The Seventh Commandment

This sermon was preached on 19/1/2010

You Shall Not Commit Adultery (Matt. 5:27-32)

While it is correct to regard this commandment as a warning about immorality it is also important to note that it is focussing on an issue that can destroy family life. Adultery is a sin committed by married persons. So we can see here that God is reminding his people about carefulness in protecting the family relationship.

The physical sin was used in the Old Testament to depict spiritual adultery, in particular the sin of idolatry. The most graphic presentation of this method is the story of Hosea and Gomer, with her adulterous behaviour illustrating the unfaithfulness of Israel towards God. It could be classified as adultery because she was in a covenant relationship with the Lord (he was her husband), and it was also true that involvement with pagan religions usually meant participation in immoral activity. The use of the sin of adultery illustrates how seriously God regarded unfaithfulness in his Old Testament people. When we turn to the New Testament, we find that Jesus reveals the same attitude regarding unfaithfulness in the church as we can read in his letter to the churches in Pergamos and Thyatira.

The Shorter Catechism answers to the question ‘What is required in the seventh commandment?’ is a very helpful summary: ‘The seventh commandment requireth the preservation of our own, and our neighbour's chastity, in heart, speech, and behaviour.’

The New Testament gives examples of how Jesus, the lawgiver, applied his own commandment (Matt. 5:27-32) and how he responded to a person who was guilty of breaking it (John 8:1-11).

Jesus and the seventh commandment

In the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5:27-32) Jesus applies the seventh commandment to his hearers and deals with two abuses of it. One abuse is connected to inner sinfulness and the other is concerned with an aspect of social practice (divorce). We can see immediately how this teaching would surprise his audience because they would have assumed that outward behaviour was all that mattered as far as personal behaviour is concerned, and that conformity to social behaviour, especially in a religious community, was very important. Of course, no one will deny that outward behaviour is important, and that living according to commonly accepted norms is usually helpful. Yet Jesus is pointing out that these two aspects of life can be used as a cover-up for sin. A person can be very religious outwardly and an immoral person inwardly; a person can go through the expected procedures, in this case in connection to divorce, with the intention of feeding his immoral desires, although others did not usually call it such. But Jesus did.

Dealing with inward sin

There are two appropriate assessments of the teaching of Jesus in this passage. One is to recognise that the Saviour is pointing out to his followers that immorality is a danger concerning which they must always be aware. We are fully aware of the trouble, and at times the havoc, that has been caused in the church because of this sin. Yet that is not the main point that Jesus is stressing. Rather he is demanding that his disciples respond to the presence of immoral thoughts in a manner different from the reaction of the religious leaders. They were content as long as the outward life was acceptable, but Jesus says that his followers have to deal with the inward attitude. This leads to the second assessment, which is that Jesus’ teaching here tells us how to deal with every kind of wrong attitude.

As we can see, Jesus demands of his followers a radical response to the expressions of indwelling sin, such as immoral thoughts. He uses very powerful imagery to depict how such indwelling sin should be curtailed. Radical surgery is needed to hinder the progress of the disease. Jesus uses two parts of the human body to illustrate his point – the eye and the hand. It may be that he intends two different activities (one illustrated by the eye and the other illustrated by the hand) or he may have in mind two connected practices (the hand follows the eye and takes hold of what the eye observes). With regard to the first possibility, Spurgeon regarded the eye as depicting wrong speculation and the hand wrong activities. Concerning the second possibility, we can see a connection between immoral thoughts and immoral practices (the man’s eye observes the woman and his hand eventually takes hold of her). The obvious biblical example of this is David: his eye saw Bathsheba bathing on her roof; instead of turning his eye away, he continued to look, and eventually he sent for her and committed adultery with her.

As we think of the illustrations used by Jesus, several responses to indwelling sin can be seen. First, we need to realise that the state of our hearts must be the priority with us. There is a sense in which outward behaviour is not a priority because usually wrong behaviour is corrected by right inner attitudes. If the inside is right, then so usually will be the outside. It has often been observed that if people took as much attention to beautify their hearts as they take to create an outwardly attractive appearance, most actual sins would disappear. We have to remind ourselves that the real person is what we are inside.

This is a very important lesson for us in how we assess what holiness of life means. When a person persists in committing a sin openly, it is easy to pronounce a judgement on the person. But what about the person who does not commit open sins? It is wrong for us to assume that they are righteous because they may be religious hypocrites. Just because a person has a Bible in their hands does not mean that they have it in their hearts. True holiness flows from within, just as sin flows from within. Jesus taught this clearly in Luke 6:45: ‘The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.’ Jesus, in this section in the Sermon in the Mount, reminds us once again that the heart of the matter is the matter of the heart.

Second, in using this illustration of removing eyes and hands, Jesus is telling his disciples that it is possible to deal with indwelling sin. Often, we will admit that we have problems in our hearts, and even complain about our sinful tendencies. Yet this response is not sufficient as far as Jesus is concerned. Since he demands more of his followers, he assures them that more is possible. He encourages them by saying that there is a way by which their inwards sins can be dealt with.

Third, this illustration stresses the necessity of personal involvement in inner sanctification. The Master does not indicate that another person is qualified to deal with my sins. I have to get out the knife and deal with my heart. The minister, the elders, fellow-Christians cannot remove the inward sin of a member of the church. Of course, they can pray for them and we can encourage one another. Nevertheless, progressive sanctification is a very personal activity.

Fourth, Jesus reminds his disciples by this illustration that they have to be very particular about their sins. The same surgery is required for each indwelling sin, but they cannot be dealt with comprehensively. Instead, each individual sin that lives in my heart has to be dealt with. Inevitably, we must realise that this will be a lifelong process because the number of sins that each of us has is innumerable. Yet I would suggest that instead of concluding that the task is pointless because we cannot achieve perfection in this life, we should focus on the sins that are prominent in our thinking at the present time.

So far, we have noted that this requirement of Jesus regarding the indwelling sin of his disciples demands making one’s life a priority, realising that change is possible, requires personal responsibility, and necessitates focusing on particular sins until they are defeated in our thinking. Nevertheless we have not yet considered the most obvious feature of the Saviour’s illustration, which is that dealing effectively with indwelling sin will be very painful – a person who loses a hand feels the pain! In order to understand what is involved in this process, it is helpful to turn to other biblical pictures of dealing with sin, and two of them are mortification and crucifixion. Paul uses both these terms. In Galatians 5:19-24, he writes: ‘Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.’ And in Romans 8:13 (KJV), he says, ‘For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live;’ and in Colossians 3:5 (KJV) he exhorts his readers: ‘Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry.’ Both the imagery of mortification and crucifixion indicate that indwelling sin has to die. But crucifixion is a painful, prolonged death.

Another imagery that I found helpful regarding understanding dealing with indwelling sin is starvation. We know that it is possible to starve to death. If we starve our particular sins of what sustains them, then these sins will die. I suspect that a man with immoral thoughts about a person will have immoral thoughts in general. Therefore he should stop feeding what causes immoral thinking such as reading certain magazines or watching films that encourage such thinking. A person with spiteful thoughts must stop feeding his sin with material that stimulates them. He has to starve his sins of food, or to change the metaphor he has to cease putting fuel on the fire, because if he does not, he will continue to have these sins running rampant across his heart.

Of course, a Christian knows that he has to replace wrong thoughts with right ones. First, he has to have correct thoughts about his heart sins, and he will get this by reminding himself what God thinks of these sins. Second, he will consider some of the consequences of his sins: they grieve the Spirit, they lead to divine chastisement. Third, he will confess his heart sins to God and ask for help in dealing with them from the Holy Spirit. Fourth, he will change his thinking to biblical material, such as God’s promises, or personal examples in the Bible, or to the sufferings of Christ, or to the activities of Jesus in heaven on behalf of his people, or even to the prospect of heaven.

Why should a professing follower of Christ deal with his indwelling sin? Jesus gives the answer in verse 30: ‘For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.’ Jesus is not saying that only sinless people will get to heaven. But he is saying that those who don’t care about the sins of their hearts are not genuine disciples. To be concerned about heart sins is evidence of a new heart; to be indifferent to heart sins is a sign that all we have is the old sinful heart that has not trusted in Christ for salvation. A true Christian hates indwelling sin and will regard it as a serious enemy that must be resisted at all times. Therefore, if I hate indwelling sin and attempt through God’s grace to put it to death, I can deduce legitimate biblical assurance from the attitude of my heart. If, however, I allow indwelling sins to fester in my soul, and perhaps feed them with further sins, then I have no evidence that I am converted until I repent of these wrong attitudes of heart. So we can see how carefully Jesus applied the seventh commandment.

Jesus and the woman taken in adultery

John records an incident in which the Pharisees found a woman breaking the seventh commandment and brought her to Jesus in order to see whether or not he would condemn her. They wanted her to be stoned for her sin. Instead Jesus responded by saying that the one without sin should throw the first stone.

The incident is very revealing because we see in it three types of conviction of sin. First, there is conviction by man, seen in the accusation of the Pharisees (they were not using God’s law for the right reasons). Second, we see non-saving conviction by Jesus (the Pharisees realised their sin, but did not approach the Saviour for mercy). Third, the guilty woman discovered the forgiveness of the perfect Judge (she called him Lord and went out to live a holy life). The incident tells us that gratitude for grace is a most powerful motive for dealing with inner sins that may express themselves in wrong outward behaviour.