ADULTERY IN THE HEART

Matt. 5:27-32

As we found out from the Ten Commandment, God’s law prohibits adultery (Ex 20;14) and the penalty for it was death by stoning (Lev. 20:10). Jesus concerned also about the Law of God to show how God’s standards of holiness are high and that we are far from reaching them. We do not have the ability of meeting the demands of the law. This is because although created the first man perfect, he fell into sin that affect all his faculties and affected all his offspring – we included. No one should be content that he is able to meet the demands of the law by reducing the law to his own imagination. It should be at the level that God wants in His Word that we should content ourselves. But you know the problem is that we are not able to meet them and this is the point that Jesus is putting across very clearly.

WHAT IS SIN?

Jesus is saying that the lust that would lead one to commit adultery would eventually lead such a one in hell. It is far much better to deal with the lust now than to deal to be dealt by the wrath of God in hell. Sin is not merely a matter of actions and deeds, rather 8it is something within the heart that leads to such actions. If you would deal with the source then you would have dealt with sin permanently.
Sin must be understood not in terms of the actions we commit but in terms of the power that causes us to do those actions, where the urge to do it comes from is the most important. What prods a person to sin – the root cause of the desire of covetousness, lust and the secrets of the hearts, is the major concern of the law.
Look at the corrupting nature of sin. It causes all the members or organs that God gave us to be so corrupted that because they so often cause us to sin they need even to be amputated and dealt away with permanently. Sin has a great ability to pervert and corrupt God’s instruments even to make them our enemies. Sin twists everything so that the very blessings of God are turned into curses that we want to get rid of. It is in this light that Paul says that the law that is holy and was meant to be good has been turned by sin to be something that actually leads man to sin.
Sin is very destructive then causing us to lose our members to evil. Sin destroys a person. Remember that it is sin that introduced death to the lives of men and to the whole creation. It always leads to death and o eternal punishment in hell. Therefore just as it is distasteful to God so should it be to us. We should and must hate sin with all our being. We should not let it to guide us and what we should do.

THE SIN IS MORE THAN JUST ACTION

The scribes and the Pharisees reduced this law to mean that, ‘You shall not be found guilty of the act of adultery.’ This was further distorted in the manner in which they helped men with very trivial excuses to divorce their wives using Deut.24:1 wrongfully. These are the misconceptions that Jesus was seeking to deal with in this passage. Adultery not is just the corporal action, that the scribes, the Pharisees and their traditions claim to be, but the deeper problem engraved in the heart of every Adam’s offspring. It is the lust and has deep problem coming from the heart of man (Mark 7:21).
The whole purpose of the law is to show the exceeding sinfulness of sin. The purpose of Christ’s death on the cross was because of the terrible consequences of sin and He was the only one who was able to deal with it. And He perfectly dealt with it by His vicarious death on the cross for He procured for His people a fully salvation. He fully satisfied the requirements of God’s justice. In Christ the full wrath of God was rested, for this reason the Father left Christ while He was on the cross to die and have the full effects of the punishment for sin.
Men and women were created for each other for companionship and commitment and this is why sexual relationship is part of it as gift from God. Adultery on the other hand is a sin that despises God and his commands, disrupting families and shatters people’s lives. The marriage is built on the foundation of faithfulness and commitment and so infidelity affects this companionship. The effects of infidelity and divorce are the same. Adultery is leaving the heart of one’s spouse for another and divorce is physically abandoning a spouse for a stranger and both have the same effects when they come to public.


THE EFFECTS OF THIS TEACHING

Evangelism can only be done in light of what the Bible has to say about sin as seen in the eyes of the law. Evangelism must start with the holiness of God, the sinfulness of man, the demands of the law, the punishment meted out by the law and the eternal consequences of evil and wrong-doing. It is only the man who is brought to see his guilt in this way who flees to Christ for deliverance and redemption. True belief in Christ is the one that see in Him one who delivers us from the curse of the law.
Doctrine of sin is also very important in the true conception of holiness. The major problem of our day is that many people are satisfied with themselves because they are not guilty of some sins like adultery, and all the sin that goes with it like lust, pornography, and so forth. They have not been convicted of their sinfulness and so are not guilty of their sin. They therefore believe and think that they are right with God. They have never examined themselves and their hearts, although they know that the heart is deceitful above everything else.

May I urge to be make covenant like that was made by job, "I have made a covenant with my eyes; how then could I gaze at a virgin? (Job 31:1)
We should neither play with our own emotions nor the emotions of others because in so doing we haul both ourselves and others into the eternal flames of fire in hell. We should vow to treat other brethren in complete purity (1Tim5:2)
God’s design for marriage:
1. It should be a permanent commitment and He does not allow divorce (Malachi 214-16)
2. There is nothing like divorce on demand (Matt 19:8-9)
3. The only Biblical ground provided for divorce in this passage is infidelity
4. Divorce on unbiblical grounds implicates other people in sin
5. Someone who is divorced following such marital infidelity can remarry with Old Testament teaching acting as the backdrop that allowed for stoning the offending spouse making the other one free to remarry.