emotional attachments to and mental relationships with neighbors, classmates, television stars and pornographic actors and actresses. We must protect ourselves. We must be on our guard.

When I am in a hotel away from home, among the first things I do is to ask the front desk to block any unwanted TV stations and movies from my room. I also have an accountability partner concerning my internet usage. I’ve joined Covenant Eyes, and a print-out of my internet usage goes to my partner every month. Before going to a movie, which we rarely do anyway, Deb and I check dependable reviews that evaluate language, violence and sexual content. A few weeks ago, we, on the spur of the moment, ended up at a particular movie, and it didn’t take long for us to realize that we had no business being there. Ten minutes into the film, we turned to each other, asked “Why are we here?” and walked out. In warning us about the damages of adultery, this commandment instructs us to be alert and to protect ourselves—to not open ourselves up to the forces that might eventually entice us to fall.

The challenge of this seventh commandment, finally, goes beyond the raising of our defenses against the evil influences in our world. This commandment encourages us to take our own marriages seriously. Marriage is a great gift from God, a gift to be cultivated and nurtured. We must not let our marriages grow stale or relegate them to the cracks of our busy schedules. We need to learn to rediscover the meaning of the word “romance” and to instill in our relationships a sense of joy and adventure. We are called to take our own health and welfare seriously and to give to our spouses the best of who we are—in mind, body and spirit.

An osprey is a medium-large bird that resembles, as least to the unlearned eye, an eagle. Ospreys are rather creative creatures, particularly when it comes to building their nests. They use virtually anything available, and they thoroughly enjoy items that shine—plastic food containers, ribbon and even Barbie dolls. But what is also noteworthy about ospreys is their loyalty. Mary Alice Monroe describes it in her bestselling novel, Skyward:
Ospreys keep coming back to the same nest year after year. They’re monogamous, too…. It’s not like they’ve taken vows to stay together
forever and ever.”
But they do. Ospreys are faithful to their “spouses.” “Don’t commit adultery,” Exodus 20:14 instructs us. Proverbs 5:18-19 offers this alternative:
Let your fountain be blessed,
and rejoice in the wife of your youth.
a lovely deer, a graceful doe.
May her breasts satisfy you at all times;
may you be intoxicated always by her love.