The Seventh Commandment
Bible Facts Newspaper Article (Ian C. Kurylyk)

“Thou shalt not commit adultery” (Exodus 20:14).

We can study this commandment like other ones by first identifying a fact of God’s nature that it involves and then go on to consider the significance to mankind. God is faithful and therefore requires it of the creatures He made in His image.

Faithfulness is a fundamental attribute of the God of the Bible. Satan first drove a wedge between mankind and the Creator when he slandered God’s faithfulness in the Garden of Eden. Ever since then sinfulness and hard suspicious thoughts toward God have been a package deal for members of the human race.

But still God has been faithful to us. His faithfulness has led Him to provide us a way of escape from sin and its curse, even at great personal cost to Himself. He has not abandoned man because of his rebellion. The Lord was faithful unto death. The gospel of Jesus Christ is a message of God’s love and His trustworthiness.

Distrust and disobedience by Adam in paradise was the way sin entered the world. The coming of God’s Son into the world to suffer and die for our sins was the ultimate act of good faith. Through this the resurrected Saviour is challenging sinful men to turn from sin and distrust and come back to God. He is calling on each individual to accept the Lord personally which means renouncing sin and repenting of distrust and accepting the gift of salvation provided through Jesus Christ. It is all-important to realize God’s faithfulness to us. The challenge is what will we do with it?

God has also ordained that faithfulness would lie at the base of human relationships. He is the Author of the home, and He has planned for procreation to take place in an environment of love and stability sustained by faithfulness. Society suffers greatly when God’s hedge of safety is broken down in the pursuit of pleasure without responsibility. Experiments in new morality have long reaching consequences often realized when the damage is too late to repair.

Every traditional marriage ceremony reminds us of the fact that God has planned life on earth to contain patterns of heavenly things for our blessing. The union of a man and a woman in marriage is a picture of the relationship God has with His people in a spiritual sense. When people become part of the spiritual bride of Christ by faith they enter into a relationship of love, eternal security, joy, and happiness. There are shadows of these things in earthly marriage as the couple enter into God’s patterns of marriage blessing.

When people depart from God in sin and take up with idols it is unfaithfulness to Him and brings ruin. When people are unfaithful in marriage a corresponding measure of sorrow and ruin comes to all involved. Like all the commandments, the scope is broad as a comparison of other scriptures makes clear. The sexual sin of adultery stands at the head of a number of deviations from the plan of God that are all violations of the seventh commandment.

Three facts of sexuality are clearly taught in the Bible that make it clear that God intended it only for use within the marriage bonds.

It is a physical and emotional sharing of love that is suited to the intimacy of marriage. “And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh” (Matthew 19:5).

It is a the expression of a complementary relationship which necessarily involves one man and one woman in accordance with God’s original blueprint for marriage. “And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh” (Genesis 2:22-24). The creation of woman involved taking something from man which resulted in a complementary relationship between man and woman when brought back together.

It is to be experienced within a setting of mutual commitment as laid out in the Biblical pattern of marriage. Marriage vows have far more importance than is often placed upon them in many relationships. The king’s mother in Proverbs 31:2 not only referred to him as “the son of my womb” but also as “the son of my vows”. While some who have never had a wedding have demonstrated a high degree of commitment in their relationship, there is good reason to encourage the public exchange of vows as people have for centuries.