It was 1632, and Robert Barker was brought into court at the Palace of Westminster. He was on trial, and things were serious. All for printing a Bible. Oh, don't get me wrong: Barker had every right to print a Bible. He was, in fact, the only authorized publisher of Bibles in the realm of England; he had the very coveted exclusive rights to do that. This time, however, neither bishop nor king were happy with his work. It was William Laud, bishop of London, who first caught what he'd done, and brought it to the attention of King Charles. By the end of the year, Barker would see this particular run of Bibles recalled as a defective and dangerous product to be burnt, and he himself would face a fine the equivalent of about $70,000 today. All for a typographical blunder.
Now what typo could so scandalize church and crown? Early printed Bibles were always riddled with typos. But this typo, however simple, was important. It's made the few surviving copies that escaped the recall into collectors' items. In the Ten Commandments, the last word you want to leave out is 'not.' Robert Barker's crime, for which he'd eventually go to prison and have to sell off his rights to publish Bibles at all? Releasing into circulation a Bible that read, “Thou shalt commit adultery!” Is it any wonder the courts stepped in?
These days, there are a few places you can visit to see Barker's blunder – the Museum of the Bible down in DC has a copy, and I've seen that perilous page. But why's it such a big deal? Because marriage, which adultery violates, is a big deal. So what is marriage, exactly? One recent definition is that marriage is, at its natural minimum, “a union between one man and one woman which is exclusive, permanent, and open to life.”1 And that's simple, short, and sweet. I also like this longer definition: Marriage is “a comprehensive union... joining spouses in body as well as in mind..., begun by consent and sealed by sexual intercourse..., especially apt for and deepened by procreation,” calling for “that broad sharing of domestic life uniquely fit for family life,” which therefore “objectively calls for all-encompassing commitment: permanent and exclusive.”2
Even more could be said, but either works as a starting point. This thing called 'marriage' is a reality created and instituted by none other than God. And what God decreed was a structured kind of relationship in which a man and a woman were to 'cleave' to one another – they glue together, become one another's other self, nearest kin, the other's highest earthly loyalty, commanded by God himself to put one another first among all creation (Genesis 2:24). Physically, emotionally, socially, they're to be bonded tighter than any other two things you can find. Such it was in Eden, and the life of Eden is our model for holy and healthy sex and sexuality even now.
At its best, marriage is free, total, faithful, and fruitful – that is, the husband and wife freely chose each other and freely choose to grow together; the husband and wife share themselves unreservedly with each other; the husband and wife reserve themselves always for each other exclusively; and the husband and wife are open and welcoming to God's gift of new life in his time and in his way.3 These are the things that make marriage the only appropriate outlet for our sexual activity. And they call for our sexual behavior to accord with and respect what marriage is, and the holiness of the One who built that marriage bed for us. That's why it's written for us in the Scriptures: “Let the marriage bed be undefiled” (Hebrews 13:4), uncontaminated by what's unethical and impure, preserved from being a scene of sexual sin against or even within the marriage.
The New Testament talks often of what we usually translate as 'sexual immorality,' what the King James Version called by the good Latin word 'fornication.' It's just one word in Greek: porneia. And in classical Greek, porneia literally meant 'prostitution.' But the New Testament lumps all kinds of sexual misbehavior as porneia. Last Sunday, we covered some kinds of porneia, like bestiality, homosexuality, and incest. But it also covers promiscuity, premarital sex, and more. All get thrown in the basket labeled 'porneia,' 'sexual immorality.'
That's why the Apostle Paul warns, “Don't you know that he who cleaves to a prostitute becomes one body with her?” (1 Corinthians 6:16). That is, sexually uniting with someone outside the marriage covenant still has that gluing effect, and still (however temporarily) identifies your body (which, if you're a Christian, is a temple of the Holy Spirit [1 Corinthians 6:19]) with the other person's body. And therefore, Paul adds, “the sexually immoral person sins against his own body” (1 Corinthians 6:18). The more sexual partners a person has before getting married, the higher the statistical likelihood of adultery after marriage.4 “The body is not meant for sexual immorality” (1 Corinthians 6:13). So all these things are in view when Paul says, “This is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you possess his own vessel in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who don't know God; that no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things..., for God has not called us in impurity but in holiness” (1 Thessalonians 4:3-7).
Now, marriage isn't for everyone. It might be hard to get that through our heads, even though Paul told the Corinthians that “he who marries his betrothed does well, and he who refrains from marriage will do even better,” if that refraining is for the sake of the kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 7:3-8). And yet that isn't to diminish the value of marriage in God's plan for us. The Bible calls marriage a “covenant” (Malachi 2:14), a family-creating bond built on solemn oaths. In Hebrews, we read, “Let marriage be held in honor among all” (Hebrews 13:4). Since man and woman become one body in marriage, neither keeps the right to do with his or her sexual life just whatever he or she sees fit: “The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise, the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does” (1 Corinthians 7:4). In marriage, we're called to learn together what it means to show love and to be satisfied by and in one another: “Drink water from your own cistern, flowing water from your own well” (Proverbs 5:15).
So one of the people discipled by the apostles declared that “it is proper for those men and women who are marrying to form their union with the consent of the bishop,” their local pastor, “so that their marriage may be in accordance with the Lord and not out of desire. Let everything be done for the honor of God. … Instruct my sisters to love the Lord and to be satisfied with their spouses in flesh and spirit. Similarly, charge my brothers, in the name of Jesus Christ, to love their spouses as the Lord loves the Church.”5 The early Christians wrote that when Christ returned, he'd bring a special reward for his people “who love marriage and refrain from adultery” (Sibylline Oracles 2.53). There's that word again: 'Adultery.'
Adultery, at its core meaning, is sexual misbehavior that bursts outside of an existing marriage covenant, disrupting or intruding into at least one marriage relationship. A husband is supposed to be sexually faithful to his marriage covenant with his wife, but he finds himself acting sexually with somebody else: his sexuality has leaked outside the marriage covenant, and that's adultery. A wife's sexuality leaks outside the marriage covenant with someone else, and that's adultery too. Ancient Israel, blessed with God's Law through Moses, recognized adultery as especially evil: a kind of treason against a sacred oath, a rupture in a solemn covenant, a betrayal of an intimate trust, a true injustice and a crime. Not even consent or acquiescence of the spouse could remove the immorality of adultery. No, the law was simple and plain: “You shall not commit adultery!” (Exodus 20:14).
Israel found it, first of all, to be unwise. Toying with it is like trying to hug a fire: “Can a man carry fire next to his chest and his clothes not be burned? … So is he who goes in to his neighbor's wife: none who touches her will go unpunished” (Proverbs 6:27-29). Adultery is costly: “A man's wife hunts down a precious life” (Proverbs 6:26). If adultery goes public, it destroys reputations: “He who commits adultery lacks sense; he who does it destroys himself. He will get wounds and dishonor, and his disgrace will not be wiped away” (Proverbs 6:32-33). Adultery, because it was so serious, was treated more absolutely in God's Law than in the laws of the nations. In Israel, an offended spouse had no right to pardon after conviction: “If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death” (Leviticus 20:10).
And yet, in darker seasons in Israel's history, adultery became a commonplace sin. Hosea complains, “They are all adulterers” (Hosea 7:4). Jeremiah complains, “The land is full of adulterers” (Jeremiah 23:10). Even after the exile and return, Malachi has to warn his people: “The LORD was witness between you and the wife of your youth, to whom you have been faithless though she's your companion and your wife by covenant. Did he not make you one, with a portion of the Spirit belonging to it? And what was the one God seeking? Godly offspring! Therefore watch out for your lives, and let none of you be faithless to the wife of your youth” (Malachi 2:14-15). After Malachi, one Jewish writer gave four reasons for calling adultery “the greatest of crimes.” First, it flows from excessive love of pleasure, which ruins body and soul and wastes God's gifts. Second, not only is adultery evil, but since it 'takes two to tango,' it lures another body and soul into that evil. Third, it “makes havoc of three families,” because each person impacted – the two spouses and the intruder – comes from his or her own family that's deeply harmed by the shockwaves of the adultery. And fourth, not only does adultery weaken trust between spouses, but between generations when there's secrecy or suspicion over who someone's parents actually were.6 And so Jews of the era prayed for a Savior who'd bring righteousness, that in his kingdom there'd be “no adulteries” and no other sexual sins to be found (Sibylline Oracles 5.430).
For Christians, or even just humans who have feeling hearts, all we've said so far should hardly need saying. We should know it. We should live it. None has an excuse for regarding our marriages, or the marriages of our neighbors, as things to treat with contempt. But the sad thing to say is, many professing Christians do pretend they have an excuse. I've seen churches wrecked by it. I've been part of a church where adultery ran rampant. Between pastors and church workers. Between members of the worship team. The devastation was profound. It left long scars on the life of the church, to say nothing of the individual lives involved. It isn't for no reason that the Apostle Paul tells us “not to associate” with a Christian “if he is guilty of sexual immorality” and won't repent (1 Corinthians 5:11). These are such serious sins that they exclude the unrepentant from fellowship.
And let's be clear. The Apostle leaves no wiggle room here. “Whoever disregards this, disregards not man but God” (1 Thessalonians 4:8). Catch that? Whoever embraces sexual sin, lives by lustful passions, dishonors his or her own body and the spouse's body he or she is one flesh with – whoever does that is mistreating God. The author of Hebrews warns that “God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous” (Hebrews 13:4). Paul urges us, “Don't be deceived!” Oh, people will try to deceive you, tell you it's no big deal, but don't listen. “Neither sexual sinners... nor adulterers... will inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Corinthians 6:9-10). “For you may be sure of this: that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure... has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God” (Ephesians 5:5). Even if your spouse never finds out, God sees. Unless you get that stain off your soul with repentance, it pits you against his kingdom. John sees “the faithless..., the sexually immoral..., their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur..., the second death” (Revelation 21:8).
And that's hard news today. A few years ago, a general social survey found that here in the United States, 20% of all husbands and 13% of all wives admitted to having committed at least one act of adultery while married.7 It's even more common among Americans born – guess when? The 1940s and 1950s. Americans born in those decades are increasingly adulterous. Of those who've ever been married, one in four has been guilty of adultery. And in the past decades, the percentage of older Americans who still agree that sex outside marriage is always wrong has been dropping.8 Don't just blame those 'kids these days'! It's their elders leading the way.
As if that weren't challenge enough, Jesus raises the bar. “It was said, 'You shall not commit adultery.' But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart!” (Matthew 5:27-28). A later rabbi echoed him, that “even he who visualizes himself in the act of adultery is called 'adulterer.'”9 A righteous man should be able to say, “I have not had intercourse with any woman other than my wife, nor was I sexually immoral by lustful look.”10 And what is lust? It's sexual desire treated or pursued as a good in itself, cut off from the desire to unite a whole life in marriage.
What Jesus makes clear is that adultery doesn't start between the legs or on the lips. It doesn't even start with the caressing hand or the ogling eye. It begins with a dirty heart. “For out of the heart come... adultery [and] sexual immorality” (Matthew 15:19). Where Jesus breaks new ground isn't in deeming lustful looks sexual sin, not even quite in calling lustful looks 'adultery,' but in his uncompromising insistence that the real battle is fought in the heart, and must be fought to the death. Even the dearest things in our lives, a hand or an eye, would be better to lose than to lose this fight against lust. Heaven and hell hang in the balance (Matthew 5:29-30). But it's a battle that can be won. As an early Christian said: “Lust is nurtured and vitalized if we minister to its enjoyment. On the other hand, it fades away if it's kept in check.”11 We must cut lust from our hearts.
Jesus' teaching about lust is why early Christians, hoping to help their neighbors, campaigned so vigorously against popular entertainments that aimed to stoke lust (since, as we say today, 'sex sells'). One said that in the Roman world, there were so many plays that “offer classes in corruption, teaching adultery even as they present it... What are boys and girls to do when they see all these shows being put on without shame and being watched with pleasure by all? Frankly, they're being told what to do. They're being inflamed with lust, and lust is most excited visually. According to their sex, they can see themselves in the acts. In laughing at them, they're accepting them. And they go back home to bed all the more corrupted, with the vices clinging close – and I don't mean just boys (who ought to be kept out of vice early on) but even old men (who ought to be beyond such misbehavior by now).”12 Sound at all familiar? Today's popular entertainment rivals all the Roman stage offered. In ever-more graphic terms, it presents sexual sins as positive virtues – even adultery, so long as the spouse being cheated on is made out to be dull enough, inconsiderate enough, or even just off-screen enough.
As Paul tells us, “put to death what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire” (Colossians 3:5). Following where he's pointing, the early church would tell those coming for baptism, those who wanted to be born again, that here's the deal: “The way of death is... adulteries, lusts, sexual immoralities” (Didache 5.1). “You shall not commit adultery..., you shall not be sexually immoral...” (Didache 2.2). “My child, do not be given over to passion, for lust leads to sexual immorality; nor be a speaker of base words, nor immodestly curious, for from all these, adulteries are begotten” (Didache 3.3). The earliest Christian preachers to follow the apostles said that the life of holiness requires “fleeing from... abominable and impure embraces, from... detestable lusts and foul adultery.”13 They commanded “to keep chastity and not let anything enter your heart about someone else's wife or about sexual immorality..., for if you do, you commit a great sin; but if you remember your own wife” or your own husband, “you will never sin.”14 Early Christians were reminded that to be self-controlled and not commit adultery was one way of confessing Jesus with our lives (2 Clement 4.3).
Even the pagans could see that Christian worship regularly included a binding oath not to commit adultery.15 It was an oath that early Christians were confident they kept. In the earliest days, defenders of Christians could honestly say that “Christians... don't commit adultery, nor sexual immorality... Their wives are pure as virgins, their daughters are modest, and their men keep themselves from every unlawful union and from all uncleanness, in the hope of a reward to come in the other world.”16 “We're so far from promiscuity that it isn't even allowed for us to look with lust.”17 “Of our own free will, we cleave to the bond of single marriage. In desire of procreation, we're content with one wife or with none.”18 Christians, they said, “take care not to corrupt the temple of God by unlawful sexual indulgence, and practice self-control as an act of piety towards God.”19
To the early Christians, these things had spiritual meanings. They knew that the prophets had accused Israel of “adultery” in chasing other gods (Hosea 2:2). Judah “polluted the land, committing adultery with stone and tree” (Jeremiah 3:9). God denounced Jerusalem as an “adulterous wife” (Ezekiel 16:32), with his prophets graphically describing her political and religious contact with foreign powers in lurid terms as “the deeds of a brazen prostitute” (Ezekiel 16:30). And yet amid Israel's adulteries, her Lord's love kept faith with her.
And each Christian realized that his or her soul was espoused to Christ, finding in him its spiritual Bridegroom. And so James is especially sharp in warning us not to seek Christ's gifts only to spend them on our lusts for our own lives. “You adulteresses!” he accuses us. “Don't you know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?” (James 4:3-4). In other words, when we become so enamored with the affairs of life and our attachment to society that it divides our affections from Christ, our souls are cheating on their Savior. That's adultery on the spiritual level. And that brings home this law to the heart, if nothing else does.
But there's hope for the wounded and the unfaithful who repent. There's a story told – it's in most but not all manuscripts of John's Gospel – and I bet you know it (John 7:53—8:11). The scribes and the Pharisees enter the temple courts, where Jesus is teaching, and they have a woman in tow. They say she's been caught in the act of adultery. With whom? They don't say. They treat the man as blameless, accusing only the woman. If it's a trial they want, there must be multiple eyewitnesses to the act itself (Deuteronomy 19:15), but they bring none. Yet she's left to face a judgmental mob in her vulnerability and shame. With no eyewitnesses, no co-defendant, not even a clear sign her husband's aware of the situation, the scribes and Pharisees terrorize this woman as their pawn. They have no interest in justice, only in trapping Jesus. So they've exposed her in the temple courts – hardly a suitable place for an execution! But it was the place where, with appropriate offerings and sacrifices, an Israelite man might bring a wife he suspected of adultery, to have the priest ritually leave the matter in God's hands by an oath. The dust from the tabernacle floor would settle such questions (Numbers 5:17, 24).
So Jesus touches his finger to that temple-floor dust. And in that holy dust, he wrote with his finger, just as God wrote the Ten Commandments in stone with his finger (Exodus 31:18). Laying out the Law in its fullness, Jesus invites judgment to begin, coming from anyone who carries no weight of sin. In a stoning, the eyewitnesses of the crime were supposed to cast the first stones (Deuteronomy 17:7). But here, there are no eyewitnesses, only culprits – no one stands outside the sin they seek to unload on this woman's head as upon a scapegoat. For it was they, even more than she, who stood there guilty of adultery against the Lord God who was sitting in front of them – they were indeed an “adulterous and sinful generation” (Mark 8:38). So, one by one, they leave her with Jesus. He was sinless enough to throw the stone. But no: he saw her fear, her regret, her willingness to repent. So in mercy he set her free to return to her husband. He calls her to be an adulteress no longer.
And then Jesus died for adulterers, for the immoral, for sexual sinners of every stripe. He calls to repentance, offers forgiveness, washes clean; he gives them the grace to treat marriage with honor and their spouses with justice. And the early church carried forgiveness forward. In the second century, one teacher, celebrating that Jesus came to save “the irreligious and licentious and unjust,” knew an “innumerable multitude of those who've changed from licentiousness and have learned these things” in Jesus' teaching about marriage.20 A century later, another preacher said that “among Christians, if adultery has been committed..., cleansing from sin isn't established through bodily punishments but through repentance. See that, if one person performs a worthy penance, he can earn mercy for it! … Let that person flee to the aid of repentance, so that, if caught once, he doesn't do it a second time; or, if he's committed it a second or even a third time, he doesn't add any more.”21
Here's the beauty of it: Christ is risen! Our Bridegroom is “able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to intercede for them” (Hebrews 7:25). Our Bridegroom is faithful even when we're faithless, all love even when we're loveless (2 Timothy 2:13). So long as we live, it's never too late to repent, not even for sins a year past, a decade gone by... even be they sixty years behind us, time cannot free us from them, but Jesus can and will, if we now repent and turn ourselves over to him!
Jesus calls us back to, and models for us, a love that truly keeps faith. We owe the same to our spouses. We have to relatively 'leave' other ties for their sake, including the ties of sexuality leaking beyond marriage. We have to 'cleave' to them only, accept him or her as our highest earthly priority. And we have to see ourselves as 'one flesh' with them, with all its radical implications of love, “for no one ever hated his own flesh,” says Paul, “but nourishes and cherishes it” (Ephesians 5:29).
And this is all meant as a witness to the faith-keeping love that God shows us and that we owe back to him in Jesus Christ. We're called to 'leave' worldly ties for his sake – to turn down what James called “friendship with the world” (James 4:4), to say no to conflicting allegiances and allures that aim to seduce us. We have to 'cling' or 'cleave' only to Christ, accept him as our highest priority, period: “You shall cleave to the LORD your God,” as Joshua said (Joshua 23:8). And whereas you and your husband or wife are made one flesh, Paul adds that “he who cleaves to the Lord becomes one spirit with him” (1 Corinthians 6:17) – and that's even better. Amen.
1 Cormac Burke, The Theology of Marriage: Personalism, Doctrine, and Canon Law (CUA Press, 2015), 2.
2 Sherif Girgis, Ryan T. Anderson, and Robert P. George, What Is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense (Encounter Books, 2012), 3.
3 Pope
Paul VI, Humanae vitae §9
(25 July 1968). <https://www.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_25071968_humanae-vitae.html>.
4 James L. McQuivey, “The Road to Infidelity Passes Through Multiple Sexual Partners,” Institute for Family Studies, 14 October 2019. <https://ifstudies.org/blog/the-road-to-infidelity-passes-through-multiple-sexual-partners>.
5 Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to Polycarp of Smyrna 5.1-2
6 Philo of Alexandria, On the Decalogue §§121-131
7 Wendy R. Wang, “Who Cheats More? The Demographics of Infidelity in America,” Institute for Family Studies, 10 January 2018. <https://ifstudies.org/blog/who-cheats-more-the-demographics-of-cheating-in-america>.
8 Nicholas H. Wolfinger, “America's Generation Gap in Extramarital Sex,” Institute for Family Studies, 5 July 2017. <https://ifstudies.org/blog/americas-generation-gap-in-extramarital-sex>.
9 Rabbi Simeon ben Lakish, quoted in Pesikta Rabbati 24.2
10 Testament of Issachar 7.2
11 Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis 3.41.6
12 Lactantius, Divine Institutes 6.20.29-31
13 Clement of Rome, 1 Clement [Letter to the Corinthians] 30.1
14 Hermas, Shepherd, Mandate 4.1.1
15 Pliny the Younger, Epistles 10.96
16 Marcianus Aristides of Athens, Apology 15
17 Athenagoras of Athens, Legatio 32.2
18 Marcus Minucius Felix, Octavius 31.5
19 Origen of Alexandria, Against Celsus 4.26
20 Justin Martyr, 1 Apology 15.7
21 Origen of Alexandria, Homilies on Leviticus 11.2.4-7
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