The 7th commandment of the Big Ten says, in Exodus 20:14, “You shall not commit adultery.” It, like “You shall not murder,” is a spike in a metaphorical wall upon which you can legitimately hang many associated ideas. Not only are overt, legally-punishable sins like murder and adultery the product of internal, legally-unpunishable sins like hate, greed, envy and lust, but they also speak to sins like assault and vandalism, fornication, immodesty, and exhibitionism.
There are two seemingly opposite sinful tendencies in reacting to divine law. I shall call them “Conniving Legal-loophole Seeker” and the “Unthinking Legal-barrier Maker.” The rebellious always seek to rationalize around a command. The other exchanges obliterating rule adherence for wise faithfulness.
One night in Youth Group when I was in High School, we asked our youth leader, Randy, (A hilariously ironic name for the occasion), how much we could do with our girlfriends and boyfriends physically without it counting as sin. He said, “I think, in asking the question, you’ve already crossed that line. A heart that wants to get as close to sin as it can without being technically guilty of sin, or, perhaps, just escaping the accusation of sin, is wholly unpleasing to the Lord. And that IS sin.” We knew he was right, but it frustrated us. We wanted. We wanted badly, and a legitimate slaking of that thirst in marriage was still years away. We were being Conniving Legal-loophole Seekers.
When I was a kid, my father put some barrels in our basement. They were those thick cardboard one’s with labels on them suggesting that the contents were acidic and could give you a chemical burn. My father, probably trying to be funny, or just tricking us into leaving his project alone, told us not to touch the barrels or the barrels themselves would hurt us. He showed us the scary pictures slapped on the side. My siblings were careful to avoid them. I wouldn’t even go in the basement lest I accidentally brush against them and melt my hand like that poor guy on the label. I was being an Unthinking Legal-barrier Maker.
When Conniving Legal-loophole Seekers read, “You shall not commit adultery,” their minds go to work preserving as much wiggle room for scratching their sexual pre-marital or extra-marital itches without guilt or shame. We have “progressive” “Christians” who say things like, “this command doesn’t say anything about sex before marriage, just adultery.” Then they throw in their public support for fornication, living together before marriage, and easy divorce. This is, of course, a shallow reading of the ten commandments in the context of the Torah[1] or Tanakh[2] or Bible, but they find room to skirt the issues whenever Scripture impinges on their passions. “Jesus is about love and mercy not law and judgment! God understands our needs and weakness after all.” Some even seek to carve out divine blessing on homosexual sex from Scripture. They believe that the path of life is found within and they don’t need some dusty old book telling them how to find it outside themselves through oppressive rules.
When Unthinking Legal-barrier Makers read “You shall not commit adultery,” they decide that sex itself must be tainted. Human wanting is to them a spiritual disease that needs to be cut off at the ankles. Taking pleasure in the beauty of the most beautiful of God’s creation—women—must be shamed and decried, as should seeking to be as pretty as possible. Arousal in and of itself is dirty, sometimes even in marriage if the desire is strong enough. It was not uncommon in some places back in the day to hear it said of Adam’s and Eve’s fall into sin, “The problem wasn’t the apple in the tree it was the pair in the bush.” As with all issues, these folks struggle with tensions and have no skill with wisdom. Everything for them must be a toggle switch of right (click) or wrong (click) and seeking context and paths of spiritual wellness in the complex daily affairs of being human is just too difficult. It’s so much easier to just condemn the whole thing and have done with it.
When I was 16, I attended a men’s conference with my father. It was on sexual purity. When we broke up into discussion and prayer groups, one of the men in my group asked for prayer that God would take away his desire for his wife. He was plagued with wanting her and knew he just couldn’t become the man God wanted him to be so long as sexual passions coursed through him. If my face displayed my mind then these men saw a twisted visage of open-mouthed, wide-eyed wonder at profound idiocy. Even at that age, I wanted to slap the guy upside the head, screaming, “Sex is a good gift from a loving creator to His beloved creatures!!! You are SUPPOSED TO BE PASSIONATE for your wife!!!”
Sex is a good gift from a loving creator to His beloved creatures!!! The wise one knows this and seeks paths of blessing in it. He also knows, however, that anything as powerful as the sex drive can be twisted in the hands of corrupt hearts. Human selfishness, if it is gifted at anything, shows a particular talent for debasing the beautiful things of God and taking that which was meant as a mechanism for abundant life and turning it into an instrument of oppression, ruin, and death.
God designed us as biological creatures with strong sex drives and made sex one of the most pleasurable experiences one can have in life. There is blessing in it, and we must not scorn His properly-used gift with shame. But according to His plan, our sexuality leads to spreading human thriving only in the context of exclusive lifelong unions of man and wife. Let us strive for God’s best by both accepting the blessing and preserving it from perversion.
~Andrew D. Sargent, Ph.D.
[1] The first five books of Moses.
[2] Torah, Prophets, and Writings… i.e. What we call the Old Testament.
