Adultery by Thought

You have heard that it was 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.
—Matthew 19:9

There’s a third way we break the Seventh Commandment by committing adultery, and that is adultery by thought.

Jesus didn’t come to cancel the law; He came to enhance it. Let’s look at what Jesus said about adultery in Matthew 5:27–28. Jesus said, “You have heard that it was 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.” Now Jesus doesn’t condemn our appreciating somebody else’s beauty. That’s not what He’s talking about here. But there is a very fine line between appreciation and lust. Jesus is not talking about that first look; He’s talking about the second, the third, the fourth, the fifth look. He’s talking about the mental undressing of the other person. That imagined seduction, that fantasizing of what it would be like to have sex with that person. That is what Jesus says is tantamount to adultery.

Why does God prohibit even that kind of thought? Remember, God wired us; He made us. He knows that if we think about them long enough, eventually we will act on those fantasies. Given the opportunity, with Satan dangling the bait out in front of us, if we have imagined a relationship with somebody other than our spouse, then given the opportunity we are very likely to act on it.

James 1:14 says, “Each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust.” If there is any message about the Seventh Commandment that I can give you after years of pastoral experience, it’s this: none of us is exempted from the temptation of adultery. I’ve heard people say to me over the years, “Now, Pastor, there are a lot of things I might be guilty of sometime, but I will never be guilty of adultery.” There’s one word for people like that: victims. The Word of God says, “Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed that he does not fall” (1 Corinthians 10:12). There is not one person reading these words who would be exempt from the possibility of adultery. That’s why we must be on guard against all things that might cause us to fall into the trap of adultery.

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Today’s devotion is excerpted from “Safe Sex,” by Dr. Robert Jeffress, 2008.
Scripture taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®, Copyright © 1960,1962,1963,1968,1971,1972,1973,1975,1977,1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.