Thou shalt not commit adultery.
This is one of the Ten Commandments — the ten foundational moral laws God gave to Moses on Mount Sinai for the people of Israel. These commandments sit at the heart of both Jewish and Christian ethics. Adultery, in the ancient world, referred to sexual relations between a married person and someone outside their marriage. It was not just a personal matter but one that destroyed families, communities, and the social fabric. Jesus later expanded this in the New Testament to include the orientation of the heart — not just the physical act but the internal disposition toward another person. The commandment points to something God clearly values: fidelity, covenant, and the dignity of the other person.
God, you designed love to be faithful, and you model it yourself more perfectly than anyone. Where my heart has wandered — in action, in imagination, in careless disregard for what costs another person everything — bring me back. Teach me what it means to truly honor another person. Help me love the way you love. Amen.
Five words. No footnotes, no exceptions, no nuanced qualifications. Just five words handed down on a mountain. And yet entire libraries have been written trying to live inside them, and people who genuinely love God and their spouses still sometimes fail them. The commandment is short because the thing it protects isn't complicated — it's just hard. Trust is hard to build and catastrophically fast to destroy. The ache when it shatters is as raw and human today as it was three thousand years ago. Jesus made this commandment both harder and more personal when he said that the heart matters, not just the behavior. That means this verse isn't only for people navigating the wreckage of a broken marriage. It's for anyone learning what it means to honor another person fully — to treat them as irreplaceable rather than interchangeable, to aim your heart and not just your actions in their direction. And underneath all of it is this: God describes himself as a faithful husband to his people, one who never walks away. The standard is that high because the love it reflects is that real.
Why do you think God placed fidelity in marriage on the same list as murder and idolatry? What does that placement tell you about how seriously God takes covenant and trust?
Jesus said that lust in the heart is adultery. Does that expansion feel like an impossible standard, a necessary one, or both — and what do you do with the tension?
This commandment is fundamentally about protecting something. What exactly does it protect, and why does that thing matter to God and to communities?
How does the way you treat other people's marriages — through what you say, what you normalize in conversation, or how you act around couples in your life — reflect your values in community?
Whether or not you're married, where in your life does this commandment call you toward a deeper or more intentional kind of fidelity — in friendship, in commitment, in how you treat people who trust you?
For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
Romans 13:9
For the woman which hath an husband is bound by the law to her husband so long as he liveth; but if the husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband.
Romans 7:2
Neither shalt thou commit adultery.
Deuteronomy 5:18
Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.
Hebrews 13:4
But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.
Matthew 5:28
But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.
Revelation 21:8
Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery:
Matthew 5:27
So then if, while her husband liveth, she be married to another man, she shall be called an adulteress: but if her husband be dead, she is free from that law; so that she is no adulteress, though she be married to another man.
Romans 7:3