“Do not commit adultery.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Humans have a complicated relationship with sex. God created it and made it really good and powerful. It is unquestionably a gift from Him. And when we enjoy this gift, it feels really good. If it doesn’t, you’re probably not doing it right. But God also made it to be enjoyed in a single set of circumstances. It is a gift for marriage. But marriage is hard. And in any given moment, sex feels good whether it happens in a marriage or not. It feels good no matter who your partner is even if you happened to be married. Because of all this, and because of a sinful nature in each of us that is profoundly selfish at its core, adultery is a thing that we do. But it’s not a good thing. At all. So, God made clear that it isn’t a thing we should do. Let’s talk about why this was a significant enough thing for us not to do that God included it in the foundational list.

A few years ago there was a big splash when a company whose stated purpose is to help married people have affairs got hacked and their client list was released on the internet. What caused all the uproar was that one of the individuals on the list was the oldest son of the Duggar family, Josh. The Duggars are a conservative Christian family from Arkansas whose belief that birth control is immoral and that God wants His followers to enjoy the blessing of family resulted in 19 children. The show aired on TLC and was original just about how a family with 19 children does life. It eventually became a combination wedding/baby saga as the various Duggar kids started getting married and having their own families.

The popularity of the show at the time combined with the fact that they are a conservative Christian family resulted in a media firestorm. How could this outspokenly Christian man do something like this? Then some folks started digging more into Josh’s background and current activities and things got worse. Suffice to say here, it was bad, he is currently in prison, and will remain there for several more years. The shocking revelation about this bit of Duggar family drama, though, took all of the attention away from what should have been the real scandal: there is a company whose expressed purpose is to help married people have affairs. They have literally monetized adultery.

While the last survey I saw on the matter still found a majority of Americans disapprove of adultery, the pool is shrinking. And from a brief survey of the kinds of stories we tell, we don’t really think it’s all that bad. In fact, in the right set of circumstances, it can be a good thing. From what I can tell, Nicholas Sparks stories are all about finding people finding their true love while they are married or engaged to someone else, having a passionate affair, and then getting married and living happily ever after. As much as we want to glamorize adultery and give it less sinful-sounding names, though, the reality of the thing isn’t quite so pretty. In fact, it’s pretty ugly.

As bad as all of this is today, it would not be right to characterize this as merely a modern problem resulting from the declining impact of the Christian worldview on our culture. Adultery was doing very well when the Christian worldview was still very much the dominant force in shaping our culture. In the ancient world we didn’t do much better. For example, it was often considered wildly immoral and even illegal for a woman to have an affair, but men could have several girls on the side. Or right in the middle. Divorce was looked down upon, but having concubines for wealthy men was normal. Polygamy was popular across many ancient cultures. A common critique of the Old Testament is that it allows for polygamy and thus Christians are hypocritical to insist on something so restrictive as marriage being a relationship between only a man and a woman. Neither charge is true, of course, but that will have to be a conversation for another day.

To repeat the point, adultery is a thing because sex is really powerful and really good. We naturally want to enjoy it and more of it. When we can’t get it from one source in the amount we want, or if we get bored with one source, because we are so fundamentally selfish in our desires, we’ll look for another. And yet, marriage and family are foundational for any society. When we misuse sex or pursue it in the wrong set of circumstances, this will always cause pain for everyone involved (including the children…especially the children) and introduce massive, catastrophic cracks in that foundation. Just consider the sheer number of social problems we are facing as a society and which began accelerating rapidly just about the time the family really started to come under attack and the invention of relatively reliable birth control made hiding the evidence of illicit sex a whole lot easier to do. A society that actively encourages people to get married and stay faithfully married for life would not be dealing with nearly so many issues nearly so badly as we are.

God’s concern in giving this command, though, was not just to tell the people they couldn’t do something. In the same vein, adultery isn’t just about sex. God’s concern was about clarifying boundaries for the people so they knew what they should be doing. In the case of God’s prohibition on adultery, simply telling the people not to have sex with someone to whom they were not married may have been the starting point, but it wasn’t the whole of God’s intention by any stretch. Thinking in such small terms leads to legalism and the ability to come up with all sorts of justifications for doing the very thing God was commanding us not to do. God’s command against adultery was really about faithfulness. It was about being faithful; it was about being faithful to our promises.

Jesus helped us understand this one better. He also elevated it to a really uncomfortable level. Our faithfulness in general, but especially in marriage, must not be just about our actions. It has to be – indeed it is – about the heart behind our actions. Before, actions were all we thought about. If our actions were unfaithful, then we were unfaithful. Jesus made it harder by reminding us that the things motivating our actions matter too. If our thoughts aren’t faithful, Jesus said, then we aren’t faithful. Our goal as His followers is to be faithful not just with our actions, but with our hearts and minds as well.

The reason for this was not merely to make things more complicated or harder for us. This wasn’t about adding yet another rule for us to obey. In fact, it was about just the opposite, but we’ll get to that in just a second. The reason for this elevation of the original command for new covenant people lies in something Jesus said another time. He said that what comes out of us is a result of what is inside of us. That is, our actions are motivated by our thoughts and desires. To put that another way, our actions aren’t the root, they’re the fruit. If we don’t deal with the root, the fruit will continue to be produced in our lives. Getting more specific to our point today, if you are married and your thoughts are constantly drifting in the direction of unfaithfulness, eventually your actions are going to follow. But even if actions don’t follow, your heart is still unfaithful and that’s a problem. You won’t love well with an unfaithful heart.

And that’s the key here. We are not to avoid adultery in our hearts or with our actions simply because God said so. This old command isn’t our guide. Jesus’ new command is our guide. He said we are to love one another the way He loved us. Being unfaithful isn’t loving. Adultery isn’t loving. Those things and all of their related thoughts and actions do not flow out of an intentional decision to see our spouse become more fully who God designed her (in my case) to be. That makes them not okay to do.

Being faithful isn’t easy because of sin. Sin doesn’t lead to faithfulness over a lifetime. It doesn’t lead to faithfulness over a short time. With Jesus’ help and the Spirit’s leading, we can live a life of faithfulness. And the fruits of faithfulness are sweet indeed. It brings stability to our lives, to the lives of our kids, and ultimately to our entire society. A society filled with stable, faithful marriages is going to be a good and strong society. Faithfulness gives us a context where we can safely be vulnerable and accepted anyway. That allows us to be known. We need to be known. When we are known, we know we are not alone. Being known gives us the confidence to face the world in ways we otherwise would not. It allows us to grow. Knowing that we live in a context of stability and safe vulnerability, allows us to grow. Growing includes and often involves making mistakes and learning from them. Faithfulness allows for this in ways unfaithfulness does not. Last but not least, faithfulness is a proper reflection of the character of our God. If we are going to claim to be His people, nothing less than that will do. So, no, don’t commit adultery. That will be bad every single time. But aim higher than that. Aim for God’s faithfulness in all your relationships, but especially your marriage. You will most certainly be glad that you did.