Q72. What is forbidden in the seventh commandment?

A. The seventh commandment forbiddeth all unchaste thoughts, words, and actions.

As I have been, I will enlist the support of the Heidelberg Q.109 which asks, “Does God in this commandment forbid nothing more than adultery and such like gross sins?” Answer—

“Since our body and soul are both temples of the Holy Ghost, it is His will that we keep both pure and holy; for which reason He forbids all unchaste actions, gestures, words, thoughts, desires, and whatever may entice thereto.”

Note the diversity of things forbidden—‘actions, gestures, words, thoughts, desires, and whatever.’

Our outline will cover, 1. How an individual violates chastity, 2. How a culture violates chastity. 

How an Individual Violates Chastity

Our answer said UNCHASTE THOUGHTS. “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person” (Matt. 15:19, 20). In addition to adultery and sexual immorality being on that list, the whole point is that these are all internal before they are external. This was the true meaning of Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount:

“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 lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matt. 5:27-28).

As we saw in the sermon from Matthew 5, Jesus isn’t saying that the physical act wasn’t so bad after all considering that “you’re all alike in your heart of hearts!” But do notice what he is saying, and we have already seen it with murder and hatred in the Sixth Commandment. While the heart and the hands differ by degree, they are the same in kind. In essence, the heart that would betray the covenant of love with someone else’s consent, has already consented to that very thing without the aid of another. The desire is the same. The intent is the same. The difference is only in opportunity and obstacles.

Our answer also includes UNCHASE WORDS. It was in the context of sexual immorality that Paul says in the next breath: “Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place” (Eph. 5:3-4). Then what is already on our minds and speech, takes only a short step to become UNCHASTE ACTIONS.

“The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power. 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! 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.’ But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. 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, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body” (1 Cor. 6:13-20).

The Bible makes any sex outside of a one-man, one-woman marriage an abomination in ways that graciously give us wisdom about it. It would seem that God was not concerned to answer to the demands of sexual skeptics with a list to close their loopholes. He was much more concerned to give a loving logic to His own children, to cultivate in us an appreciation for that design. So first He teaches us by example—even by story. 

“In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle … It happened, late one afternoon, when David arose from his couch and was walking on the roof of the king’s house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful. And David sent and inquired about the woman. And one said, ‘Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?’” (2 Sam 11:1, 2-3)

Here we see, first, a man out of his proper place and season. It is “when kings go out to battle,” so that idleness begat the occasion for lust. Then, second, his lust did what James said all of our sin does: “But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death” (Jas. 1:14-15).

Even in the cases of polygamy, which critics of the Bible often take to be a moral blemish on God’s record, these are never treated as virtuous or even an exception to the rule. That God permitted speaks to his permissive will and not to a change in His prescriptive will. Examine the cases of Abraham, Jacob, David, Solomon, or anyone else, and one will not find God’s blessing in that union but only in spite of it. Where there is causality traced out from such unions, it is only trouble for the man. 

But then God’s word also instructs us by poetry. Think of the refrain of the Song of Solomon: 

“I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles or the does of the field, that you not stir up or awaken love until it pleases” (Song 2:7; 3:5; 8:4).

Wisdom often teaches by stiring up what is known by way of reminder, or by a lively picture. 

Brakel’s list of ways and opportunities for breaking the seventh commandment are striking. Our view back to more traditionally Christian culture usually comes through the lens of its critics—and all the more so when it comes to views of sexuality, contrasting that culture with our own. It is viewed through mockery. Yet the honest reader must work through the discomfort of a summary such as the one Brakel gives and admit that it is all true. So, after listing the more straightforward sins implied beyond more surface adultery, he moves on to “the opportunities for fornication,” that is, those things which tend to lead to the sin: 1. dancing, 2. comedy, 3. idleness, 4. rioting and drnkenness, 5. social interaction with those inclined toward fornication, 6. lewd paintings, 7. marriages between those who are unequal in years, and 8. domestic quarrels.1

How a Culture Violates Chastity

There is a long story that Carl Trueman chronicles very well in his book The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self (2020). If I can reduce that history down to a logical syllogism that takes us from Rousseau to Freud: simply start by (1) defining ethics down to sentiment, and the chief of those sentiments as one’s own happiness; and then (2) define happiness down to sexual gratification, then you have defined ethics down to sexual gratification. Now three implications follow from Freud: First, in elevating sexual gratification to the purpose of the individual, the purpose of sex was also altered. Trueman notes, “the purpose of procreation is subordinated to the purpose of personal pleasure.”2 Second, since this is universal of human nature, and since children are humans, then this is true of children from the start.3 Third, since the repression of such gratification is contrary to nature, any resistance to such was destined to become a mental disorder. Another statement by Trueman really zooms out from the trees to the forrest of the whole modern era: 

“The self must be first psychologized; psychology must then be sexualized; and sex must be politicized.”4

I would just add a fourth and fifth logical consequence—the traditional home (parents) must then be criminalized, and the bodies of the young economized. We can see the seeds of this even in Freud’s own writing. In his book The Future of an Illusion, he wrote, “Is it not true that the two main points in the program for the education of children today are retardation of sexual development and premature religious influence?”5

There are many ways to violate chastity at the fruit level, but a cultural revolution can sever all chastity at the root. It can challenge the very notion of a fixed or proper sexual nature. Paradoxically one can deny that sexuality is by design beforehand, but that we can re-design it. Now Genesis 1:26-27; 2:18-25 is clear that God made them male and female (cf. Matt. 19:4-6). Homosexuality is the first strike against that design. Contrary to popular belief, the New Testament continues that teaching, specifying natural law reasons,

“For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men” (Rom. 1:26-27).

“just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and spursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire” (Jude 7).

In other words, Paul and Jude are saying that homosexual relations are contrary to the immutable nature of sexuality. And contrary to contemporary myth, Leviticus 18:22 and 1 Corinthians 6:9 do not suggest anything other than improper relations between men.

“You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination” (Lev. 18:22)

“Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality” (1 Cor. 6:9).

Although, even there, the ESV removed the properly translated word “effeminate,” while combining the words to make “men who practice homosexuality.” In the Greek these are two words separated by “nor” just like all the other words on the list—Μὴ πλανᾶσθε· οὔτε πόρνοι οὔτε εἰδωλολάτραι οὔτε μοιχοὶ οὔτε μαλακοὶ οὔτε ἀρσενοκοῖται.

Why does the concept of effeminacy matter here? 

In the aforementioned book, Trueman speaks of “plastic people,” that is, a dimension of expressive individualism, whereby one thinks he can “make and remake personal identity at will.”6 Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (1949) is one early example of the foundation being laid. She argued that womanhood was an ideological construct, not an essential nature.7 Biology is included in this construct, becoming in her rhetoric “a form of tyranny.”8 What is more foundational is the separation between gender and sex, the former psychological and the latter biological. The upshot is this: “If human nature is not something we are given but something we do or something we determine for ourselves via our free decisions and actions, why should we tie gender identity to an objective physiological basis.”9 So what is the straight line from this divorce of gender (psychology) and sex (biology) and the transgender debate? Trueman summarizes it well: 

“This distinction between gender and sex is now a basic element of contemporary notions of identity. The whole transgender question depends on it, for if sex and gender are inextricably connected, then a mismatch between what one is biologically and who one is psychologically must inevitably be regarded as a dysfunction of the mind.”10

So “gender dysphoria” is defined on the UK National Health Service web site as “a sense of unease that a person may have because of a mismatch between their biological sex and their gender identity.” The unease one may feel is a very subjective thing, even something which can be easily manipulated and cultivated by various forms of pressure. 

APPLICATION

Use 1. EVANGELICAL USE. Here, we might consult the Proverbs to see what is meant by this enticing. In that book of wisdom, there is a contrast between two ladies, as it were: Lady Wisdom and Lady Folly. And “Lady Folly” is depicted as a prostitute. And the main quality that she possesses is not just the tendency, but the obsession, to ENTICE. It’s her job description. The answer to this Catechism Question ends that list with the summary, WHATEVER MAY ENTICE UNTO.

“For the lips of a forbidden woman drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil, but in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword” (Prov. 5:3-4).

We have to understand that this woman in the Proverbs doesn’t just represent a certain kind of woman “out there,” but also a certain disposition “in here,” that of natural folly, oblivious folly, naive “neutrality” folly. Something was already ready to be enticed. Remember James 1, that, “each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire” (v. 13). What appears with Lady Folly is the folly that we already displayed in failing to treasure what is lasting over what is passing. That imagery of “dripping honey” and “smooth oil” are of things that drip or evaporate into nothingness. They are a shadow beauty committing treason against the light which casts her. 

Use 2. CIVIL USE. A local community has every right and every responsibility to censor entertainment material to the fullest. We would already say that the Christian has a calling to censor material in their own home—for others in that home—that tends to violate the seventh commandment. So, all that entices in public is of a public interest. If people don’t like that, they can move to a different community. The extreme need for this is seen in the extremes of our day. How did we get to “Drag Queen Story Hour” funded by tax payer dollars? The proposed Oklahoma bill called the “Millstone Act of 2023” has the right idea. It proposed to cut off funding to “any school district in America that teaches critical race theory or woke sexuality.” The bill is intentionally named after the passage where Jesus says, “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea” (Mk. 9:42).

Use 3. DIRECTIVE USE. If what we have seen about God’s own design in Genesis is true, then it follows that the very desire to transcend that design, and to assert oneself or one’s chosen identity is itself a sin, even if it is not acted upon in any way. This makes it imperative for the church’s teaching office to instruct in God’s design being holistic. When God designed a man, He made the man to be biologically and psychologically and vocationally masculine. When God designed a woman, He made the woman to be biologically and psychologically and vocationally feminine. So in Titus 2, Paul enlists mature men and mature women in the church to do what? To instruct younger men and younger women in the conditions of being masculine and feminine in the whole frame of the design,

“Older men are to be sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness. Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled. Likewise, urge the younger men to be self-controlled. Show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works, and in your teaching show integrity, dignity, and sound speech that cannot be condemned, so that an opponent may be put to shame, having nothing evil to say about us” (2:2-8).

Among the items on a faithful Titus 2 ministry in our day would be reintroducing a new generation to what a man and a woman are to begin with. 

___________________

1. Brakel, The Christian’s Reasonable Service, III:209-210.

2. Carl Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020), 205.

3. Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, 206-09.

4. Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, 221.

5. Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, 223.

6. Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, 164.

7. Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, 255.

8. Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, 259.

9. Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, 257.

10. Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, 259-60.