“You shall not commit adultery.”

Seventh Sermon on the Ten Commandments

Lent III; March 19, 2006

Matthew 5:27-32

I’m going to do some old-fashioned expository preaching today. Sometimes the text demands it, and I believe this is one of those times. This text from Matthew divides into three sections; to comment on each section and then draw a conclusion from the whole seems to me the best way to deal with this text, particularly in the context of the Ten Commandments.

So, first, a few words about the Commandment: “You shall not commit adultery” comes out of a context when paternal identity was highly important. In other words, for purposes of inheritance of land and family name, it was critical to know that the man you call “Father” really was your father. Consequently, the Commandment prohibited married women from sexual intercourse with men other than their husbands. It did not prohibit married men from fooling around with unmarried women. Oh, such fooling around was considered sinful, but it was not considered adultery.

Women, you should recall, were considered little more than property: first, the property of their fathers, then the property of their husbands. The Commandment against adultery was to protect husbands, but it did not concern itself with the emotional or physical well-being of wives.

With that in mind, hear the words of Jesus. The first section of this text (verses 27-28), tells men that if we look at a woman with lust in our hearts, we are already guilty of adultery. Now, there are several wrong ways to take this text. One wrong way might occur to a clever lawyer. If I look at a woman lustfully, then I have in the view of God committed adultery with her. Therefore, the punishment is the same as if I had actually had sexual intercourse with her. Consequently, if I look at a woman lustfully, then I might as well go ahead and have intercourse with her, because the punishment will be the same. Wrong.

Another wrong way of looking at it is to assume that Jesus is condemning all men – or at least all heterosexual men – to the fire because lust is unavoidable. You know, at this point I was going to say something like, “At least if you’re between the ages of 14 and…” and I decided not to because I couldn’t decide what upper age to pick and I figured I would be in trouble whichever one I picked.

And a third wrong way of looking at it is to assume that it applies only to heterosexual men. If you are a woman who looks at a man lustfully, or a man who looks at a man lustfully, or a woman who looks at a woman lustfully, go for it. Wrong. All of these are sinful, because it is clear that what Jesus is doing in the context of the Sermon on the Mount is taking a law that has become a straightjacket and turning it into a source of liberation.

“Liberation?” you cry. “He’s just told me that sex is bad!” No, he hasn’t. First of all, it is clear that Jesus is referring not to the inevitable thump-thump of the heart that happens when someone gorgeous walks by. He’s referring to the intentional use of other persons as sources of sexual titillation. Given his time, he mentions only the lust of a man for a woman, but I’m convinced all forms of sexual exploitation are his concern. His difficult comment is a source of liberation for two reasons. First, it says that as a child of God, I don’t have to reduce my desires and my relationships with others into sources of sexual pleasure. I can like myself better than that; I can think more highly of myself than that. Second, it is liberating for the other people to be admired as beautiful, or handsome, or admired for other reasons, without being reduced to lumps of flesh for sexual pleasure.

I recall a hitch-hiker I picked up many years ago in New Jersey. He was a scruffy-looking man about my own age – I was in my early twenties then – and as we drove he told me of a concert he had recently attended. I don’t remember the band, but it was one I had heard of, and their music was excellent. But my companion didn’t talk about the music; he talked about what a hot chick the lead singer was and how he wished he had been lying on the stage with her… well, you get the picture. I was disgusted. Okay, his attraction for her was natural, but to turn that into a yearning for intercourse when he should have been admiring her singing was the sort of thing Jesus has in mind.

So, in the second section of the text (verses 29-30), Jesus advises self-mutilation. No, he doesn’t. Remember that Jesus indulges in exaggeration and other outrageous ways of speaking in order to get his point across.

Besides, your right eye and your right hand can’t cause you to sin; only your own choices can cause you to sin. Perhaps there are bad influences in your life and you need to remove those: friends who want you to do things that are harmful, business colleagues who think a little cheating won’t hurt, books, websites or magazines that distract you from the ways of God. Absolutely: get them out of your life.

A couple of the church fathers1 remember St. Paul’s description of the Church as a body, and so apply this text to the need to remove those who lead the Church astray. That is, bishops, ministers and teachers who lead the people away from the truth of Christ should be removed from their positions, these Fathers say. It’s an interesting observation too.

The third section is difficult for us moderns, and probably should be. In it, Jesus flatly rules out divorce as a possibility within the will of God, with the possible exception of on the grounds of unchastity. When Mark reports the same teaching (Mark 10:11-12), he does not allow even that exception. Allow me to make some observations.

First, notice the concern for the woman’s well-being in Jesus’ statement. The old law made sure that a divorced woman was adequately compensated by her ex-husband, so she was not left financially destitute, but it did not concern itself with her position before God afterward. Jesus claims that a man who divorces his wife causes her to be in a precarious position before God, and that is important and it is his fault. It should be noted that in his day, women could not ordinarily divorce their husbands, hence the one-sidedness of his teaching. As I see it, Jesus takes the wife seriously as a person in his teaching: a person in her own right, not merely an appendage of her husband.

Second, it misses the point to turn this teaching into another law. Requiring people to go through a long process of annulment in order to be able to remarry and still receive communion, or prohibiting persons who are divorced and remarried from holding office in the church, seems faithful to the letter but to miss the spirit of Jesus’ teaching. Jesus consistently reveals the will of God to the world. Churches are terribly uneven in how we apply his teaching to our regulations. We seem to be fixated on turning his handful of teachings about sex into rules, but leaving his large body of teaching on money and property as good suggestions, or ideals to aspire to. Jesus proclaims the will of God, unadorned and without concern for making it palatable and practical. We’ll talk about money another time. Here it is clear that Jesus declares that the will of God is for marriage to be indissoluble, a lifetime of growth, mutual respect and encouragement that we can call, for short, “love.”

That does not always happen and vows are broken. People do get divorced and they do get remarried. Divorce is a breaking of a covenant and therefore is an experience of sin to be confessed and forgiven. Yet it is forgiven, and people are free to get on with their lives and seek to make commitments and relationships that more faithfully mirror the will of God than what they had before.

What should we conclude from all this? Simply, that as sexual beings as with everything else, we are to treat one another and ourselves with dignity. Sexual behavior is not, frankly, a private concern, but is expressed within a social matrix of expectation, reward and consequence, and the feelings of many. We have good reason, for example, to teach young people to abstain from sexual activity until marriage, because sexual activity always complicates relationships and creates emotional and physical dimensions that make people more vulnerable. People can be hurt: one’s lover, one’s parents, one’s friends, oneself. And all of these should be treated with dignity.

But simply making rules for people and thinking we have followed Jesus is misguided. He makes it clear that all of us, married and single, divorced and widowed, straight and gay, are to treat ourselves and others – all others – with respect and dignity. That includes – fortunately! – being able to appreciate good looks, but excludes thinking of persons as objects to satisfy desire.

Whew; and even with all that I feel I have treated the subject inadequately. Well, let’s end with a joke and call it a day. A child was reciting the Ten Commandments, and when she got to this one, she said, “Thou shalt not admit adultery.”

Let us pray. Thank you, God, for creating us for life together. Thank you for good marriages and families, thank you for second chances, and thank you for the joys of our sexuality. Give us grace to remember Jesus’ words and the Holy Spirit’s power to follow him, treating ourselves and others with dignity. Amen.

Robert A. Keefer

Westminster Presbyterian Church

Clarinda, Iowa

[1] Both Chromatius and Augustine. See Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, New Testament volume Ia, edited by Manlio Simonetti, p. 111.