The seventh commandment addresses not only physical unfaithfulness and adultery but also spiritual unfaithfulness. This article looks at the biblical theme of adultery, applying it to the church today.

2006. 11 pages. Transcribed by Diana Bouwman. Transcription started at 4:22 and stopped at 46:42.

The Seventh Commandment The Ten Commandments Series: Part 7

Greeting cards are a part of our culture. They are an expression of who we are. And thus we should note with interest that there is a new line of cards out for adulterers. In Los Angeles Times there was an article entitled “Adulterers Need Cards Too.” A woman by the name of Cathy Gallagher developed a line of cards for couples involved in an adulterous affair. The whole idea is profoundly sick, but it tells us a great deal about our society. A Christmas card developed for this line of greeting cards includes this line: “As we each celebrate with our families, I will be thinking of you.” According to the Los Angeles Times:

Ms. Gallagher says her Secret Lover collection of 24 cards is the first line exclusively for people having affairs, and she expects hot sales. She says half of married couples have had affairs (though some studies show the figure to be far less).

There is nonetheless a huge market evidently, in the eyes of those who produce such cards, for their product.

Gallagher says her cards express sentiments that people in affairs can’t express to anyone else, even their best friends. “These are not sex cards; these are emotional,” she says. “No other card reflects having to share someone or not being able to be with that person on the holidays.”

Yes, there’s nothing like a little home-wrecking sentiment to warm the adulterous heart at Yuletide. Ms. Gallagher’s line of cards is no threat to the big business of the major greeting card companies, but don’t think that they haven’t been thinking of this as well. Los Angeles Times contacted Hallmark, the nation’s largest greeting card seller, and they said that some of their relationship cards are broad enough that their meaning can vary according to the situation, so “it doesn’t see a need for an explicit line of cards for adulterers”. Spokeswoman Rachel Bolton pointed to the Hallmark cards line entitled Between You and Me. She says it covers a wide variety of relationships.

She points to a card that says, “I love the private world that you and I share. I look at that and I am thinking of my husband. You might look at that and think of your secretary. The purpose of a greeting card is to make somebody feel good—to solidify or further a relationship.”Stephen Kiehl, Adulterers Need Cards Too, New York Times, 2005

We are an adulterous generation. We have institutionalized adultery in our entertainment and in our literature. It is no longer included, by the way, in literature as a matter of making a moral point about the importance and priority of fidelity. It is now considered almost a requirement and it is expected, whatever the genre of literature—if you are writing a detective story, a thriller, if you are writing anything of fiction—that there will be found within the pages of the book adultery. Film and television—all these forms of entertainment are rife with adultery. Not only depicted, but adultery celebrated. From Anna Karenina to The Bridges of Madison County, adultery is depicted in what we read. It is in what we sing, or at least in what we hear sung, as modern music also has institutionalized adultery.

A few years ago I read an article about the retirement of one of America's most prolific divorce attorneys. In the course of this interview he was asked about the cause of divorce and his response was “Let's get real. I have not yet had a major divorce in which adultery was not a precipitating cause.” It is a frightening prospect! Just consider where we are in our culture. In 1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote what is considered to be his most influential novel: The Scarlet Letter. It depicted a colonial era America in which adultery was the scarlet sin, and that one who would commit it would be marked with the scarlet letter and set apart from the society because of her sin, or conceivably, because of his sin. But what we have in modern day America is the virtual moral impossibility of imagining such a sanction.

We have come to the place where a spokesman for Generation X said, “We are the first generation in which adultery is now not an issue. We have so little expectation of monogamy or of faithfulness, adultery is just no big deal.” Gladly that is not true of his entire generation, but it is true, it seems, increasingly of the culture at large. We have to face the reality that adultery is considered, writ large across this culture, no big deal! It creates the dramatic conflict for our sitcoms. For that matter, it increasingly is the backdrop to the news stories on the front page.

This is nothing new, of course. Adultery is not a new invention. If nothing else, the seventh commandment reminds us that adultery is one of humanity's first sins. In the first giving of the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20:14 we read these succinct words: “You shall not commit adultery.” And adultery as a category, as a sin, was so well understood that it needs (like the other commandments that conclude here the second table of the law) no great elaboration, no great definition or explanation. We know exactly what the Lord is saying here in this commandment. “You shall not commit adultery.”

The Seventh Commandment and the Old Testament🔗

We need to face and look honestly at what adultery is. The context of the Ten Commandments reminds us that these words were originally directed towards God's covenant people, the nation of Israel, whom the Lord is preparing to enter the land of promise. As his people of the covenant, they are to live in a way that reflects his character. They are to live according to the covenant that he will establish with them. They are to practice and to live fidelity, faithfulness to that covenant. The sin of adultery is a dagger at the very heart of that covenant. The sin of adultery is a dagger at the very heart of humanity, because it strikes at the heart of trust and faith, of love and affection. Adultery undermines the family. It undermines marriage. It undermines parenthood.

And it begins a breakdown of order that threatens the entire society. How can we trust each other if we cannot trust each other in our most intimate commitments? If we cannot maintain trust and fidelity within the small and inherently meaningful universe of marriage, how can we trust each other in commerce, in politics, in business, in culture, in life? Throughout the culture we see the unravelling of bonds and commitments. We see a culture that, in embracing adultery within its heart, accepts within itself a poison pill for every other relationship, a toxic substance for every other commitment. Because adultery is just that primal in its attack upon all that is honourable and good and true and faithful.

Israel is told, “The other peoples may live by other laws, because they will serve other gods, they will be driven by other worldviews, they will live by other commitments. But you, as my people, listen clearly: You shall not commit adultery.” The presence of adultery within the Ten Commandments is a reminder to us of the priority of faithfulness within marriage. Of the necessity of keeping that public commitment: “I will be faithful unto you till death do us part.” For Israel there was to be no adultery. For God's people there is to be no adultery. The sanction for adultery was death. And that most ultimate of sanctions (humanly speaking) was called for because adultery was an attack on the very priority of civilization, the priority of society—that little universe of marriage upon which every other human relationship depends. Adultery was a dagger at the heart of Israel, and it is a dagger at the heart of any civilization. And yet we take it so casually today. There really is no danger of the scarlet letter.

I would ask you to consider with me this morning that not only is there no danger of the scarlet letter in the culture, there is no danger of the scarlet letter in so many of our churches. Now we must assail and have nothing to do with the hypocrisy that Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote within the context of his novel, but we must recognize that we have now entered a day in which the church is so lax in its discipline and has so accommodated itself to sin that even within many congregations there can be webs and patterns of adultery that are known by the congregation and yet are accepted! And here again a congregation has accepted within its own body the poison pill of a sin that undermines all fidelity and all trust! They have accepted within their midst the breaking of a covenant that undermines their witness to the covenant of salvation!

It is interesting that so many within the church have such a low view of the importance of adultery, and yet any fair reading of the Bible indicates that adultery is not a minor theme. If anything, we would look at the Bible and we would see that adultery is actually a major theme within the biblical text! There is a big picture here! What we find within the sacred text of Scripture is that the smaller universe of adultery of the sexual sort becomes a picture in a paradigm of spiritual adultery of the universal sort. Time and time again Israel is told that its sin comes down to playing the harlot, and spiritual adultery is identified as its primal sin.

No one has brought greater and more scholarly attention to this theme than has Ray Ortlund Jr. in his book on Israel's adultery, A Biblical Theology of Spiritual Adultery. There is a big picture. I want to quote Dr. Orland here; he says this: “For post-Fall humanity, adulterated by sin, the Bible unfolds the drama of a loving God winning back to himself a pure Bride for her one Husband” (2003). There is a big picture here. There is a biblical theology of adultery, and it is the big story of God's redeeming love. It is the big story of God's determination to save a people through the blood of his Son, for the glory of his name, out of an adulterous generation. It is the Father's pleasure to create a Bride for his son, the Bridegroom and to present this Bride unto the Bridegroom without spot and without blemish. We, as the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, look forward to that eschatological promise of the marriage supper of the Lamb. God's big purpose of salvation, God's dealings with his people, God's redeeming love is against the backdrop of this biblical theology of adultery.

Israel’s Unfaithfulness🔗

Israel is referred to as God's unfaithful wife. Why is it that God would choose a sin that is so intimate in order to demonstrate to us a sin that is so universal? How is it that sexual adultery frames the backdrop for the biblical theme of spiritual adultery? It is because we can understand adultery. We understand what it is. In our honest moments we understand what has happened. One who has made a commitment to a spouse—a husband to his wife or a wife to her husband—has violated that precious and sacred covenant and vow with another, inviting within the marriage one who does not belong. Forsaking the one to whom all is due and all must be given for the one who has no rights whatsoever to this that the adulterer would give! God has given us, in our fallenness, this small picture of adultery within the human sphere, which is a matter of no small consequence, in order that we would understand the big picture of the fact that not only do we live in an adulterous generation, spiritual adultery is writ large across the Scripture! And we understand that this spiritual adultery becomes the prime means of understanding what we have done in forsaking our Creator. What we do in denying him his rights for us. What Israel repeatedly did in violating the covenant and going after other gods, a-whoring after pagan deities. And the temptation that is always ever so close to us that we would forsake our first Love for another.

In the Scripture, Yahweh is described as a jealous god. And that word is inherently meaningful within this context of the marital model. Like a jealous husband, God will not share Israel with other gods! God will not share Israel's affections and allegiance with pagan deities. He will call that sin what it is: adultery! He will accuse Israel of playing the harlot and of going a-whoring after other gods. In the Scriptures it is repeated time and time again. Israel is told, by the way, that the citizens of the covenant people, the members of the covenant race of Israel, are not to intermarry, because this is itself a background form of adultery. Just think of Ahab and Jezebel. Just think of Solomon and his wives. The law itself is written as a gift; it is given to us as God's gift that we would know how to live, not only to maximize our happiness but to demonstrate God's holiness.

But Israel did play the harlot. In Leviticus 20:4-6 Israel is accused of playing the harlot by seeking false revelation through mediums and spiritists. Israel is warned that anyone who plays the harlot in the worship of Molech is to be put to death, because this harlotry undermines the very security of the nation. In Numbers 15:38-40 Israel is accused of playing the harlot through wayward desires and lusts. In Deuteronomy 31:16 Israel plays the harlot by experimenting with pagan worship practices, not satisfied with the worship God commands. Israel went out to bring within its own bosom and within its own practice that which was done in the name and for the worship of other gods. Israel played the harlot. In Judges 2:16-17 Israel played the harlot through idolatry, turning their backs upon the one true and living God.

In Judges 8:27 Israel again plays the harlot, we are told, in the age and of the day of Gideon. Thus, God's judgment fell upon them in the nation’s vulnerability and defencelessness. And even after Gideon, Israel—who should have learned the lesson—instead returned to harlotry. In Judges 8:33 we read, “As soon as Gideon died, the people of Israel turned back and played the harlot after the Baals, and made Baal-be’rith their god.”

This theme of spiritual adultery should certainly have our attention, because if anything it describes the day in which we live. We understand this undermining sin, this subversive reality of adultery. And we can see it in Israel. We can read the Old Testament and we see Israel's continual pulling away from the covenant, their continual turning of their back to God, their continual seduction by other gods. And we look at it and we wonder: How could it happen? How could such things come to be? How could Israel—which was to see itself as having a holy Husband, Yahweh—make him a cuckold? Shame his name and deny his glory by going after other gods?

And then we come to the prophet Hosea. They are in a moment of extreme national urgency. God says to Hosea, “Go and marry a wife of adultery.” Hosea 1:2: “When the LORD first spoke through Hosea, the LORD said to Hosea, “Go, take to yourself a wife of harlotry and have children of harlotry, for the land commits flagrant harlotry, forsaking the Lord.” Famously, in Hosea 2 this continues with a more explicit command:

Contend with your mother, contend,
For she is not my wife, and I am not her husband;
And let her put away her harlotry from her face
And her adultery from between her breasts,
Or I will strip her naked
And expose her as on the day when she was born.
I will also make her like a wilderness,
Make her like desert land
And slay her with thirst.
Also, I will have no compassion on her children,
Because they are children of harlotry.
For their mother has played the harlot;
She who conceived them has acted shamefully.
For she said, “I will go after my lovers,
Who give me my bread and my water,
My wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.”

Therefore, behold, I will hedge up her way with thorns,
And I will build a wall against her so that she cannot find her paths.
She will pursue her lovers, but she will not overtake them;
And she will seek them, but will not find them.
Then she will say, “I will go back to my first husband,
For it was better for me then than now!”Hosea 2:2-7, NASB

Through the prophet Hosea the Lord God made clear what the sin really is, using the awful and hideous picture of this adulterous wife. He was showing Israel the nation’s adulterous practices. They had gone a-whoring after other gods even as this wife went a-whoring after other lovers. The Lord God would bring Israel back to himself through his redeeming love, but he would have to bring Israel out of the pit of adultery. At the end of the prophet Hosea we are warned, lest we miss the point:

Return, O Israel, to the LORD your God,
For you have stumbled because of your iniquity.
Take words with you and return to the LORD.
Say to him, “Take away all iniquity
And receive us graciously,
That we may present the fruit of our lips.
Assyria will not save us,
We will not ride on horses;
Nor will we say again, ‘Our god,’
To the work of our hands;
For in You the orphan finds mercy.”
Hosea 14:1-3, NASB

What is the redeeming love of God like? The redeeming love of God is so rich that it, and it alone, can overcome the hideous reality even of adultery. And the wholeness and the healing that comes on the other side of God's redeeming love is such that not only is the sin of adultery forgiven, but even the orphan who has no parent finds his home! The last verse of the prophet is clear:

Whoever is wise, let him understand these things;
Whoever is discerning, let him know them.
For the ways of the LORD are right,
And the righteousness will walk in them,
But transgressors will stumble in them.Hosea 14:9, NASB

It is not just Hosea, of course. The same metaphor, the same model of sexual adultery demonstrating spiritual adultery is written throughout the prophet Jeremiah as well. It is in the warp and in the woof of Scripture; it is in the very fabric of the biblical revelation. And of course, then we come to the New Testament where we understand the Bride and the Bridegroom imagery to be telling us something about the church. It was not even said so explicitly about Israel; now we understand that the new covenant people is given an identity and explicitly called the Bride of the redeeming Christ. With adultery seen in all of its evil, seen in all of its effects, seen in all of its grotesque horror

The Church’s Unfaithfulness🔗

How is the church, then, not aware of the constant danger of spiritual adultery? How is it that we are unaware, as Israel was repeatedly made aware, that there is always the seductive energy, the seductive pull, the seductive invitation for the church to abandon its first Love, to forsake its Bridegroom and to go a-whoring after other gods? Yes, let us admit as we read about Israel: the church also plays the harlot. It plays the harlot in theology, denying God's revealed truth. It plays the harlot, like Israel, looking for revelation outside the Scriptural revelation, dissatisfied with what the Scripture teaches and unwilling to be limited to what God has revealed in his Word. The church plays the harlot selling out to priorities that are not godly and biblical priorities. The church plays the harlot by accepting harlotry within its midst.

Why would Israel do such a thing? How can we conceive of such a thing? In one sense, it must have been that the invisible Yahweh lost ground continually to the all too visible pagan idols. As Israel watched the people around them in their worship—they saw them manufacturing their idols, they saw the ministrations to the idols—it made sense. It makes sense to have a god you can set in place. It makes sense to have a god you can serve in this way. It makes human sense in our depravity to want to worship a false god according to its false ways.

Far harder it is to maintain the faithfulness to the God who will not be seen. Who speaks. Yahweh, who redeemed his people from bondage to Pharaoh in Egypt, is continually sinned against by the people. For they would rather have a god they could hold, they would rather have a god they can manipulate, they would rather have a god with its creative worship than to obey and be in covenant faithfulness to Yahweh. And again, as we observe this in Israel, how dare we not observe it also in the church. The same temptation, the same pattern, the same horror, the same grotesqueness, the same effect.

But the New Testament theology of adultery also reminds us that God is victorious over sin and over death and even over spiritual adultery. He is redeeming a people to the glory of his name, he is cleansing a people to the glory of his name, and he will present a Bride to the Bridegroom, spotless and without blemish. His redeeming love is grace greater than all our sin.

One of the realities of spiritual adultery you must face is that this is not just about other people; this is a story for ourselves. Each of us must recognize that when Isaiah says, “All we like sheep of gone astray; we have gone each one to his own way” he is speaking about all of us. And he is pointing to spiritual adultery on the individual scale as well as on the national and on the covenantal scale.

But the only way we understand spiritual adultery is because we honestly also understand sexual adultery. It is the human experience of this sin that allowed Israel to understand the very notion of a spiritual adultery, and it is likewise our understanding of the concept of sexual adultery that allows us to understand the peril of this spiritual adultery. “You shall not commit adultery.” It is simple, it is clear and uncomplicated, but for Israel it had a very clear meaning. And that is that so long as there was no sexual relationship, there was no sexual activity between a man and a woman, either one of them married, there was no adultery. That does not mean there was no sexual sin, but it does mean that at that point there was no adultery, because adultery comes only as a violation of the marital covenant. And it is the fidelity to covenant that was Yahweh's point in Torah, in the Law, of making this clear. And, in the Old Testament at least, it is simple, it is clear and it is uncomplicated.

The Seventh Commandment and the New Testament🔗

And then along comes Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount of Matthew 5. Jesus repeats this commandment and, as is his pattern, in this message he comes not to abolish the Law but to fulfil. In verse 27: 'You have heard it said, ‘You shall not commit adultery’; but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”

I was sixteen-years-old, working in a campaign for the other presidential candidate, when the Democratic nominee Jimmy Carter, former governor of Georgia, gave an infamous interview with Playboy magazine. In this magazine he made a rather astounding admission; he confessed that he had committed adultery in his heart. It was a concept the editors of Playboy magazine clearly could not understand. Now, this was thirty years ago. In 1976 America, conservative Christians could not believe that Jimmy Carter could survive having granted an interview to Playboy magazine. On the other hand, the culture at large could not believe that a serious political candidate could have such hang-ups like this. Jimmy Carter did not come up with the idea of committing adultery in his heart. Jesus spoke of this in the Sermon on the Mount, in repeating the command and in heightening the command and making it an interior, not only a matter of actual sexual sin that involves a sexual act that is consummated with the one and the other, now Jesus says, “I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery.”

Now Jesus says [that] to plot and to plan adultery is to commit adultery. In other words, this new covenant is not just about what one does with the body; this new covenant is about what happens in the heart. God's new covenant people are now called to a standard which is not only about body parts in motion; it is now about the heart and its inclination! And now we understand that, as God's new covenant people, adultery is not a lesser danger. It is not a lesser thing in our midst; it is not a lesser temptation. It is an altogether higher, more urgent, reality for us! When the Bride is without spot and blemish presented to the Bridegroom, there will be not only no adultery, there will be no lust for adultery. It will be not only no physical breaking of the covenant, there will be nothing less than full fidelity to the covenant.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus makes clear his expectation of his people. Now we understand that we can break the commandment against adultery with our eyes. We can break the commandment against adultery with our brains. We can violate the seventh commandment with our imagination. We can fuel the breaking of this commandment with our passions. It is about our attention. It is about the totality of who we are. Of course, this sets a higher bar. It is a heightened criterion. It is not enough not to have sex with one who is not your spouse; now you cannot plot to do so. You cannot fantasize about doing so. You cannot enjoy the thought of doing so. Jesus says it is the same sin. He did not say it has the same effect, humanly speaking, as the actual sin of adultery. But he tells us it is the same sin. It is the desire for one who is not deserving of the gift.

A Gospel Issue🔗

When we think about adultery in the Scripture, we have to think about two simultaneous dimensions: the big picture and the smaller picture. We have to think about spiritual adultery and sexual adultery. We have to understand that the sex issue is a gospel issue. Paul makes this matter abundantly clear as he writes to the Corinthian church. The church of the Lord Jesus Christ, living by this new law in Christ, not only can visibly before the nations humiliate its witness (as Israel could do by going a-whoring after other gods and playing the harlot). Adultery in our midst undermines our testimony to the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ! As Paul told the Corinthians, your involvement with sexual sin, the notorious nature of your sexual practices as sins against God, are undermining your witness to the gospel and makes impossible your living together as the people of the covenant. For Christ's people, the sex issue is a gospel issue. Sexual adultery and spiritual adultery go hand in hand.

If we take Jesus seriously in the Sermon on the Mount, there are things we must do without. We must do without pornography. We must do without the celebration of sexual sin. We must do without the wayward glance. We must do without the modern concept of serial monogamy—marriage after marriage after marriage. Let’s be clear. When God said, “Thou shalt not commit adultery” he was speaking about something Israel could understand. He was speaking to something that they had witnessed and observed in their midst. He was speaking of this dagger at the very heart of Israel as a civilization. He was talking about this dagger at the very heart of marriage as an institution. And he was talking about something at the very heart of Israel’s witness among the nations.

For the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, the urgency is not lesser; it is greater. The tragedy is not minimized; it is maximized. For now it is not only a nation’s—a covenant, elect nation—witness before the peoples of the earth, it is now God’s redeemed people, the people of the new covenant. Because it is our mission not merely to live before the world so that they would see the glory of God in our living, but it is our responsibility to go and take the gospel to the ends of the earth! And that is a witness that is undermined by adultery.

In our specific context we need to be very clear that the Christian ministry is undermined by adultery. The Christian minister, the pastor, teacher, the one who assumes a position of authority and responsibility in the church, who commits adultery not only violates that marital commandment, that marital fidelity, that marital covenant, that marital vow, that marital commitment, but undermines the very possibility of effective and faithful Christian ministry. Writ large across our own imagination is a harvest of fallen trees where adultery has been the cause of that fall.

Jesus said it is even greater than that. It is more interior than that. It is also about the mind. And we must acknowledge that there are all too many Christian ministers who may never (at least yet) have committed adultery with the body who right now have their ministries undermined by the fact that they are committing adultery in the mind and in the heart. We set ourselves up for this in ministry, if we are not prudent and if we are not faithful and if we are not wise.

We speak to you who would be pastors of the church: You must establish absolutely unbendable rules for what you will and will not do, where you will and will not go, with whom you will and will not meet. And you must, in an act of faithfulness to your wife and in faithfulness to your church and in faithfulness to your Lord, never violate those boundaries! At least in terms of the physical sin of adultery, you cannot have an adulterous relationship with a woman with whom you are never alone! You say, “That sounds unrealistic”—I don’t care! We are not called to a realistic ministry; we are called to a holy ministry. You have no business counselling a woman alone. According to the New Testament, you are not even equipped for that. Read Titus! You have no business putting yourself in a position of vulnerability.

Secondly, the minister of the gospel (especially in our context I would point out) must never develop emotional bonds with a person of the other sex who is not the wife. Far too many men find themselves taking the far too easy route of finding emotional satisfaction and a boost to the ego of having a woman who is not our wife, to whom we are not committed, who is not the mother of our children, who does not come to us with demands and expectations, who does not remind us of our priority and of our commitments. We have our egos so easily boosted by a woman who would be drawn to us. And our ego tells us it is just because of who we are. It is because of how sophisticated we are. It is because of how wise we are. It is because of how handsome we are. And when that emotional relationship begins, when the excitement and the anticipation and the enjoyment of that gaze begins, adultery begins.

We must establish boundaries in our ministry of accountability. Accountability to our wives, yes! Absolutely non-negotiable. But accountability to the church. Yes, absolutely non-negotiable. And in many cases you will have to teach your church why these boundaries are important. In many cases you are going to have to educate your church through the preaching of the Word and through your urgent exhortation of why these things are important. You have to tell your church that the sex issue is a gospel issue. And it is high time they find this out before the tree falls in the forest and before all is lost.

God’s Redeeming Purpose🔗

In the Scripture, adultery is a dual focus. And writ large across the Scripture is God’s redeeming purpose in an adulterated age, in an adulterous generation even like our own, to save a people to the glory of his name. And as we understand this, we come also to understand that God’s redeeming love is demonstrated in the fact that, yes, he does through Christ bring to us grace greater than all our sin! Even grace greater than this sin we can hardly even imagine in its consequence and in its importance and in its grotesqueness and in its horror—even the sin of adultery.

When the Bride is presented to the Bridegroom without spot and without blemish, it will not be because the Bride has tidied herself up. It will not be because the Bride has decided to cover her own sin. It is not because the Bride, looking back at the horror of what she has done, will simply say, “We will do this no more; from henceforth we will be faithful.” It is because the redeeming love of God will cleanse this Bride of all iniquity! Her sin will be known no more. In heaven there will be no Ten Commandments. They will not be needed. The glorified church will live out in totality what it means to live to the glory and to the praise of the one true and living God, the bene elohim gathered before the throne of God.

But let us know this: everyone who is there will be a soul that has at some point committed spiritual adultery. Many who are there—all too many—will be those who committed sexual adultery. If anything else, Israel was told and the church is now instructed to understand the grace and mercy of God in all of its glory over against the honest assessment of this sin in all of its horror. As the Lord spoke through his prophet Hosea, “Let the wise man take heed and be instructed.”

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