Fidelity

“You shall not commit adultery.” (Exodus 20:14)

When God made humans, He made marriage. Marriage is the first and thus the most basic of all human relationships. Faithfulness to God reigns supreme over all, of course, but the next foundational layer for goodness in society involves faithfulness and goodness between a husband and a wife.

It doesn’t take much to observe this in our own society. The healthiest families are those in which a man and his wife love, honor, forgive, and help one another—and otherwise mirror the image set by Christ. This sets the pattern for their relationship with their children, as well as for their children’s relationships with each other as brothers and sisters. How we learn to relate to others in the home is our first and most important teacher for how we are to relate to others in community outside the home. And then of course we learn from our experience in our homes of origin how to set up our own homes, and thus the effect of marriage relationships is passed on ad infinitum.

God not only made the world this way—with faithful marriage at the center of all good society—but in His process of redeeming a broken and sin-filled world, His redemption of marriage is front and center as well.

God says in Proverbs, “For a man to take a wife is a good thing.” Adultery is the corruption of “a good thing.” Adultery extends to anything that corrupts the marriage relationship and takes away from the health of a marriage.

For example, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus applies this command in the realm of “just thinking about it,” making a direct correlation between adultery and lust in the mind and heart. It is not just that one leads to another—and it certainly does in many cases—but His point is that the desire itself adulterates the marriage and corrupts it. Sure, actual, raw physical adultery is worse than a moment of lust, just as murder is worse than a hateful thought. But hate will do in destroying society. It is murder in seed form, and enough relatively “little” weeds can ruin a garden as well as (and often better than) one big thorny thistle. So it is in marriage. The little foxes of daily infidelity will spoil the vineyard.

When God redeems marriage, He redeems it down to the roots. The fidelity called for in this command includes sexual purity from top to bottom—in thought, word, affections, and actions—and both before marriage as well as in it. But faithfulness in marriage also means loving your spouse sacrificially, in an understanding and honoring way, loving him or her as your own body, just as Christ loves His own Bride, the Church—again in every thought, word, attitude, and action. As God reforms our marriages in just such a way, all society and culture will be reformed as well—to His honor and His glory.

“Lord God, we give You thanks for Your own faithfulness to us, a covenant fidelity that led to such sacrifice as Christ made on the cross that we might live in true oneness with You, with God Himself. We pray that we would mirror that faithfulness in our own marriages. Grant forgiveness for this sort of sin in our marriages as well as others, and reform our marriages according to Your Holy Word and Your holy character, that we might bring You glory not only in our marriages but in our children, in their families, and in every other facet of our society. We pray for this in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.”