What does the Bible say about adultery?

The seventh commandment safeguards the purity of human life. "Adultery" here has the widest sense, covering what are considered to be lesser forms of this sin between the sexes. The history of peoples shows those who have widely practised this evil have degraded themselves both physically and mentally, and out of it spring a host of other ills.

Marriage is something into which two persons enter for life, and ever since creation it has enjoyed God's special care. According to the New Testament it is a picture of the relationship between Christ and His assembly, marked by divine love and human devotion.

Here, the Lord points to the human heart and shows that adultery has its source there… He reveals for the first time something which had to become clear by experience to every honest Israelite, namely, that everyone who tried to keep the commandment, "You shall not commit adultery," had within themselves those very lusts which led to the actions forbidden by God, and had not the strength to overcome them.

Although the wicked deed may be checked by will-power alone, the sinful desire fills the heart beforehand. And divine holiness uncovers the secret source of inward evil… We should habitually govern our words and our deeds, but who can govern the imagination of the heart which God beholds?

Two similes are now used to illustrate the extreme folly of giving in to adultery. First, it is like taking fire into one's bosom… If one steals food when he is starving, people do not despise him for this, yet he must restore sevenfold when found out. In other words, only for a small infraction such as this, justice demands punishment. Therefore, what of the deeply serious guilt of adultery? One who falls into this is destitute of understanding: he destroys his own soul.

The special warning is withdrawal, not coming near the door of her house; living away in another scene of thought and being where will does not go in the path of lust, nor lust have occasion to seize hold of the will.

It was God's institution that when a man left father and mother and took a wife they were no more two persons but one flesh, and the bond was indissoluble. In the case of sin against the relationship it was not really an exception, for then the one man and one woman had ceased to be one flesh by man's will coming in: the bond was broken by sin.

While God could, and did, pardon His servant, on his confession of his guilt, He did not step in (as He seldom does) to shelter him from the consequences of his sin on earth. Grace can righteously restore a fallen saint, but God's government is unchanging in its laws and principles… The anointed king had thus become the guiltiest sinner in his kingdom.

There is not the least sign of levity in dealing with her evil. The Lord simply brings out the fact that her accusers retreat from the light which convicted their conscience, when the law had utterly failed to reach it; and as they could not condemn her, because they were sinners no less truly than herself, so He would not.

How real and great is the depravity of man left to himself and Satan! How real and still greater is the delivering grace of God in the name of the Lord Jesus and by His own Spirit!

The world is marked by the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life. It has shown its enmity to God by rejecting and crucifying the Son of God. For one professing faith in the Lord Jesus to enter into friendship with the world that has crucified the Son of God is to commit spiritual adultery.