Tim Maas Retired Quality Assurance Specialist with the U.S. Army

In Matthew 5:28, Jesus said that if a man even looks at a woman with lustful intent, it is the same in God's eyes as the physical act of having committed adultery with her. God created men and women to be physically attracted to each other, but that attraction was to find its full expression exclusively within the framework of lifelong marriage (Genesis 2:24).

Even someone such as David, whom God Himself described as "a man after My own heart" (1 Samuel 13:14), and who was mightily used by God in many ways, was not immune to lusting and acting on that lust, even to the point of making the woman pregnant, and then having the woman's husband murdered (2 Samuel 11 and 2 Samuel 12), for which he was severely judged by God (even though David repented and did not lose his salvation).

Also, a man who divorces his wife and marries another (with no mention of the second wife having been involved in the break-up of the man's marriage) commits adultery against his first wife (Mark 10:11; and Luke 16:18), and is also held responsible by God for making the first wife commit adultery (Matthew 5:32).

Adultery is not the unpardonable sin, but it is a violation and defilement of the most intimate relationship that one human being can have with another -- a relationship so close that the two are considered to be "one flesh" by God.

January 21 2016 • 0 responses • Vote Up • Share • Report

Jack Gutknecht ABC/DTS graduate, guitar music ministry Baptist church

According to Brown-Driver-Briggs, a Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, more commonly known as Brown–Driver–Briggs or BDB (from the name of its three authors) is a standard reference for Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic, first published in 1906, the verb, נאַף, means “commit adultery.”

It is used usually of a man, and always with the wife of another man; with Leviticus 20:10 (twice in this verse).-- 'If a man commits adultery with another man's wife-with the wife of his neighbor-both the adulterer and the adulteress are to be put to death.”

It is used also in Proverbs 6:32; elsewhere absolute Exodus 20:14 = Deuteronomy 5:17 (Ten Words). Here it is categorically prohibited in “the Decalogue” (seventh commandment, Ex 20:14; Dt 5:18): "Thou shalt not commit adultery."

The penalty was death for both guilty parties: "And the man that committeth adultery with another man's wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbor's wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death" (Lev 20:10).

Bethany Verrett says that Exodus 20:14 is "cut and dried." It explicitly forbids the sin of having sexual intercourse, wanting to have intercourse, or imagining the act of sex with someone that is not your spouse. I don't believe Exodus 20:14 is that straightforward. But Jesus certainly is that straightforward In Matthew 5:27-28 (imagining the act of sex with someone that is not your spouse.)

August 16 2020 • 0 responses • Vote Up • Share • Report