You shall not commit adultery. –– Exodus 20:14 (NIV)
The church has had much to say about sex throughout history. Some has been good, and some not so good. Unfortunately, there have been some views, propagated by well-intentioned individuals, which have labeled the church as anti-sex. There has been a prudishness, a negativism, concerning sex which has been communicated to many. At various times, sex has been portrayed as the ultimate "no-no." Because of this kind of thinking when I say that someone is "immoral" you think of sexual sin. Often the church is viewed as still living in the Victorian Era where skirts were made for piano legs so they would not be too revealing.
The church’s attitude concerning sex has not always been God’s attitude. In fact, God has much to say about sex in the Bible. After all, He created it. Dr. Ruth may think she coined the popular phrase "good sex" but God really did. Like all He created, He saw that sex was good. What we need to do is to look at sex from a biblical perspective. We need to understand the reasons why we were created as sexual beings. We need to understand how God intends for sex to impact our lives. And finally we need to understand the dangers inherent in the misuse of sex.
We Were Created for CompanionshipIt is important to understand that we were created for companionship. When God created man, He said that it was not good for a man to be alone. Then God created a woman to be a companion for the man. This was in God’s plan all along. He created a man. He created a woman from the man. Then he brought the man and the woman together.
What do you suppose Adam said when he first saw Eve? Maybe he said, "Hi madam, I’m Adam." Does that seem far-fetched? What Adam really said was "Whoa Man!" That is why she is called woman. You don’t buy that either do you? Of course, Adam could have said, "Hey, babe you are the best looking woman I’ve seen." Whatever he said, I’m sure Adam said a lot of great things to Eve.
The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him." …So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and closed up the place with flesh. Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. The man said, "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man." For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame. –– Genesis 2:18,21-25 (NIV)
So God created human beings in his image. In the image of God he created them. He created them male and female. God blessed them and said, "Have many children and grow in number. –– Genesis 1:27-28a (NCV)
The Bible indicates that he received her as "Bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh." Adam received her as a part of himself. God then instructed them to come together in a one-flesh union. He intended for them to have a personal, intimate, pleasurable, sexual union in which they would find fulfillment and satisfaction.
Now some have perverted sex by negative attitudes toward it. There have always been ascetics, those who deny themselves any pleasure at all. There have also always been those who consider physical things inherently inferior to spiritual things. Others would like you to believe that there is a certain shame attached to sex. But that presupposes that sex is sinful. Only when Adam and Eve became aware of their sin did they cover themselves to hide their nakedness. There is shame in sin. But to conclude that sex is inherently sinful is to make a false assumption. Scripture does not support that assumption.
While there are some who pervert sex by their negative attitudes, still others pervert it by letting it consume them. God intended sex to provide fulfillment in a mutually satisfying relationship. Some, however, turn it into lust. Lust, by its very nature, is one-sided. Lust is a desire to use another for our own pleasure. And lust can become all consuming. Lust is a perversion of sexuality. God did not create lust, man created it, and while some would pass lust off as love, it is not. It is a perversion of both sex and love.
God created us male and female, as sexual beings, so we could enter into a relationship for companionship and mutual fulfillment. In this context sex is good.
We Were Created for CommitmentSo we see that we were created for companionship, with all the sexual aspects of that relationship implies. But that companionship was designed to exist in a committed relationship. We were not only created for companionship, we were created for commitment. We know that commitment as marriage.
When God created Eve and brought her to Adam, He joined them together for life. That was the first marriage in human history. Since that time men and women have entered into a covenant relationship called marriage in which they have agreed to live their lives together as partners. In that committed relationship called marriage we share our lives together, face life together, reproduce and raise children together, share burdens together, and grow old together. And part of that relationship is sexual.
Remember, God is pro-sex when sex is within the context of the marriage relationship. That is the message of the Seventh Commandment and the passage before us. When God says, "You shall not commit adultery," He confines the proper area for sexual relationships to marriage. You may say it another way. Sex is for marriage, and only for marriage.
And by marriage I mean the committed relationship of a man and a woman. There is no room in the Scripture for homosexual marriage. But I might add that there is also no room for heterosexual sin through premarital or extramarital sex. Sex belongs in marriage, and only in marriage. God, in His wisdom ordained it to be so, and with many good reasons.
You see, sex is risky business. By its very definition, it is one of the most intimate encounters two people can have. Because it is intimate, it places us in a very vulnerable situation. That is why God confines it to the committed covenant relationship of marriage. There, in the marriage relationship, trust can grow. There is love, devotion, respect, communication, confidentiality, and loyalty implied in the covenant of marriage.
When someone violates that trust, they violate another person. Adultery is not merely a sin against God, it is also a sin against another person. Additionally it is a sin against yourself. We do not live in isolation. Adultery causes pain. It destroys our relationships and robs us of our self-esteem. Adultery devastates whole families as it crushes our mate and cripples our children.
It is for these reasons that God so opposes adultery. This is why Jesus not only affirms the Seventh Commandment but also extrapolates its meaning to include the heart attitude behind it.
"You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart." –– Matthew 5:27-28 (NIV)
Avoiding the lustful desire as well as the lustful deed protects our self-worth, the sanctity of our marriage, the welfare of our children, and our relationship to God. There is great truth in the popular proverb: "Sow a thought and reap an act. Sow an act and reap a habit. Sow a habit and reap a character. Sow a character and reap a destiny."
We Must Obey God’s CounselIt may serve us well to look at some practical suggestions designed to help us avoid falling into the trap of sexual sin. All of us want to know how to safeguard our own marriages. All of us are interested in how to avoid becoming involved in relationships that are doomed to fail. There are several things that we can do.
The first thing any of us can do is to center our life on Jesus Christ. The best defense is a good offense. As we aggressively follow Jesus Christ we will be strengthening our defenses against all sin. When Jesus becomes the center of our lives, His desires will become more important than our desires. Matthew 6:33a (NCV) says, The thing you should want most is God’s kingdom and doing what God wants.
The second thing that you can do, if you are not married, is to marry only another Christian. The Bible repeatedly warns us of the dangers of marrying an unbeliever. 2 Corinthians 6:14 (NCV) says, You are not the same as those who do not believe. So do not join yourselves to them. So many Christian young people ignore this warning only to suffer the consequences of their actions. Do not be deceived in thinking that everything will work out because you "really love each other," or because your future mate will "become a Christian soon," or because you are "mature enough to handle it." When it falls apart, you will have to pay an enormous price. Don’t do it.
A third thing you can do is to focus on ways to communicate to one another. Philippians 2:4 (NIV) says, Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. The sexual fulfillment of our marriage relationship will depend greatly on the success of our communication. As we listen to one another, we will develop a real intimacy. And unless we develop intimacy outside of the bedroom, we will never develop intimacy inside of the bedroom. We must focus on our communication. Read books on it. Listen to tapes about. Practice it until you perfect it. But by all means do it.
The fourth thing you can do is to give attention to meeting your partner’s sexual needs so completely that there will be no desire to look elsewhere. If we love our mate, we should desire to fulfill him or her sexually. We must, with great sensitivity, and much communication, attempt to ascertain the legitimate sexual needs of our mates. And, at the same time, we must be willing to give of ourselves in order to meet those needs. This requires great sensitivity and understanding, but the effort is worth it. Proverbs 5:18-19 (NCV) tells us to: Be happy with the wife you married when you were young. She gives you joy, as your fountain gives you water. She is as lovely and graceful as a deer. Let her love always make you happy; let her love always hold you captive.
Fifthly and finally, we must avoid any and all relationships or situations that might tempt us to stray. If you are honest with yourself you have to admit that some members of the opposite sex probably attract you just a little more than they should. Unless you build a wall of protection around yourself by avoiding certain types of contact with those individuals, you may live to regret it. The Bible exhorts us to flee temptation. In 2 Timothy 2:22 (NLT) it says, Run from anything that stimulates youthful lust. Follow anything that makes you want to do right. Pursue faith and love and peace, and enjoy the companionship of those who call on the Lord with pure hearts.
We are also exhorted not to be overconfident in our own ability to stand, lest we fall. I like what the Living Bible says about this in 1 Corinthians 10:12: So be careful. If you are thinking, "Oh, I would never behave like that"—let this be a warning to you. For you too may fall into sin.
I was always told that if you play around the creek bank long enough, you’re sure to slide in. We are not just protecting ourselves, we are protecting our relationship with our mate or future mate, if we are not married. We are protecting our families. We are protecting our relationship with God. We are protecting that other person. We are protecting their mate, their family, and their relationship with God. We must be careful in this point.
Sex is giving of yourself on many levels. God confines it the marriage relationship in order to protect us. Obviously, by doing so we are protected from the many diseases that abound in our society today. We are also protected from unwanted pregnancies, where there is no commitment on the part of the would-be parents. We are protected from the emotional pain, the loss of self-esteem, and the feeling of having cheapened ourselves. We are also protected from the unwanted memories that will surface in the future. God knew what He was doing when He ordained sex for marriage. Guard your mind because it all starts there. Keep you relationship to Jesus strong, and be careful to avoid tempting situations.
Before I close, let me say that sexual sin is not the unpardonable sin. You may have committed this sin, and right know you stomach is churning and your palms are sweating. You may feel a sense of conviction over your own unfaithfulness, your own promiscuity. You may be guilty as charged. If you are, then you must understand that God’s grace is bigger than your sin. If you are willing to bring your sin to Jesus, He is willing to forgive you. His blood, shed on Calvary in payment for your sin, can cleanse you of that sin right now. We are reminded in 1 John 1:9 (NIV) that: If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.
If you confess your sin to God, He can and will grant you His forgiveness. Just as He met the woman caught in the very act of adultery and cleansed her based on her repentant spirit, so He will cleanse you if you have a repentant heart.
May God grant us all the power to live with clean hearts and hands before Him. May God give us the grace to affair-proof our marriages, and to keep pleasure undefiled. May He give those of you who are not married the grace to keep yourself pure from this day forward, and to flee temptation. May God help us to think biblically about sex, and to live from that position in our daily lives.
Copyright © 1999 J. David Hoke. This data file is the sole property of the copyright holder and may be copied only in its entirety for circulation freely without charge. All copies of this data file must contain the above copyright notice.
This data file may not be copied in part (except for small quotations used with citation of source), edited, revised, copied for resale or incorporated in any commercial publications, recordings, broadcasts, performances, displays or other products offered for sale, without the written permission of the copyright holder. Requests for permission should be made in writing and e-mailed to J. David Hoke, at David@JDavidHoke.com.