What is adultery?

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Prov910

Senior Member
Jan 10, 2017
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0
#1
Thou shalt not commit adultery. Exodus 20:14 (KJV)

What is adultery?

If a married person has sex with someone besides his/her spouse, clearly that is adultery. But is it adultery if two unmarried* people have sex? (*never been married before.) Is that what the bible tells us?
 
N

NoNameMcgee

Guest
#2
entertaining any form unjust sexual desire is adultery

now if a man has sex with any woman he isnt married to

yes thats adultery but its also fornication


if a young boy watches pornography


that is also adultery

but not fornication
 

tourist

Senior Member
Mar 13, 2014
41,243
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Tennessee
#3
Thou shalt not commit adultery. Exodus 20:14 (KJV)

What is adultery?

If a married person has sex with someone besides his/her spouse, clearly that is adultery. But is it adultery if two unmarried* people have sex? (*never been married before.) Is that what the bible tells us?
I believe that is just your ordinary fornication.
 

posthuman

Senior Member
Jul 31, 2013
36,530
13,098
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#4
idolatry is spiritually adultery. so is fornication idolatry?

& since the scripture uses the same language to describe marriage as it does sleeping with a prostitute - "
becoming one flesh" - and also calls idolatry prostitution - isn't fornication tantamount in a sense to marriage, and to idolatry?

so many people have been through what amounts to so many flippant marriages and divorces in our culture! and so much bowing before idols! is it any wonder they are so emotionally and mentally destroyed?
 

NotmebutHim

Senior Member
May 17, 2015
2,917
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#5
Biblical adultery starts by coveting your neighbor's wife. And this coveting doesn't always involve the desire for sexual intimacy.
 

Prov910

Senior Member
Jan 10, 2017
880
47
0
#6
I believe that is just your ordinary fornication.
Yeah, that's what I think. When I was younger I was led to believe that it was adultery for an unmarried couple to engage in sex. I believed that for a long time. But then I ran across a discussion of the topic that distinguishes adultery from fornication. So now I'm not so sure.

Maybe distinguishing adultery from fornication is splitting hairs. Or maybe not. Adultery is clearly a sin. It's not so clear to me that fornication—relations between an unmarried couple—is a sin. Or at least I don't see where the bible expressly says that it's a sin. :shrug:
 
D

Depleted

Guest
#7
Yeah, that's what I think. When I was younger I was led to believe that it was adultery for an unmarried couple to engage in sex. I believed that for a long time. But then I ran across a discussion of the topic that distinguishes adultery from fornication. So now I'm not so sure.

Maybe distinguishing adultery from fornication is splitting hairs. Or maybe not. Adultery is clearly a sin. It's not so clear to me that fornication—relations between an unmarried couple—is a sin. Or at least I don't see where the bible expressly says that it's a sin. :shrug:
This should help -- What is the difference between fornication and adultery?
 

MarcR

Senior Member
Feb 12, 2015
5,486
183
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#8
entertaining any form unjust sexual desire is adultery

now if a man has sex with any woman he isnt married to

yes thats adultery but its also fornication


if a young boy watches pornography


that is also adultery

but not fornication
Jesus defines adultery as looking at a woman wist lust in your heart as adultery.

Society defines adultery as cheating on a spouse.

Dt 25:5-6
5 If brethren dwell together, and one of them die, and have no child, the wife of the dead shall not marry without unto a stranger: her husband's brother shall go in unto her, and take her to him to wife, and perform the duty of an husband's brother unto her.
6 And it shall be, that the firstborn which she beareth shall succeed in the name of his brother which is dead, that his name be not put out of Israel.
KJV

IMO obedience to this would not be adultery even for a married man; but it is a unique exception; not a definition changer.
 

mcubed

Senior Member
Dec 20, 2013
1,449
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#9
Well according to our Lord Y-shua But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. Matthew :5:28. Since He is G-d I will go with His definition of adultery. Y-shua's teaching are much harder than Torah! Two unmarried people is fornication.
 
Last edited:
Feb 28, 2016
11,311
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#10
we're all 'betrothed', how many of us have taken our engagement rings and spit in God's face?
He's made a Way to reconcile us unto Himself, in His awesome Holy, Spiritual, Love...

Read His Word, Listen, Heed, Do, Obey, Submit: He's The Beginning and The End, everything else
in-between is pure vanity and as the author said so well, 'All is Vanity',...Vexation of spirit,,.

ECC. 12:13.
Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep His Commandments:
for this is the whole duty of man.
 

Dino246

Senior Member
Jun 30, 2015
24,555
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#11
I appreciate the quotes of Matthew 5:28, but that does not define "adultery". In other words, adultery is not only looking with lust.
 

mcubed

Senior Member
Dec 20, 2013
1,449
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#12
I appreciate the quotes of Matthew 5:28, but that does not define "adultery". In other words, adultery is not only looking with lust.

Oh so true the physical act of sex and expanded to the beyond... Y-shua is so hard cor with sin... maybe people should not say we live under the New Testament... Y-shua is hard on His Law... If we obey His commandments we love Him (His disciples) ... according to Y-shua Himself
 
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Johnny_B

Senior Member
Mar 18, 2017
1,954
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#13
Sexual sin is more involved than regular sin, there is a mingling of the soul and spirit where the flesh becomes one, I mean the two participants they become one. This is why many women and men get hurt when having sex with someone and they find out that person does not love them. You feel violated because you gave that person the most intimate part of your being.

I Corinthians 6:12-20 “All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be dominated by anything.13 “Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food”—and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.14 And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power.15 Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never!16 Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, “The two will become one flesh.”17 But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him.18 Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body.19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own,20 for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.