Exodus 20:14 - The Seventh Point on our Spiritual Measuring Stick

Exodus 20:14 “You shall not commit adultery.”

As we continue on in our look at the Ten Commandments, we come to this, the 7th commandment. Like the 6th, it is short and to the point and also like the 6th there is more to it than the short phrase brings to mind at first.  The overt result of adultery is that families are wounded fairly badly. Some marriages stay together, some fall apart. Families are broken in either case, trust is lost and must be painfully rebuilt if the family is to continue on. Adultery wounds children as well. They see the fighting between  parents, they see how it causes friction and unrest and then they learn the behaviours that cause adultery and don't learn how to deal with problems in the marriage in a wholesome way. When the marriage ends, the children are used by the feuding parents to fight by proxy and the children receive deep gaping wounds that scar them for life.  Adultery scars the social circles the parties involved are involved with, because no matter the outcome, everyone in those social circles end up having to make a choice between friends. If it is a pastor in adultery, the church he pastors typically ends up schisming or falling apart, with the members going elsewhere, also scarred and wounded and with a more cynical eye towards pastors.

In Matthew 5:28 we find again that it is not just the physical act but also the mental that has the same affect. It says quite plainly that someone who looks lustfully at a someone has already committed adultery in their heart with them and thus has sinned. When we look at the results of emotional or mental adultery we find they are often times similar to the results of physical adultery. Sure, families don't divorce and break up as badly but there is yet a loss of trust and that sense of belonging. Friends and those around the people involved also end up having to take sides and give tacit approval to one faction or the other. Adultery, even more than murder or theft, ends up splitting and sundering communities and the fabric of the social environment it is found in. Large gaping wounds are torn into the spirits of all those involved in the affair, be it of heart or of deed.

Adultery is more than just between a married couple though. Adultery can be found creeping into any commitment one makes, not just marital. Its one of the reasons that we are commanded to let our yes be yes and our no be no (Matthew 5:37, James 5:12) Once we make a promise, an oath, we are bound to it, even if we find ourselves no longer wanting to be.  If I promise that I will committing a certain portion of my extra time to doing one thing every week for so many weeks, but I find that I am bored or it isn't what I wanted, or it doesn't fulfill me how I thought it would, and I make an excuse one week and do something else, and then maybe a couple weeks later go do that something else again because it seems more worthwhile, I have broken my covenant and my commitment to doing the first thing, be it nothing more than mowing the church lawn. I have been adulterous to my commitment. I have broken my word. I have broken trust.

This is why the sin of adultery is so bad. Its more than just marriage, it gets into every aspect of our lives and pours out into the lives of others, and few people notice how something so apparently benign can be so cancerous to their community or social network. This week then, lets see where we have broken faith and trust with others, where we have broken our commitments and lets find out how to make amends for it. Healing begins with true and sincere apology, and then rebuilding the trust that was broken slowly over time. It takes years, but it is how one heals the wounds of adultery, and we have all been adulterous in something in our lives even if only once. We have all broken trust.

O Father, hear me as I pray to Thee,
I know that I am far from purity;
But Jesus died that sinful men might live,
So in His name I ask Thee to forgive.
                           ^{Virgil O. Stamps, 1922.}