Protestant Ethics Today: The Seventh Commandment
Be sure to check out part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, and part 7 of this series on Protestant Ethics Today.
The seventh commandment is “You shall not commit adultery” (Exod 20:14). Like the other commandments, this one seems simple enough on the surface: adultery is a sexual relationship with a married person who is not one’s own spouse. If neither party in the sexual relationship is married, there is a different biblical word used to describe the act: “fornication” (older translations) or “sexual immorality” (newer translations). The seventh commandment is one of the commandments Jesus explicitly addresses in the Sermon on the Mount. In Matt 5:28, Jesus says that a man who “looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Jesus’ typical pattern of “you have heard it said, but I say to you” indicates in this instance that lustful desires are an extension, or application, of the seventh commandment. It is important to note that Jesus does not say that lust is to be treated in exactly the same way as adultery. Adultery (Matt 5:32; 19:1–12) is one of the two instances in the Bible where divorce is permitted (abandonment being the other: 1 Cor 7:15). Jesus does not add lust as a third ground for divorce in Matt 5:27–30. Rather, he takes us to the heart of God’s law to show us the impulse from which adultery ultimately flows: sinful sexual lust. This is why one must be willing to do whatever is necessary to fight against this sin, which Jesus powerfully illustrates with a classic instance of hyperbole regarding the cutting out of one’s eye or cutting off of one’s hand.
To fully understand the implications of the seventh commandment, one must begin with the positive purpose of marriage in God’s creational design. In Matt 19:1–12, Jesus is confronted by Pharisees who seek to cause Jesus to say something disparaging about God’s law. They appear to have already encountered some of the things Jesus says about marriage and divorce, and don’t appear to like those things. Sinful man, in his rebellion against God, desires loopholes to enable him to evade the true force of God’s law. That is exactly what the Pharisees do: they ask Jesus if it is lawful for a man to divorce his wife “for any cause” (Matt 19:3). They desire the equivalent in their day of no-fault divorce: the ability to divorce a wife simply because she burned the dinner, because he has tired of her, or for no reason at all. Jesus never engages the Pharisees or Jewish scribes with casuistical wrangling over the minutiae of the law. Instead, he takes them back to God’s original purposes in creating marriage:
He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” (Matt 19:4–6)
The Pharisees are not satisfied. They remind Jesus that the law allowed for divorce (Matt 19:7). Jesus grants this, but also explains that divorce is not a good thing. It is the result of human “hardness of heart” (Matt 19:8), and is only legitimate in the case of sexual immorality (Matt 19:9). Divorce for any other reason (other than the additional grounds of “abandonment” in 1 Cor 7:15) will cause the one initiating (if he or she remarries) to be an adulterer.
The seventh commandment, then, and Jesus’ extension of the commandment to matters of the heart in Matt 5:27–30, must be understood in light of the positive teaching of Scripture on marriage. God designed that one man and one woman would unite in marriage, thus becoming so intimately intertwined that they become “one flesh.” Marriage existed even before there was sin in the world. It was a positive creational good. God made Adam to rule over creation and made Eve to help him in that endeavor. They have different roles, but both are indispensable.
The Westminster Larger Catechism’s (Q/A 139) explanation of “the sins forbidden in the seventh commandment” follows Christ’s lead in seeking to understand the OT law in an expansive sense. “The sins forbidden in the seventh commandment,” it says,
besides the neglect of the duties required, are, adultery, fornication, rape, incest, sodomy, and all unnatural lusts; all unclean imaginations, thoughts, purposes, and affections; all corrupt or filthy communications, or listening thereunto; wanton looks; impudent or light behavior; immodest apparel; prohibiting of lawful, and dispensing with unlawful marriages; allowing, tolerating, keeping of stews [= brothels], and resorting to them; entangling vows of single life; undue delay of marriage; having more wives or husbands than one at the same time; unjust divorce or desertion; idleness, gluttony, drunkenness, unchaste company; lascivious songs, books, pictures, dancing, stage plays; all other provocations to, or acts of uncleanness, either in ourselves or others.
This list is very specific and detailed, but it flows out of a desire to get to the root of the seventh commandment, to understand the different manifestations of lust in our world and all the evils that come about as a result of it.
There are obvious sexual sins in the list: adultery, fornication, rape, incest, and sodomy. There are also sinful states of the heart: all unnatural lusts; all unclean imaginations, thoughts, purposes, and affections. Unnatural lust is a desire, or what Paul calls a “dishonorable passion,” for someone of the same sex (Rom 1:26–27). Side-B Christianity, Revoice, and other movements have tried to convince Christians that “same-sex desire” is not inherently sinful if it is not acted on, or that one could have a “gay orientation” that is immutable, but also not sinful if not indulged in (mentally or physically). Rom 1:26–27 reveals how wrong this claim is: both same-sex sexual activity and same-sex desires (what Paul calls “passions”) are sinful and egregiously contrary to God’s creational design. Both the sexual act and the disordered sexual desire must be repented of. Sexual desire of an unmarried man for an unmarried woman, or an unmarried woman for an unmarried man, while sinful, can be directed toward a legitimate fulfillment in marriage. There is no such fulfillment for same-sex passions. They simply must be mortified. By God’s grace, they can be. Christians must be careful in our day not to accept sinful ideologies about sex: that same-sex lust can be neutral if not acted on, that one can even be a “homosexual,” which implies that this is one’s “identity.” The Bible does not speak in identity terms like that: it addresses sinful states of the heart (lust, desire, passions) and of the body (sexual acts). No believer can be defined by his or her sin, which is what calling oneself a homosexual would mean.
Transgenderism is another cultural pressure point addressed by the seventh commandment. Transgenderism, the idea that gender is a social construct that can be changed at will, is premised on the (mere) assertion that “sex” is what a person is biologically and that “gender” is what a person is mentally. If gender is a mere mental construct, it can be changed in the same way that our moods can be changed: by getting sunshine, exercise, or rest.
We must recognize that the Bible makes it clear that, because of sin (what is called the “noetic effects of sin”), what we think or feel is not necessarily true. Sin radically distorts fallen human reasoning in myriad ways. As Paul writes in Rom 1:21: “For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.” Transgenderism makes this futility of thought, and darkening of the heart, the key to its whole understanding of what it means to be human. Ultimately, transgenderism is based on the notion that there is no such thing as a stable human nature created by God. But “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Gen 1:27; cf. Matt 19:4). Apart from knowledge of this stable and unchangeable truth about men and women, there really would be no answer to the gender-fluid claims of transgender ideology.
All forms of pornography are included in the seventh commandment as well: “all corrupt or filthy communications, or listening thereunto.” A much more comprehensive understanding of what constitutes pornography would be one important application. It is not merely pictorial, but includes any medium that might be used to convey sexual impurity and stir up sexually impure thoughts and desires. Chastity figures prominently in the list too, both in how one presents oneself and in how one looks at another. Chastity is a requirement for men and women and is more than simply not wearing enough clothing (though it is not less than that): it is a basic orientation where we seek to do good to others by not doing anything that would entice them sexually. Many actions beyond how one dresses fall into this category.
The catechism, in seeking to be faithful to New Testament teaching, also recognizes how important godly marriages are for the protection of the faithful against sexual temptation. That is why it includes a condemnation of those who would forbid biblically legitimate marriages, or those who would enter into unlawful ones (like polygamy). Even to delay marriage unduly is to create unnecessary temptations (see 1 Cor 7:9).
Lastly, and most basically, the catechism (in Q/A 138) points to the necessary pursuit of comprehensive purity in our lives as the antidote to all forms of sexual sin. Keeping the seventh commandment requires “chastity in body, mind, affections, words, and behavior.” That is why Jesus warns believers so strongly in Matt 5:27–30 to do whatever is necessary to flee from lust, the starting point for adultery, and ultimately, all sexual sins.
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