What is spiritual adultery?

(V. 4). The lust of the flesh leads the Apostle to warn us against the friendship of the world, which offers every opportunity to gratify lust. The world is marked by the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life. It has manifested 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. “The friendship of the world is enmity with God.” Our attitude towards the world plainly declares our attitude towards God. “She that lives in pleasure is dead while she lives”, states the Apostle Paul (1 Tim. 5:6). Habits of worldly self-indulgence bring death between the soul and God. “If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him”, writes the Apostle John (1 John 2:15). “Whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God”, says the Apostle James.

The cross of Christ is the world's condemnation, it was tested by His coming into it, and by rejecting Him it has demonstrated beyond question the fact that it has not a single thought in common with God, and that it is in irreconcilable rebellion against Him. God's plan is to gather His saints out of it and bring them “into the fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord.” Every attempt at compromise with the world on the part of the Christian profession is spiritual adultery—unfaithfulness to the Lord. To be true to that fellowship into which God has called us means heart-separation from the principles upon which the world is founded and the wisdom and movements in which it boasts. Thence the call to all who belong to it: “Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you saith the Lord Almighty” (2 Cor. 6:17-18).

Let us beware of any flirting with the world. The Church was espoused to Christ as a chaste virgin (2 Cor. 11:2); all her heart's affection rightly belongs to Christ who gave Himself for her. Friendship with the world is spiritual adultery (James 4:4). The Church's downfall began when it turned its heart from Christ and set it upon the things of this world. God has revealed His terrible judgment that is to fall upon the professing Church by the hands of the world so that we might be warned against any flirting with it. The world system is ever an enemy of Christ. It said, "We will not have this man to reign over us" (Luke 19:14), and stained its hands in His blood. When a Christian begins to flirt with it, his downfall is certain, unless he repents and recovers himself from its clutches by a complete break with it. It is an immense loss for the Christian to compromise in any degree with the world.

The apostle James is exceedingly definite on this point. The world is in a state of open rebellion against God. It was ever thus since man fell, but its terrible enmity only came fully to light when Christ was manifested. Then it was that the world both saw and hated Him and His Father. Then it was that the breach was irrevocably fixed.

We are speaking, of course, of the world-system. If it be a question of the people in the world, then we read, "God so loved the world." The world-system is the point here, and it is in a state of deadly hostility to God; so much so that friendship with the one entails enmity as regards the other. The language is very strong. Literally it would read, "Whoever therefore is minded to be the friend of the world is constituted enemy of God." It does not say that God is his enemy, but the breach is so complete on the world's side that friendship with it is only possible on the basis of enmity against God. Let us never forget that!

And let us also never forget that we, as believers, are brought into such close and intimate relations with God that if we play Him false and enter into guilty alliance with the world the only sin amongst mankind with which it can be compared is the very terrible one of adultery.

The world and its unsatisfying pleasures controlled those described in the foregoing words, some of whom may have been professing believers. The wisdom which is earthly, sensual and demoniac, they followed. And now the writer breaks out in a passionate exclamation: "Ye adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore would be the friend of the world maketh himself an enemy of God." Here others than unbelievers are contemplated. The sphere of the natural man is the world; his walk is according to the course of this world; he is governed by the lust of the flesh, the lust of eyes and the pride of life. As such he is an enemy of God by wicked works and by nature a child of wrath (Ephesians 2:1-3).

The true believer, saved by grace, is not of the world, even as our Lord was not of the world (John 17:16). Grace has severed the believer from the world; the cross of Christ has made him dead to the world and the world dead unto him. Hence the exhortation in John's Epistle "Love not the world, neither the things of the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world" (1 John 2:15-16). And believers may turn back to the world, like Demas, and love it for a time. James calls such adulteresses; they leave Him to whom they are espoused, even Christ, and turn to another. The term must have reminded the Israelites of the Old Testament passages in which unfaithful, apostate Israel is pictured as an adulteress and playing the harlot (Jeremiah 3:9; Ezekiel 16:23; Hosea 2). It is a solemn exhortation which every true believer should consider carefully; friendship with the world means enmity against God. Verse 5 should be rendered as follows: "Or think ye that the Scripture speaketh in vain? Doth the Spirit, who dwelleth in us, long unto envying?" All the Scriptures testify that worldliness and godliness cannot exist together; think ye then that these Scriptures speak in vain? And the Holy Spirit, who dwells in the believer, does not lust unto envy, for He opposes the flesh and those who walk in the Spirit do not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. But he giveth more grace, yea grace sufficient to overcome by faith the world, for faith is the victory that overcomes the world. He quotes Proverbs 3:34. God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble.

"For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ." The great point of the whole argument was, that the seed was risen, the seed Isaac, after he had been appointed to die, and actually under the knife, but now risen from the dead in figure, to show that this is the condition into which we Gentiles are admitted as having to do with Christ. Was Christ under the law when He rose from the dead? Nothing of the kind. So, says the apostle, it is with us Christians now. You have nothing to do with the Jewish schoolmaster. Faith has come in alike for us, and for you Gentiles; you have become sons of God without passing under the law at all. "For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ." Do you not know what your baptism meant? What does a man confess when he is baptized? That he belongs to a Saviour who died and rose again. "So many of us as were baptized unto Jesus Christ (says our apostle elsewhere) were baptized unto His death." And the death of Christ is that which for ever dissolves even a Jew's connection with the law. Up to death, the law had a righteous claim upon the Jew, but the moment he confessed Jesus dead and risen, even he at once passed out of it into a wholly new condition. With a Saviour who is risen from the dead as his life and Lord, his business is to walk as a man that is united to Him: the connection is broken with the old husband, and he belongs to another. Were he to attempt to have Christ and law together afterwards, it would be like a woman having two husbands; that is, spiritual adultery. The effect of it, too, is most palpable. Who has not seen a Christian one day joyous, the next day very much cast down in spirit, not sure whether he have eternal life or not; trembling at the thought of the Lord's coming; and yet that same man admiring, loving, adoring Christ? How comes this? He knows not death to the law. No wonder, then, he is in a miserable plight. The law presses him to death, and Christ is only known enough to keep his head above water, but with constant tendency to fall under it. How good for his soul to learn that God has broken all such ties by the death of Christ! My very baptism is the confession that, even had I been a Jew, I am dead to the law — "being dead to that wherein we were held." "Wherefore ye are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead." Of course, if dead to the law, it would be a most unhappy state not to be married to another. How great would be the danger of thinking oneself at liberty to do what one liked! But if belonging to Christ, then come the new feelings of one who is thus near to Him. Now, I belong to Him, and I am to do what He likes; our husband gives us liberty to do His will, not to do our own — "to bring forth fruit unto God." This is what baptism sets forth in a Christian; it is the confession of the death and resurrection of Christ. The believer should know, then, that he has done with the law, and is called to live unto God. "As many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ" — not the law, but Christ.

Previously we were in the flesh. But now death has come in. Our connection with the first husband (to use the illustration given in the chapter) is over. The jurisdiction of the law has closed for us. Its authority which applied to men who were in the flesh is therefore annulled. We are set free from it. Death has ended, before God, our connection with it. The whole state of existence to which the law applied has thus been judicially terminated. Faith accepts this. We are not under the law. If we were under the law we could not be under Christ. It must be Christ or the law; it cannot be Christ and the law. That would be like the woman having two husbands. It would be spiritual adultery. We cannot have the law and Christ.

We have now once more one of those apparent repetitions which, as such, emphasize the importance of what they speak. Yet there is perhaps no mere repetition in all Scripture, and it is important for us to realize what constitutes the difference between things which at first sight seem absolutely similar. The present chapter gives us, as is evident, substantially the theme of the 16th; Israel's departure from God being symbolized by the sin of adultery; Jehovah's exclusive relationship to Israel among all the nations of the earth being compared in this way to marriage. God has taken up the most intimate relations of human life to show us the fulness of His love towards men, and the nearness in which His heart delights to bring us to Himself. All the greater therefore is the sin which breaks through a love so manifested, and we cannot wonder if the foulest of human sins becomes a shadow of that which is symbolized by it here. We shrink from these descriptions. How thoroughly God would teach us by it to loathe that which in His sight is so much worse: the human symbol is but a shadow of the greater sin!

This was forbidden in the ten commandments; but neither there nor anywhere else is the sin defined. It seems clear, that as far as the man was concerned, if he had intercourse with a woman unless it was with a married woman, he would not be charged with adultery, though he himself might be married; indeed how could he be when he was allowed more wives than one, as well as concubines and slaves? If he committed adultery with a married woman or with one betrothed, both were to be put to death. Deut. 22:22-24. With the woman it was stricter, she must have no intercourse with any man but her husband. If a man was jealous of his wife there was the ordeal of the bitter waters provided to test her innocence. Num. 5:11-31. But we do not read that any man or woman was stoned for adultery, nor that any woman drank the bitter waters. We know from the New Testament that Moses had, because of the hardness of their hearts, allowed a certain looseness, and a man could divorce his wife for any cause, which was easier than bringing a suspected wife to trial. It may be that the men themselves had not good consciences, like those who brought the adulterous woman to the Lord in John 8:3. We have a dreadful picture of guiltiness in Judges 19: and Jeremiah charges Israel with being "as fed horses in the morning, every one neighed after his neighbour's wife," which loudly called for judgement. Jer. 5:8; Jer. 13:27. The Lord declared that a man morally committed adultery (or fornication) in his heart if he lusted after a woman. Adultery had also a typical meaning. Israel had been espoused to Jehovah, but instead of being a faithful wife she had sought other lovers. "With their idols have they committed adultery." Ezek. 23:37. So the false church, who has Jezebel in her midst, the Lord will cast her "and them that commit adultery with her into great tribulation, except they repent of their deeds." Rev. 2:22.

Adultery, or idolatry — “with their idols have they committed adultery” (Ezek. 23:37) — is the special sin charged upon Israel of old as being the married wife of Jehovah (Jer. 3:14; Isa. 54:1). For this she was divorced. But in the purpose and grace of Jehovah Israel will be reinstated in her former blessed relation, one never again to be forfeited so long as sun and moon endure. Fornication, or illicit intercourse and connection with the guilty and apostate world, is the solemn indictment against Babylon — the corrupt and licentious woman who ensnares and captivates with her short-lived pleasures all within her influence — kings and people, high and low. The seductive glitter and meretricious display of this abandoned woman affect all classes, and morally ruin those over whom she casts her golden chains and who drink of her cup. Every right and true thought of Christ perishes where the woman’s blandishments are received and her smile courted.