7th Commandment

The "Right" To Marry

Seventh Commandment
Ex. 20:14

This time we are looking at the 7^th Commandment: “You shall not commit adultery.”

            Once again I want you to notice that this commandment is stated in the negative.  As I have said before, we don’t want to be mistaken about its meaning.  Stating something in the negative expresses nothing else than the strongest and sternest warning.  Such warnings, by their very nature, are meant to be all-encompassing.

            By stating this negatively, God is expressing to us the heinousness of sexual sin in his eyes – destroying the image of God by murder is worse but just under that is the violating and abusing of the image of God in life.  Therefore, to understand this commandment properly we must begin our examination by emphasizing the positive: we are all to uphold the value, preciousness and holiness of the marriage covenant - whether we are in a covenant of marriage at present or ever hope to be.  The marriage relationship is to be honored and respected whether it’s ours we are talking about or someone else’s.

            This is very necessary to stress for some have thought that because the word used here, “adultery”, implies a marriage relationship at present, that other sexual abuses are not included or forbidden.  Such is the logic of one who is looking for a way he or she may sin “permissibly” while still being perfectly aware in his or her conscience that what he or she wants to do is sin.  But when you start not with your own desires but with what God wants us to honor, you realize that this commandment includes every sexual sin under its umbrella: manipulating a marriage partner with sex, cheating on a wife or husband, sex outside of marriage, homosexuality, prostitution, pornography, masturbation, voyeurism and lustful thoughts.

 From the Beginning

            There are three biblical principles regarding marriage we need to know and remember:

            1.  God has created the institution of marriage.

“Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”  (Gen. 2:24)

He created it marriage for companionship,

“And the LORD God said, ‘It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him.’”  (Gen. 2:18)

for procreation/rearing of godly seed.

“God seeks godly offspring. Therefore take heed to your spirit, And let none deal treacherously with the wife of his youth.”  (Mal. 2:15)

              2.  Marriage is a three-way covenant – it is a promise vowed and meant to be kept between one man and one woman, and it is also a promise vowed to and kept before God.

              3.  The purpose of marriage is to give and receive the gift of “the act of marriage” - the intimacy of physical and emotional bonding.  This physical companionship and relationship is based on mutual attraction and comfort, mutual trust and vulnerability, and mutual satisfaction and fulfillment.  And through the physical union, the bearing of fruit – the birth of children - is done under the provision of a secure environment – that also allows for their being raised and taught to know, trust, profess and live before the Lord their God.

            We’ve seen this alluded to already, earlier in God’s Moral Law:

            a) when we studied the 1^st Commandment, we saw that our devotion and worship unto God is based on a similar choice we make to devote ourselves entirely unto him and to forsake all others;

            b)  our honoring of the family in the 5^th Commandment taught us that the family is the foundation of society and that it supports the health of the church and the prosperity of the nation which both depend on the integrity and strength of the family unit.

 How Much is Preciousness?

            The 7^th Commandment concerns the need to guard and protect that family unit and it does so by reminding us of the value of human life as the image of God.  In this, the 6^th & 7^th Commandments are alike – they both deal with the precious value of the image of God: it is wrong to take the image of God in murder, and it is wrong to give the image of God in sexual sin.

“You shall not commit adultery”

 But the truth is, my friends, the marriage act was created by God to be a precious communion. And that is what it is: precious. It cannot be made cheap, it can only be abused, only be shamed, only be ruined. Marriage is the only context given by God for it. The marriage vow is holy – it is made before God.

You must honor and uphold the gift and institution of marriage.

The marriage relationship is sacred – it is security and comfort and strength. The marriage act is precious – to be properly protected as well as properly enjoyed at all costs. The home that is made and protected by a godly marriage is secure for all parties – the husband and the wife and the children that come from their union.

From Studies in the Book of Exodus, by The Rev. David G. Barker, October, 2000.