Do not commit adultery.
—Exodus 20:14
Having worked as a pastor for thirty years, I’ve heard more than one parishioner confess that they’ve cheated on their mate. I’ve also listened to the sorrow, disappointment, and anger of those whose spouses cheated on them. Adultery is a kind of betrayal that violates our deepest trust and usually results in devastating pain.
In the Ten Commandments, the prohibition against adultery follows just after the prohibition against murder, which points to the severity of this transgression against one’s neighbor. It is also likely true that the inclusion of this command indicates that infidelity was a common occurrence among the ancient Israelites, just as it was among the ancient Egyptians and every other ancient people.1 Prohibitions against adultery are found in nearly every ancient legal code.
The fear that one’s spouse had cheated must have been prevalent enough that Numbers 5:11–31 outlines a process used by the priests to determine if a woman had cheated on her husband. The code says she should undergo a test that would force her to miscarry if found to be carrying another man’s child. Later in scripture, Proverbs 6 and 7 provide stern warnings to men against sleeping with another man’s wife.
Adultery was a metaphor regularly used by the prophets to describe Israel’s infidelity to God. In these passages, Israel was portrayed as an unfaithful wife, and God as Israel’s faithful husband. As Israel violated the first two commandments, worshipping other gods and making use of idols, she was said to have committed adultery against God. Hence God said to the Jewish people:
How can I pardon you?
Your children have forsaken me
and swear by gods that are not gods.
Although I could have satisfied them,
they committed adultery,
dashing off to the prostitution house. (Jeremiah 5:7)
Adultery was such a serious violation of God’s will that, in the Law of Moses, it was punishable by death. Leviticus 20:10 states, “If a man commits adultery with a married woman, committing adultery with a neighbor’s wife, both the adulterer and the adulteress must be executed.” Deuteronomy 22:22 repeats the command in slightly more direct terms: “If a man is found having sex with a woman who is married to someone else, both of them must die—the man who was having sex with the woman and the woman herself.”
In the passages above, you may have noticed that adultery was framed as a sin committed against a married man by his wife and another man. By contrast, a husband did not commit adultery against his wife when he slept with another woman. In patriarchal and polygynous societies, a married man might have more than one wife and dozens of concubines (secondary-status wives). He might even sleep with an unmarried woman without its being considered adultery.2 Adultery was, technically, a violation of a husband’s rights that took place when another man slept with his wife. Far from being unique to Israel, this definition was nearly universal in the ancient Near East.
Note, though, how the idea of patriarchy—men holding primary legal rights and power in society—was absent in the Bible’s opening story of creation in Genesis 1. There we read:
God created humanity in God’s own image,
in the divine image God created them,
male and female God created them. (Genesis 1:27)
In Genesis 1, men and women were created at the same time and each in the image of God. Further, God says to the man and the woman, “Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and master it. Take charge of the fish of the sea, the birds in the sky, and everything crawling on the ground” (Genesis 1:28). According to this text, men and women were to rule together in partnership, with no sign of patriarchy.
Patriarchy arises in the Bible’s second creation account, in Genesis 2:4b–3:24. This creation story is written in a markedly different way from the first one. Genesis 1 was written in the form of Hebrew poetry, and the creation story found there is something like a creed or liturgy—it points to the goodness of God and all that God had made. Genesis 2:4b and the following verses were written in prose, telling a narrative story. In this more “earthy” portrait, human beings were created not by God’s speaking them into existence but by God forming them from the dust of the earth.
In the second creation story, the woman is created after the man as God’s response to Adam’s loneliness. God says, “It’s not good that the human is alone. I will make him a helper that is perfect for him” (Genesis 2:18). In this account, God takes a rib from the man’s side and forms the woman. God blesses the first humans with the Garden of Eden but warns them not to eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. A few verses later, the woman is persuaded by a talking serpent to eat the forbidden fruit. She eats and in turn gives the fruit to her husband to eat.
When God discovers their disobedience, he expels the humans from paradise. He tells Adam that henceforth the earth will be more difficult to cultivate and harvest relative to the ease with which food was available in Eden. And he tells Eve that childbirth will now be more painful and that “You will desire your husband, but he will rule over you” (Genesis 3:16).
In both creation accounts, it appears that in Eden the man did not rule over the woman, but they shared the partnership described in Genesis 1. I believe that patriarchy and the subordination of women in human society were never God’s will. Genesis 3:16 was not prescriptive. Rather, the verse was descriptive—it was announcing how things would be in a broken world outside of Eden. It is how relationships would be distorted by sin and the difference in physical strength generally seen between the genders. This patriarchy was seen as normative across the ancient world. But it was not God’s original or intended will. And when Christians pray, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven,” we are praying for, among other things, the end of patriarchy and a return to the partnership seen in Genesis 1.
Before turning to Jesus’s words concerning the seventh commandment, let’s consider the best-known example of adultery in the Hebrew Bible, the infamous story of King David’s adultery with Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah.
David was viewed in scripture as Israel’s greatest king. The Bible mentions him more often than anyone except Jesus, and God himself identified David as “a man after his own heart” (1 Samuel 13:14 and Acts 13:22, NRSV). He was a courageous warrior who ruled with a shepherd’s care for his people and a deep faith that he expressed through poetry that we still read in the Psalms today. Yet despite this, David also experienced temptation and, in this case, ultimately succumbed to it.
The story begins in springtime. David sent his army off to war to fight against the Ammonites. “But David remained in Jerusalem,” the text says (2 Samuel 11:1b, emphasis added). David had always led his men into battle. Yet this time he sent his men to fight while he remained in his citadel. The mention of David remaining behind is, I believe, meant to point to a change in the shepherd-king’s heart. Perhaps it was pride or a sense of entitlement that led him to stay behind in his palace while others fought on his behalf.
“One evening,” the story continues, “David got up from his couch and was pacing back and forth on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing; the woman was very beautiful” (2 Samuel 11:2). If you visit Jerusalem, you can see what archaeologists believe are the foundation walls of David’s palace. His home would have been the highest building in Jerusalem at the time. From his room he could easily look down upon the homes of his neighbors.
That night, David saw the beautiful Bathsheba bathing. Rather than turn away, as decency would dictate, he kept looking. It seems that in the days that followed, he could not stop thinking about this woman. Here I’m reminded of the words of the Epistle of James:
Everyone is tempted by their own cravings; they are lured away and enticed by them. Once those cravings conceive, they give birth to sin; and when sin grows up, it gives birth to death. (James 1:14–15)
David knew the commandments we have been studying in this book. But he entertained his desires. They were allowed to gestate until they finally gave birth to actions.
Author and pastor Walter Wangerin once wrote about “the moment of ‘maybe,’ ”3 the split second in which we may be seized by the thought of having an intimate relationship with someone who is not our spouse. When the thought crosses our mind, we either immediately shut the door—recognizing that an affair is wrong, is prohibited by God, and will result in pain—or we entertain the idea. We cultivate it. We imagine what it might be like. At this point, we might not have any intention of actually cheating on our mate or violating someone else’s marriage vows. Perhaps that’s how David felt as he watched Bathsheba on the roof that night. The problem, Wangerin notes, is that when we begin to play with “maybe,” it can be a short walk to “yes.”
“David sent someone and inquired about the woman. The report came back: ‘Isn’t this Eliam’s daughter Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?’ ” (2 Samuel 11:3). At this point, David still had not violated the commandment. He simply wanted to know more about the woman he’d seen bathing. But when he found out that she was Eliam’s daughter and the wife of Uriah, one of his warriors fighting the Ammonites, that should have been the end of his interest. Instead we read, “So David sent messengers to take her. When she came to him, he had sex with her” (2 Samuel 11:4).
Carefully notice the words here. David’s messengers “take” Bathsheba, then David has sex with her. Generations of men have read this story imagining that Bathsheba willingly came to see the king, flattered and excited to be invited to the palace. They assumed Bathsheba willingly slept with David, drawn to him as he was to her. But that is not what the text says. Instead it seems likely to many interpreters that David’s taking and having sex with this young woman whose husband was off at war was not born of mutual desire.
In the story, Bathsheba appears to have no children yet. She is likely in her teens, while David is likely in his fifties. He is the king. She is the wife of a foreigner, giving her a somewhat lower status than the wife of an Israelite in this ancient culture. Can she say no? If so, at what cost? When you dig beneath the surface, the account from the Bible sounds tragically familiar to the stories we’ve frequently heard in this #MeToo era: a powerful man forcing himself upon a woman under a stated or implied threat.
The next time we hear from Bathsheba, a month has passed. She sends word to David that she has missed her period. She’s pregnant. David, now realizing his sin could be made public, and knowing the severity of the seventh commandment, seeks to hide his sin.
The king sends for Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, under the pretense of wanting a report from the front lines of the war. Uriah returns, giving his report, after which David urges Uriah to go home and enjoy an evening with his wife. David hopes Uriah will sleep with his wife and believe, when the child is born eight months later, that the baby is his own. But Uriah is too honorable to sleep with his wife while his fellow soldiers are on the war front. Instead he sleeps on the front step of the palace to guard the king. When David hears this the next day, he tries to get Uriah drunk so that he will go home and sleep with Bathsheba. But this backup plan also fails. Uriah holds on to his honor and the commitment he made to his men.
And this is where one sin begets another. David, afraid of his sin being found out, hatches a plan. He prepares a letter to Joab, his general on the front lines: “Place Uriah at the front of the fiercest battle, and then pull back from him so that he will be struck down and die.” He seals the letter and asks Uriah to take it back to the general. Uriah has no idea that the letter he carries is his own death sentence. Joab does as the king commands, and Uriah dies in battle. When the news makes it back to Jerusalem, David plays the part of the compassionate king, marrying Uriah’s poor widow—what would seem to others an act of remarkable kindness on the part of the shepherd king.
It would be easier to read this story if David were simply an evil person. But he’s one of the Bible’s heroes. His story is told across four books of the Hebrew Bible. Seventy-three of the Psalms are attributed or dedicated to David. Jesus is called “the son of David”—a messianic title—twelve times in the Gospels. The story is a reminder that if someone as seemingly pious as David can succumb to adultery, so can the rest of us. Here I appreciate the words of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: “If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.”4 Whether it’s murder, adultery, or a violation of any of the other commandments we’ll examine in the next few chapters, all of us are capable of evil.
Not only did Jesus greatly expand the meaning of this command, but he also upended the practice of patriarchy behind its traditional legal definition.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, “You have heard that it was said, Don’t commit adultery. But I say to you that every man who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery in his heart” (Matthew 5:27–28). Note that Jesus doesn’t specify whether the woman is married or not. Remarkably, Jesus says that adultery includes not only the act of intercourse with a woman who is not one’s wife but also the desire behind the act. He recognizes the importance of the “moment of maybe.”
Jesus goes on to say:
And if your right eye causes you to fall into sin, tear it out and throw it away. It’s better that you lose a part of your body than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to fall into sin, chop it off and throw it away. It’s better that you lose a part of your body than that your whole body go into hell. (Matthew 5:29–30)
Does he really intend us to pluck out our eyes or cut off our hands? No. Jesus often speaks in what is called “prophetic hyperbole.” “Prophetic” refers to bold statements addressing what is or is not God’s will. “Hyperbole” means intentionally exaggerating to make a point (“I’m so hungry I could eat a horse” is a common example). In Matthew 5, Jesus is clear that we’re not meant to objectify others or to entertain illicit desires in our hearts. He also recognizes that sin begins with the “maybe” that we ponder in our hearts. And his mention of cutting off hands and plucking out eyes? It was a way of saying, “This is serious. Pursue this path of desire and it could destroy you and others.”
I’m reminded of Jimmy Carter’s famous words when he spoke to Playboy magazine during his 1976 campaign for the White House:
Christ set some almost impossible standards for us. Christ said, “I tell you that anyone who looks on a woman with lust has in his heart already committed adultery.” I’ve looked on a lot of women with lust. I’ve committed adultery in my heart many times. This is something that God recognizes I will do—and I have done it—and God forgives me for it.5
As Carter said, there are very few men, and perhaps few women as well, who have not violated this command as Jesus defines it.
As a young man, I thought about sex all the time. This was in part a function of biology, raging hormones that I had no control over. These desires didn’t suddenly cease when I became a Christian at the age of fourteen. Getting married didn’t instantly make me uninterested in all other women I met. There have been times across the course of my married life when thoughts of “maybe” raced through my brain and sought to burrow their way into my heart.
I’ve seen more than a dozen colleagues in ministry give in to the “moment of maybe.” I feel compassion for their mates and the pain they’ve experienced. Some of their marriages survived; many did not. I also recognize how easy it would have been at points in my life to have followed in their footsteps.
LaVon and I have been married for thirty-eight years. Our wedding took place the week after I graduated from high school—not usually the wisest age to get married. We’ve fallen out of love with each other several times across those thirty-eight years. She’s noted that there have been times when the church seemed like my mistress, seasons when I allowed the demands of the ministry to become all-consuming. I would have meetings every night of the week, and even when I was home I could easily be preoccupied in my focus on sermons or ministries or people I needed to care for. I tried to be engaged at home. I scheduled date nights with LaVon and my girls and sought to prioritize them. But it didn’t always work out that way, or feel that way to them. And then there were the books, like the one you are holding in your hand. Those were written on my days off, late at night, and on vacations.
In those seasons, I would come home from work excited and energized. I would share with LaVon the new ministries we were planning, or the important things that had happened in my day, or the insights I’d discovered working on my sermon. She’d often listen with enthusiasm, but when she was feeling unvalued, she would say, “Really? Do we have to talk about the church all the time?”
I’d feel shot down and discouraged. But when I went back to the office, I was no longer Adam Hamilton, failing husband, but Adam Hamilton, caring pastor and visionary leader seeking to accomplish great things for God. In those seasons, our personal and intimate life suffered and the word “maybe” once more entered my vocabulary. Likewise, if someone had come along in those moments when LaVon felt alone and uncared for—someone who paid attention to her and who made her feel loved and valued—it would have been easy for her to have been drawn into a relationship with someone else. Thankfully, that didn’t happen for either of us.
In caring for friends and congregants who have been through affairs, I have seen that when a person is drifting into adultery, they are often blind to the consequences that will result. Even clergy whose careers, ministries, and congregations will be wrecked by an affair cannot see this in the moment. Perhaps for LaVon and me, it was having witnessed those consequences that kept us faithful to each other. That and the grace of God. More than once we recognized we were struggling. I would pull back on work, and she would turn toward me instead of away. We’d pray for each other and remember the calling to be each other’s helpers and companions. And over time, we’d find that “loving feeling” again.
Feelings of love come and go. The commitment we make in marriage is not to always feel in love. It is to always practice love; to seek to bless, encourage, and build up our mate. Those seasons of resentment or frustration or loveless days and nights are like the “check engine” light in a car. They are not signs that the car needs to be sent to the scrap yard, only that it needs some help. Often the underlying problem is relatively minor, but sometimes it’s big enough that you can’t fix it on your own. At one point, LaVon and I sought professional counseling—someone who could help us understand the underlying causes of the particular “check engine” light we were experiencing.
Today, thirty-eight years in, we are more in love with each other than we have ever been, and enjoying the best seasons of our life—empty nest, a beautiful granddaughter, a bit of travel. We looked at each other the other day and agreed, “We’re so glad we never gave up.”
How common is infidelity today? The 2018 General Social Survey out of the University of Chicago asked the question (as it has each year since 1972) “Is it wrong to have sex with someone other than your spouse?” Seventy-six percent of married persons said it is always wrong, and another 15 percent said it is almost always wrong. That’s about the same number of people who indicated that affairs were wrong in 1970 (though the number who say adultery is always wrong is down 10 percent from the 1980s).
So most people agree that infidelity is wrong, but many have had affairs nonetheless. The numbers from national studies vary widely, but looking at the General Social Survey data on those currently married, the numbers range from about 16 percent of those in their sixties and seventies to about 10 percent of those in their twenties, thirties, and forties and about 12 percent of those in their fifties.6 Other surveys suggest that as many as 20 percent of married persons have had at least one affair, with a handful reporting even higher numbers. It’s worth noting that these numbers are far lower than estimates from the past. It appears from the GSS that younger generations are becoming less inclined to have an affair, though the numbers are rising slightly among middle-aged and older adults.
Still, some websites and blogs extol the “benefits” of having an affair. Even after a scandal in which the identities of millions of its users were leaked, Ashley Madison—a dating site for married people—continues to claim sixty million users who have bought into its marketing slogan, “Life is short. Have an affair.” As appealing as this might sound, the reality is that your life is not so short. Most of us will grow old, and there is something beautiful about doing so with a partner and friend who has stood at your side for your entire life. But while your life is not short, your marriage likely will be when you pursue an affair. The hurt and pain that result from adultery always outweigh the benefits.
Having said that: It is easy to understand how good people, who genuinely love God and love their mates, end up in another’s embrace. I remember speaking to a woman who had just confessed her affair to me. She described the emptiness of her marriage, a husband who was never home, never noticed, never told her she was loved or special or beautiful. Eventually she met another man who did tell her these things, and they ended up sleeping together. She knew it was wrong and had broken it off quickly. But she wept as she told me of the heartache she felt, the guilt and the shame. Her deepest hope was that she could put her marriage back together again.
I think also of a man, in his early forties at the time, who confessed his affair to me. It started as a flirtatious relationship at the office, seemingly innocent. But the excitement and energy of the forbidden relationship led the man and woman, both leaders in their churches, to a hotel room one night. They pledged they would never do it again, but the lure was too great.
When the affair was found out, he said it was like waking from a stupor. He did not love the woman he’d been sleeping with. He loved his wife. But he’d caused her such pain, destroyed her sense of self-worth and her trust. He sobbed in my office, asking if there was any way he could heal the harm he’d caused to the woman with whom he’d always dreamed of growing old.
My point in sharing these two stories, out of the dozens I know, is to remind you both of your vulnerability and of the consequences we often can’t see when we’re wrestling with the “maybe.” I’ve often thought that I know of no one who, if you were to put them in the wrong situation at the wrong time in their lives, couldn’t be seriously tempted to have an affair. And the challenge is even greater when we consider another temptation that’s readily available today: pornography.
Pornography has become ubiquitous in our Internet age, but it is by no means a modern phenomenon. The ruins of ancient Pompeii, a city frozen in time by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79, make clear that sexually explicit images were a part of the ancient world. And the surprisingly high proportion of brothels to residents of the city makes modern cities appear Victorian by comparison.
But it is the ease and anonymity with which one can view pornography today—not simply images but video—and the staggering amount of this content that is easily accessible that separate ours from prior periods of human history. In 2019 the largest porn site in the world noted that it had 42 billion visits that year. (Bear in mind that there are just over seven billion people on our planet.) It averaged 115 million visits to its site per day, an increase of 15 percent over 2018. Over the last twelve months, the company noted, 6.83 million new pornographic videos had been uploaded to its site. These numbers are mind numbing.
Recent studies of the impact of pornography use have found that there is an inverse relationship between porn use and sexual satisfaction.7 The more frequently individuals of both genders viewed porn, the less satisfying they found their sexual relationship with their mate. There are correlations between porn use and divorce among young adults.8 A recent study of 6,463 Polish college students found that 58.7 percent felt pornography had a negative impact on social relationships and 63.9 percent felt its use had a negative impact on mental health.9
The British edition of Cosmopolitan ran an article recently about “porn-induced erectile dysfunction”—PIED for short. It noted that a significant number of British young men aged eighteen to twenty-five found it hard to climax during sexual intercourse with a woman due to frequent use of pornography and masturbation. The article quoted neuroscientist Nicola Ray of Manchester Metropolitan University:
Porn works on the brain like any addictive substance….The thing you’re addicted to takes hold of your neural circuitry and hijacks the pathways related to more natural rewards so that they become unresponsive. So porn becomes the only thing the brain understands in relation to sexual stimulation; basically real sex becomes increasingly less exciting.10
Is every user of pornography affected by PIED? No. But for many who frequently use pornography for self-stimulation, the level of stimulation provided by multiple images and videos produced by actors and actresses pretending to engage in sexual activity that real couples do not engage in makes it difficult for real sexual intimacy to measure up.
I’ve heard parishioners describe how the regular use of porn led them to escalating “levels” of pornographic material in order to achieve climax. In some cases, this led young adults to have unrealistic expectations of what sexual behavior should be like with a mate. In other cases, viewing pornography led individuals to pursue real-life actions that were harmful to themselves or others, and sometimes even illegal. Increasing rates of unwanted “rough” sex reported by women is one example. Another is consumption of child pornography and other forms of child sexual abuse.
The New York Times recently noted, “Last year, tech companies reported 45 million online photos and videos of children being sexually abused—more than double what they found the previous year.”11 Where is the appetite and desire for this kind of illegal and horrific material coming from? Do the people who view these images and videos start off with child porn? Or do they begin with more “normal” pornography and gradually escalate to this?
I remember speaking with a man who had been convicted of possession of child pornography. For him there was a clear through line from his use of “normal” porn to his addiction to pornography and ultimately to his search for more and more deviant images that led to his use of child pornography. This man, now in recovery, had always considered himself a follower of Christ. He felt deeply ashamed of what he was doing and yet found it very hard to stop. His story gave new meaning to Jesus’s words “If your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out.” While Jesus didn’t mean this literally, he was pointing to the idea that the things we train our eyes upon can destroy us.
I’ve only scratched the surface of reasons not to use pornography. Yet porn seems ubiquitous and so easily accessible that its use is an increasing challenge for large numbers of Christians.
I have no judgment for those who use Internet pornography—large percentages of the population, according to some studies. I spoke with one man in my congregation who struggled with the guilt and shame that accompanied his struggle with “ordinary” porn. He told me, “I feel like I shouldn’t even be coming to church. I am such a failure. God knows how often I’ve failed. I try really hard to refrain, and a few days go by, maybe a week or two, and then I find myself succumbing once more to the desire. How could God possibly love me?”
My response to him was “God knows your desire and your struggle. He’s seen every time you failed. He doesn’t want this for you. But I wonder if, while you focus on every time you failed, God sees every day that you thought about viewing porn but didn’t. He knows you resisted on those days precisely because you love him. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t care about the times you failed. But remember that he also sees the times you have overcome.”
Over the years, dozens of people have shared with me their stories of affairs. Hundreds more have talked about their struggles with other forms of temptation and what they have done to resist. When placed alongside the Bible’s teachings, several common tactics emerge that seem to help in resisting temptation. I think of these as the Five Rs of Resisting Temptation:
Remember who you are: Who are you? What roles do you hope define you? (For me, I am a Christ follower, LaVon’s husband, Danielle and Rebecca’s dad, Stella’s grandpa, and Resurrection’s pastor. I want to be defined as someone who loves God, follows Jesus, and loves others, starting with my family.) Is the action I am tempted by consistent with these roles and characteristics that I hope define me?
Recognize the consequences of the action: What are the worst possible consequences of saying yes to this temptation? How would I feel after saying yes—proud or ashamed? Who would be hurt if my actions were discovered, and how would it impact them?
Rededicate yourself to God: In the midst of the temptation, pause to pray and recommit yourself to God. James famously noted, “Resist the devil, and he will run away from you” (James 4:7). Resisting the devil is easiest when we ask for God’s help and recommit ourselves to him. When you do this, it acts like a cold shower in the “moment of maybe.”
Reveal your struggle to a trusted friend: As long as something remains a secret, it has power over us. But when we share our secret temptation with someone else, the desire often dissipates. The friend will be able to hold you accountable. Enlist your friend’s support. If this is your mate, share your passwords with them and invite them to monitor your Internet search history, your texts and email or your credit card bills. LaVon has always had access to all of my accounts and my phone. If I need to hide something from her, I shouldn’t be doing it.
Remove yourself from the tempting situation: This may be as simple as using Google’s SafeSearch feature to block explicit content on your computer or installing porn-blocking software on your phone. It might mean unfriending people or breaking off relationships in the workplace, neighborhood, or even church, if you find yourself developing unhealthy emotional relationships. In some cases, it could mean doing something as serious as leaving a job or moving.
The last of these suggestions may seem extreme, until we consider the cost of succumbing to certain temptations. Having seen infidelity cost people their marriages, their relationships with their children, their homes and careers, I’ve come to believe it would have been less costly for them to take a new job or move than to have stayed in the situation that destroyed their family.
We began this chapter talking about King David’s infidelity. I’d like to end by looking at another famous example of infidelity, a woman caught in the act of adultery. Her story, and Jesus’s response to her, is found in the eighth chapter of the Gospel of John.
In John 8 there is a well-known story that was not originally a part of John’s Gospel. Scholars believe it was an authentic story about Jesus that circulated among Christians until it was added to John’s Gospel in the second century. According to this account, Jesus was teaching in the temple courts when
the legal experts and Pharisees brought a woman caught in adultery. Placing her in the center of the group, they said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of committing adultery. In the Law, Moses commanded us to stone women like this. What do you say?” (John 8:3–5)
It was, of course, a trap. They had seen Jesus show mercy toward “sinners and tax collectors.” How would Jesus respond to a situation in which scripture clearly calls for the death penalty? I believe they anticipated that Jesus would compromise on the “authority of scripture” in favor of showing mercy to this woman.
Can you imagine what the woman must have felt? She was terrified, humiliated, and utterly exposed. We don’t know much about her story. Was she in a loveless or abusive marriage and found herself drawn to another man who expressed genuine love for her? Or was she, like Bathsheba, forced into sex by a powerful man who had power over her? We don’t know. And where was the man who was committing adultery with her? Why did the Pharisees not bring him to Jesus?
The author of this Gospel fragment tells us, “Jesus bent down and wrote on the ground with his finger.” Jesus did this twice, in verses 6 and 8. It is a mystery what Jesus wrote, but Jerome, writing in the fourth or early fifth century, suggested that he was writing in the dirt the sins of the religious leaders.
As the religious leaders continued to question him, Jesus stood up and spoke. “Whoever hasn’t sinned should throw the first stone,” he said. One by one, the religious leaders dropped their stones and walked away. What a brilliant answer. He doesn’t set aside the scripture that calls adultery a serious sin. But he points to the reality that we have all sinned. Contrary to what you might have heard, all sin is not equal. The Bible itself makes this clear. But even here, on one of the “top ten” sins, Jesus shows mercy.
The story continues, “Finally, only Jesus and the woman were left in the middle of the crowd. Jesus stood up and said to her, ‘Woman, where are they? Is there no one to condemn you?’ She said, ‘No one, sir.’ Jesus said, ‘Neither do I condemn you. Go, and from now on, don’t sin anymore.’ ” (The entire story is found in John 8:2–10.)
Jesus set impossible standards in his teachings and ministry. He forbade us from even looking at another with lust in our hearts. Yet when a woman was caught in the very act of adultery, Jesus refused to condemn her. He looked at this woman with compassion. He understood her humanity and whatever circumstances had led her to the embrace of a man who was not her husband.
Jesus forgave her and forced her accusers to set her free. What does that tell us about his mercy toward us?
While this story may not have been part of John’s Gospel, I’m so grateful the second-century church inserted it. It is one of the stories that lead me to love Jesus—both for his response to the hypocrisy of the religious leaders and for the love he showed the woman in the most vulnerable moment of her life.
What was true for this woman is also true for me and you. The Lord’s forgiveness might not eliminate the consequences of our actions. A marriage can survive infidelity, though it requires remarkable mercy, patience, and love, and usually help from a counselor. But whether our marriage survives or not, Jesus reminds us in this story that God is rich in mercy and “abounding in steadfast love” (Exodus 34:6, NRSV).
I understand. I understand how powerful your desires are. I felt these desires when I walked the earth. And I understand how accessible and available temptations are to you. Remember, I taught you to pray, “Lead us not into temptation.” Know that my Father will not lead you into temptation, but as you pray these words, he will help you resist and lead you on another path, better than the one you are tempted by. Know that our “no” is not for lack of love for you. It is not to keep you from pleasure or satisfaction. Our “no” is to keep you from harm, from shame, from pain. We want what is best for you. Resist the dark side, the tempter, and the temptation you are drawn to. The tempter and the temptation are not irresistible. Remember who you are—you are my Father’s beloved child and you are my disciple. We don’t want you to experience the pain of infidelity, nor to inflict it upon someone else. But know this too: If you have fallen and given in to desire, know that I am willing and able to forgive you.