There are a number of words for sexual sin in Scripture and let’s look at those individually.

First, there is porneia or what we call fornication. Several times Paul warns against fornication and tells young men to flee fornication. It is almost a purely physical act and other than Paul’s warning that our bodies are the temple of the Lord and are not to be joined to prostitutes, there is no particular relationship. It is the relationship of a man and a woman that is most often described as a man going to a prostitute. It is a transaction.

Next, there is aselgeia or what we call promiscuity. It is the next level up from fornication. It is a lifetime of debauchery. The KJV language here is licentiousness and wantoness where sexual sin becomes a lifestyle and includes the other sins that follow around with it. It is a life of debauchery described by Peter in 1 Peter 4:3: “For you have spent enough time in the past doing what pagans choose to do – living in debauchery, lust, drunkenness, orgies, carousing and detestable idolatry.” The result of promiscuity is a stunted life or what the Bible calls a life with no understanding.

Once on a plane coming back from overseas I met a man headed to Costa Rica for his annual vacation. It turns out his vacation was nothing more than what Peter describes. As we talked I realized this man was like others I had met who take trips away from Tyler to other places to live a few days in ways that would be frowned on at home. Sexual sin had become a part of his personality and had so worked its way into him that he had made it a normal part of his life. Nothing I said about the effects on his marriage and his family made sense to him. It was just something he did. Still, there was no relationship with the women he met. They were just parts of a transaction. It was licentious and wanton but short of all out adultery as described by Scripture.

Then there is a third word that is different from the other two. It is the word moicheuo and it is the word for adultery. Adultery is a sin committed by a married person who engages in an illicit intimate relationship outside that marriage. It is almost always sexual eventually.

2.  All relationships in the world are based on the relationship of marriage. It is a holy bond and the way God chooses to describe his relationship with Israel and the Church. Because it is holy it is dangerous and degrading it has dire consequences. Physicists talk sometimes about the “binding energy” that holds the parts of the atom together. It is a force so strong that when it is broken it starts a reaction that leads to a nuclear explosion. It affects everything around it for years and the results are fatal. It destroys lives. It will demand your soul and everything you have.

That is how Scripture describes the results of adultery. Look at Proverbs 6:26. “…for the prostitute reduces you to a loaf of bread, and the adulteress preys upon your very life.” In other words, there is something about adultery that is different from fornication and debauchery. Adultery attacks your life. It leads to death. Fornication and promiscuity reduce you to the level of an animal. Adultery distorts your soul and destroys your life. In a way, Satan uses adultery not to destroy love but to destroy the capacity for fidelity. To destroy the ability to be faithful has enormous consequences. That is why we make our vows public. If we thought we were faithful by nature we would never need to make public vows. In a sense we should not be surprised at adultery as we tend toward unfaithfulness. It is the natural course of things. Fidelity is a discipline and not our nature.

3.  Adultery is different from promiscuity and fornication in another way. Adultery is the weakening of a bond by the introduction of an alien bond – and not just sexual. It is what happens over the course of time between two people who begin to share confidences, who commiserate together about their relationship and begin to find something in common that is unhealthy. Adultery does not start with sex. It starts with longing…and longing is different from lust. It is deeper and more devious.

It begins when someone feels alone or isolated in some very important way in their life. Remember what God said about Adam? “It is not good for man to be alone.” Nothing is as basic and as dangerous as the sense of being alone. It is not always so much seduction on the part of the woman or man as it is a mutual aloneness that draws them together.

In Matthew 5 Jesus says, “Everyone who looks on a woman with longing commits adultery.” Longing is more than sexual attraction. It is more than sexual fantasy. It is longing for everything you think is missing in your life and you desire to have. Desire is not always sexual but it is always self-centered. It always ends in death. James says about desire: “…each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full grown, gives birth to death.”

I like the way Moffatt translates this passage: “Anyone who looks at a woman and wants to possess her.” I think that is more than sexual. It is the desire to have something that is not yours to have. It is the longing to possess and to be bound to that person – even at the expense of your life or the risk of destroying your life with your spouse. Oftentimes men cannot even explain what it was they were missing or what they wanted but it drove them to adultery. The Portugese have a word for an undefinable longing – saudade (sou-daad). It is the desire for something that cannot be described but it cannot be put aside. It consumes a person.

Years ago a friend and very visible Christian leader, Gordon MacDonald, became consumed with the same desire to find something that was missing. He was able to hide the affair for a time but then it came out and he was discredited. Perhaps today he might have been able to continue as if nothing had happened but not then. He had broken the trust of not only his wife and family but of the ministry which he led at the time. Years later, Gordon was asked to comment on the moral failure of another leader and this is what he wrote:

“I’ve spent more than a little time trying to understand how and why some men and women in all kinds of leadership get themselves into trouble, whether the issues be moral, financial, or the abuse of power and ego. I am no stranger to failure and public humiliation. From those terrible moments of twenty years ago in my own life I have come to believe that there is a deeper person in many of us who is not unlike an assassin. This deeper person (like a contentious board member) can be the source of attitudes and behaviors we normally stand against in our conscious being. But it seeks to destroy us and masses energies that—unrestrained—tempt us to do the very things we “believe against.”

If you have been burned as deeply as I (and my loved ones) have, you never live a day without remembering that there is something within that, left unguarded, will go on the rampage. Wallace Hamilton once wrote, “Within each of us there is a herd of wild horses all wanting to run loose.”

It seems to me that when people become leaders of outsized organizations and movements, when they become famous and their opinions are constantly sought by the media, we ought to begin to become cautious. The very drive that propels some leaders toward extraordinary levels of achievement is a drive that often keeps expanding even after reasonable goals and objectives have been achieved.

Like a river that breaks its levy, that drive often strays into areas of excitement and risk that can be dangerous and destructive. Sometimes the drive appears to be unstoppable.

This seems to have been the experience of the Older Testament David and his wandering eyes, Uzziah in his boredom, and Solomon with his insatiable hunger for wealth, wives, and horses. They seem to have been questing—addictively?—for more thrills or trying to meet deeper personal needs, and the normal ways that satisfy most people became inadequate for them.

No amount of accountability seems to be adequate to contain a person living with such inner conflict. Neither can it contain a person who needs continuous adrenalin highs to trump the highs of yesterday. Maybe this is one of the geniuses of Jesus: he knew when to stop, how to refuse the cocktail of privilege, fame, and applause that distorts one’s ability to think wisely and to master self.

More than once we’ve seen the truth of a person’s life come out, not all at once, but in a series of disclosures, each an admission of further culpability which had been denied just a day or two before. Perhaps inability to tell the full truth is a sign that one is actually lying to himself and cannot face the full truth of the behavior in his own soul.

But then all sin begins with lies told to oneself.

The cardinal lies of a failed leader? I give and give and give in this position; I deserve special privileges—perhaps even the privilege of living above the rules. Or, I have enough charm and enough smooth words that I can talk anything (even my innocence) into reality. Or, so much of my life is lived above the line of holiness that I can be excused this one little faux pas. Or, I have done so much for these people; now it’s their time to do something for me—like forgiving me and giving a second chance.

The travel, the connections, the interviews, the applause of the congregation, the organizational power, the perks and privileges, the honor: gone! The introit to people of position and power: gone! The opportunity to say an influential word each day into the lives of teachable younger people: gone! The certainty that God has anointed one for such a time as this: gone?

And what will grow each day is the numbing realization of regret and loss. In time they will be approached by people who will say in one way or another, “I used to trust you, but what you’ve done has made me very angry.” “You’ve turned my son away from the gospel.” “I thought I knew you, but I guess I didn’t.”

Adultery is more than sexual. We describe something as “adulterated” when something is mixed in that makes the original impure. It is an alien bond that invades a marriage and comes between husband and wife. Think of it this way. There is enough fabric of trust and love in a marriage to cover two people and adultery is an attempt to stretch a fabric beyond its limits. Again, it is different from fornication or even promiscuity but the attempt to form a deep bond with another person – to possess them and be possessed by them.

4.  Matthew 15:19 says, “For out of the heart come forth adulteries.” So, how do you protect your heart.

Let’s look at that.

I think it begins with a phrase that is used over and over in Scripture: “Take heed”. In Deuteronomy the Israelites are told to take heed that they do not forget the things their eyes have seen or let them slip from their hearts as long as they live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them. In Deuteronomy 11:16 they are told to take heed not to turn away to other gods. In Joshua 23:11 they are told to take heed to love the Lord your God. In 1 Corinthians 10:12 Paul says, “So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall.”

Keeping ourselves from adultery begins with taking heed – with paying attention and listening to those around us. Ironically, we can choose between two voices and both are women in Scripture. We can listen to the voice of Wisdom which cries aloud in the street and raises her voice in the public squares. There is no question about what Wisdom thinks. Then there is the quiet and subtle voice of temptation. It is not loud or even heard. It sneaks up on us and we are drawn in and off the path. I don’t think this means women seduce men and men are blameless. I think it means we hear two voices and both are appealing to us – the way of Wisdom and the way of destruction.

We are all tempted toward it – not just tempted toward sex but tempted toward outside relationships that invade and adulterate our marriage. It never goes away so we need to be constantly aware of it. Thomas Jefferson said, “eternal vigilance is the price of liberty” and it is also the price of fidelity. Many, many forms of infidelity begin with the failure to take heed.

That failure leads to what Hebrews calls drifting and the word for drifting is what happens when a boat slips away from the dock and slides into the current. It becomes unmoored in unnoticed ways.

That leads to “going after” or “following after” or even pursuing. Going after is the same word that Peter uses to describe those who pursue a debauched life. It is getting in the current because you have lost your moorings and have become detached. The prophet Hosea calls it a “spirit of prostitution that leads them astray and they are a people without understanding.”

In time, that leads to what Scripture describes as “worthlessness” and the loss of the soul.

How do we protect ourselves from a bleak future?

a. There is no room in a marriage for another bond. I have had to learn this the hard way. Whether it was work or a competing relationship or another interest there is something in me that tempts me to take my marriage for granted and to allow other things or people to invade it. Over and over again Scripture says “guard your heart” and it is when guards fall asleep or are distracted that we are in trouble.

b. There are some longings and gaps that will simply go unfulfilled in this life. Our spouse cannot meet all our perceived needs. We don’t always share the same interests but those interests that take us outside the primary relationship of marriage are dangerous. God gave us each other not to totally complete each other but to glorify him and accomplish something together. We have a calling as a couple and not just as individuals.

c. There is no substitute for time and proximity. Recently, Carol moved a chair into my study and, at first, I felt she had invaded my space. Now I realize how that space has become something we share and it gives us time with each other.

This morning I am aware of Paul’s own great fear in 1 Corinthians. “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore I do not run like someone running aimlessly; I do not fight like a boxer beating the air. No, I strike a blow to my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.”

I want to run in such a way as to get the prize. I am far too aware of the special temptations that come to leaders who are disconnected, alone and unaccountable. Gordon’s description is perfect but the price he paid to describe it so well is too much.

Finally, just three words.

First, to those who have stumbled and allowed an adulteration in their relationship with their spouse. Take heed and remember. Where there is repentance and turning away there is grace and forgiveness.

Second, to those who have not but are in the grip of temptation. Take heed and listen. Listen to Gordon. Listen to Wisdom. Listen to the stories of people who have lost their reputations, their families, their futures and their lives. But also focus on what happens in your life when you listen to Wisdom. Instead of death there is honor, life and respect.

Finally, to those who think they are immune or have preached to others. Take heed and beware. The devil is a devouring lion but not always a roaring one. Guard your heart.