The Sixth Commandment

The Sixth Commandment
You’ll not commit adultery.


Parents, please don’t give up on this commandment. Many of us violated this commandment more than once before we got married, and some of us have violated it since. But it is possible to raise our children differently. I think the first thing to do as a mom and dad is to talk about your parenting strategies together with regard to dating, boyfriends/girlfriends, and the myriad of even more difficult issues that our children have thrust upon them by the public. Remember, the public is NOT a Christian or Biblical environment. We want to raise Bible-minded Christian children. So there will always be a difference between the outside influences on your children and what they should hear from you.


Adultery, put plainly, is what happens when we share our bodies sexually with anyone other than our spouse. Even more bluntly, adultery is lust - either acted upon or just dreamed about - for anyone other than our spouse.


Since sex is a gift from God that he has given specifically to husbands and wives, there are many good things that can be said about it. We’ve been invited by God to participate in the creation of life. We’ve been blessed by God to actually experience what it feels like to love and be loved (as opposed to simply being told). We’ve been given a way to truly become “one flesh” with our spouse in a way that goes beyond words. Sex God’s way is amazing.


However we all understand what we perceive about sex from the world’s point of view. According to our world, sex is all about me. It is something to experience to fulfil my own needs or desires. Sex the world’s way (that is, outside of marriage) means I am robbing someone else of their purity (remember, they shouldn’t be doing it either!) so that I can have what I want. When sex is used wrongly, it is destructive in a spiritual way.


The fact that God is serious about this issue can be seen throughout the Bible. One of the more popular metaphors God uses to describe our sin is adultery. Very often, God will speak to his followers who have been worshiping other gods or sinned in some other way by saying that they’ve “prostituted themselves”. In other words, God uses the metaphor of marital sex to describe the monogamy of our spiritual lives with Him. This should give us a clear picture of how we should treat sex with one another. We should not get all sexy with anyone other than our spouse.


This means you will be encouraging your kids to maintain their purity until marriage. This can feel strange if your kids know that you didn’t. How you handle those conversations can lead to incredible deepening of your relationship with your kids. If you mitigate your sins in front of them, they will likely interpret that as permission. But if you are sincere that you were wrong to do what you did when you did it (even if it may have resulted in the beautiful child you are now saying this to!), that you’ve confessed your sin to God, that God forgives you and gives you a wonderful life despite of it all… These are the kinds of talks parents SHOULD be having with kids.


One thing we are doing at HCLC to help you in this conversation is called Faith Legacy. When your son/daughter is a freshman at high school, you will be invited to participate with them in the Faith Step which deals specifically about sex. This will help with some guided conversation and it will also help you communicate the importance of the subject as well as the incredible opportunity your children have to arrive at marriage without having made this particular mistake.


And as always I am available to help you navigate these waters.


-Pastor Dan