Who’s Adulterous? – The Seventh Commandment

Who’s Adulterous?

The Seventh Commandment

Exodus, 20:14; Deuteronomy 5:18

“You shall not commit adultery.”

James 4:4

You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?

Are you living a lie?

Recently Susie and I watched “The Bridge on the River Kwai,” that classic statement about the way power, pride, and self-preservation can make us susceptible to the Lie. In the final scene the British officer, played by Alec Guinness, suddenly comes to his senses, even as he is about to die. Out of pride and stubbornness he has been complicit with the enemy, working to show up his captors’ ineptness and lack of discipline by leading his men to build a proper bridge. The bridge, he realizes just in time, is being used to advance the enemy’s war effort, and when, in his dying breath, he falls on the detonator, blowing up the bridge, we hope that, for his sake, he was doing it as a conscious act. How easy it is to become a friend of our enemy. In Biblical terms, how easy it is to become a friend of the enemy of our God! James’ readers must have been shocked to hear him call them an “adulterous people.” But it was true. The ease with which they accommodated the ways of the world in their practice of the Christian faith made them complicit with the enemy of their souls, and, thus, dangerously close to being enemies of God themselves. In an age like ours, which is awash in illicit sexuality, it is very easy for the followers of Christ to engage in building bridges whereby the enemy can bring havoc and ruin to our souls.

What are some ways that “adultery” in any form forces itself on our attention day by day?

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“In the Gates” is a devotional series on the Law of God by Rev. T.M. Moore

T. M. Moore is editor of the Worldview Church. He serves as dean of the Centurions Program of the Wilberforce Forum and principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe, a spiritual fellowship in the Celtic Christian tradition. He is the author or editor of twenty books, and has contributed chapters to four others. His essays, reviews, articles, papers, and poetry have appeared in dozens of national and international journals, and on a wide range of websites. His most recent books are The Ailbe Psalter and The Ground for Christian Ethics (Waxed Tablet).

Scripture quotations in this article are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, (c) copyright 2001,2007 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Editor’s note: The use of a translation other than the Authorised Version in an article does not constitute an endorsement in whole or in part by The Christian Observer.