SR • February 2016
13
Other sexual sins are wrong too
There are other laws about all kinds of sexual immorality. The
specificity of some of them is bizarre. Like, clearly some really
specific cases came up. But there are civil and ceremonial laws
dealing with degrees of sexual immorality and appropriate
penalties and arrangements, ranging in severity. The New
Testament is absolutely clear that we should flee all sexual
immorality, using the generic term, then lists adultery as one
form of sexual immorality that we should flee.
So let me be absolutely clear. Dusty is not saying “only adultery
is a sin, sex outside of marriage is all good.” Neither am I saying
“adultery is a felony, extra-marital sex is a misdemeanor or
minor infraction.” This command, right here, is very focused.
The words are not accidental. The focus is not happenstance
and we should not gloss over it:
The emphasis, the focus, the distinctive of the
seventh commandment is the marriage covenant.
In the Top Ten
So, I have previously pointed out that God only calls out two
specific human relationships, three if you count neighbor.
Parents were the first. Here, with this focus on covenant
marriage, God calls out the second: your spouse.
Top Ten Words, from God to His people, are how to live in
Righteousness. Take that marriage stuff seriously. Take marital
fidelity, this inter-personal covenant, the thing where you leave
your family and cleave to your spouse, forsaking all others...
take it seriously. Don’t break your marriage covenant.
Be faithful.
God created man and woman, and He created marriage before
the Fall. He never quite tells us why...but I think we can make
an informed guess:
Marriage intends to create one human relationship
where intimacy and trust can grow and we can
experience love most profoundly.
Adultery wounds the in macy and trust in marriage.
It doesn’t kill it. It wounds it. It gets real hard to love when you
can’t trust. You can’t be intimate any more because you can’t
be vulnerable any more.
Adultery wounds the intimacy and trust in marriage.
Jesus on Adultery
Jesus had some words to say on Adultery, following immedi-
ately on His exposition on Murder, the sixth commandment.
Matthew 5:27-28
27
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit
adultery.’
28
But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman
lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”
There is more than one word in the Greek for sexual immorality
and one specific to adultery. Jesus uses the word very specific
to the marriage context. Then, perhaps to make it even more
clear that it is the sanctity of the marital covenant He has in
mind, He explains another aspect of covenant breaking:
divorce. But the context, once again, here and in the following
verses, is very clearly on marriage — the marriage covenant.
Then Jesus calls our attention to the matter of the heart. It is at
the moment of lust, looking at a woman, or more specifically,
looking at a woman
for the purpose of lust
, that is the heart of
adultery.
Just as Jesus did with murder, going deeper than
the outward action to the hate and contempt at
the heart, so Jesus goes deeper than the outward
act of adultery to the heart. The inner, willful act,
of looking at a woman, at a person,
for the purpose
of lust.
I heard it said “it’s the second look that gets you in trouble...so
make the first look a good one!” Jesus says. “No.” The moment
in the heart — the moment that flirts with the idea, that dwells
on the image, visual, imagination, whatever it is, at the moment
— adultery has begun.
He calls us to
absolute faithfulness
in the marriage covenant.
Absolute faithfulness:
not just in the strict outward actions,
but in the eyes, in the way that we look at people, which is to
say, in the heart and mind, in the seat of our will and our deci-
sion making.
Absolute faithfulness.
Radically Unrealis c
It begins to sound unrealistic. Impossible. Maybe as impossible
as what Jesus said earlier about reconciling with all those
around you; about being the kind of person who reconciles
with people you hate; people you despise, and anyone who
might have reason to hate you.
Jesus holds up a standard of
absolute faithfulness
in the
marriage covenant. How important does He hold it? He gives
some practical application here:
Matthew 5:29-30
29
“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.
30
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.”
continued on next page
