This is a followup to my recent comments on socials concerning the adultery committed by Texas Rep. Tony Gonzalez which resulted in the self-immolation of the adulteress—leaving her husband a widower and her eight-year-old son motherless.
Quoting Gonzalez’s public statement of regret, he described his adultery as a “lapse in judgment.” He denied his sin was in any way responsible for his partner’s self-murder and firmly stated God had “forgiven” him.
Adultery is a terrible crime against God and man.
First, against God. In His Seventh Commandment He declares, “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” The Ten Commandments of God the Father Almighty are given in revelation of character traits we call His “perfections.”
In excruciating detail Scripture reveals His perfection of everlasting faithfulness to His Own covenants He has made with sinful men. Take Abraham, for example: twice he passed his wife, Sarah, off as his sister, and his son Isaac followed his father’s example by passing off his wife Rebekah as his sister, also.
Scripture records God’s words through His prophets condemning the pervasive idolatry of His covenant people, the Jews, which He calls “adultery.” Yet God cried out to them to return to Him, promising He would forgive and restore them as His Own beloved bride.
The Old Testament prophet Hosea is a true-life parable of God’s faithfulness to His covenant marriage to the Hebrews, persevering in covenant faithfulness despite His people’s adulterous liaisons with pagan gods. Then, in the New Testament, we have this theme of God’s marriage to His people through the work of Jesus Christ reiterated by the Apostle Paul who commands wives to “submit” to their husbands because the husband is “head” of His wife just as Christ is “head” of the Church.
Next he commands the husband to “love” his wife because Christ loved the Church and gave Himself up for Her. He concludes his commands to wives and husbands by explicitly declaring God’s covenant people are to conduct themselves in their marriages following the Divine pattern of marriage demonstrated by Christ and the Church:
For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and shall be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is great; but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church.
Nevertheless, each individual among you also is to love his own wife even as himself, and the wife must see to it that she fears her husband. (Ephesians 5:31-33)
The Divine archetype for marriage is “Christ and the church,” and for this reason the wife is to submit to her husband as the church submits to Christ, and the husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself up for her.
A man who commits adultery refuses to love his wife. He lies about God’s attribute or perfection of covenant faithfulness. Our Lord Jesus is incapable of unfaithfulness to His precious bride.
If we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself. (2Timothy 2:13)
The entire Ten Commandments testify to God’s attributes and perfections. We are commanded to have no other gods before Him because His Name is “Jealous.” We are commanded to rest on the Sabbath because He Himself rested on the seventh day. We are commanded to honor our father and mother because He Himself is the Father of us all. We are commanded not to murder because every man bears His Image and Likeness. We are commanded not to lie because He cannot lie.
So then we are commanded not to commit adultery because He Himself cannot be unfaithful to His covenant people.
How serious is the sin of adultery?
Well, think of King David murdering Uriah to cover up his adultery with Uriah’s wife, Bathsheba. Think of Rep. Gonzalez whose partner in adultery burned herself to death after her adultery became known to her husband and child.
It’s hard to take sex seriously in a culture drowning in nakedness and perversion, but sex has always been as serious as death. Stealing another man’s wife produces fruit so bitter that Scripture speaks of it as the soul’s destruction:
The one who commits adultery with a woman is lacking heart; he who would destroy his soul does it. (Proverbs 6:32)
Then notice the close association of adultery and the bloodshed of babies and children:
For they have committed adultery, and blood is on their hands. Thus they have committed adultery with their idols and even caused their sons, whom they bore to Me, to pass through the fire to them [their idols] as food. …For when they had slaughtered their children for their idols, they entered My sanctuary on the same day to profane it; and lo, thus they did within My house. (Ezekiel 23:37-39)
We see this same horror today in our bloody practice of murdering our unborn children through hormonal birth control and other kinds of abortion. Murder and adultery are joined by an iron yoke.
You respond that you have never committed adultery?
Well then, it’s almost certain you are also a liar. Remember, although you can hide your online evil deeds and your secret liaisons from your husband and children, you can’t hide them from God. He sees all and will bring everything into judgment.
Sixty percent of women and ninety percent of men use online pornography and this is adultery, just as our Lord declared:
You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery’; but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. (Matthew 5:27-28)
You think you can look as long as you don’t touch?
Wrong. Sexual sin never stops where you promise yourself it will. You tell yourself you’ll do this here, but stop there, but soon there is here and you haven’t stopped. Satan owns your flesh and is in control of your adulterous eyes.
Do you not recall Wisdom’s warning “to keep you from the evil woman,
from the smooth tongue of the adulteress. Do not desire her beauty in your heart, nor let her capture you with her eyelids. For on account of a harlot one is reduced to a loaf of bread, and an adulteress hunts for the precious life.
Can a man snatch up fire in his bosom and his clothes not be burned? Or can a man walk on hot coals and his feet not be scorched? (Proverbs 5:24-28)
How serious is the sin of adultery?
Marriage is to be held in honor among all, and the marriage bed is to be undefiled; for fornicators and adulterers God will judge. (Hebrews 13:4)
Yes, adultery confessed to God may be forgiven. King David is the classic example of the wonderful reach of God’s forgiveness to the depth of this terrible sin of adultery (followed by murder).
Here are the words of David’s true confession to God and repentance:
To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet came unto him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.
Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions. Wash me throughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.
For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me. Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight: that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest. Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me….
Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, thou God of my salvation: and my tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousness. (Psalm 51:1-4, 14)
But, dear sister and brother, don’t fool yourself. The kindness of God leads us to repentance, but not everyone is granted true repentance. Remember Scripture records Esau “was rejected, for he found no place for repentance, though he sought for it with tears” (Hebrews 12:17).
Again, it is hard to have anything approaching a truly Biblical view of adultery and commensurate horror in our present time which is drowning in every form of sexual degradation and wickedness. We’ve repeated the teaching of Scripture that adultery lies about God’s perfection of covenant faithfulness to His Bride, the Church. This is far and away the worst evil committed by the adulteress and adulterer.
Now, though, let’s end by speaking of two lesser evils which should also be helpful warding off this sin of adultery.
Commenting on President Bill Clinton’s adultery with Monica Lewinsky, Joe Sobran once said the president’s problem was that, when he got up in the morning and looked in the mirror, he only saw himself. He never saw Chelsea’s father.
Commenting years earlier on presidential candidate Gary Hart’s adultery, the outcry over which quaintly led to his abandonment of his campaign, Joe Sobran also said that an adulterer is a man who, for the sake of his lust, is willing to betray everyone he holds most dear.
Maybe these two Sobran quotes will be as helpful to you as they’ve been to me.
Anyhow, let’s end by rightfully calling Rep. Gonzalez the liar he is.
He lies when he says his sin of adultery was a “lapse in judgment.” It was no momentary lapse, but longstanding, and it was an act of wickedness against both man and God.
He lies when he says he is not responsible for his adulteress’s self-murder by fire. Adultery and bloodshed are joined together by a yoke of iron.
He lies when he declares publicly that God has forgiven him. The adulterer who dismisses his wickedness as a “lapse in judgment” and denies he has any responsibility for his adulteress’s self-murder demonstrates he has not been given the gift of godly, true repentance.
Representative Anthony Gonzalez has been painted on a national billboard as an example for us all. His sins couldn’t be more public. His sins couldn’t be more horrible. His victims couldn’t be more visible.
May the Lord have mercy upon his soul.
