Sex Sins In Disguise

You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God?  James 4:4

Adulteresses – We live in a culture of “normal” unfaithfulness.  From prime-time sit-com to the soaps, from music to movies, from pop icons to presidents, adultery is acceptable.  As far as the culture is concerned, the message is: sex sins satisfy.  Unfaithfulness is just the way humans are wired.  Excused, condoned or ignored, we have a global “don’t ask, don’t tell” morality.  Consequently, when James uses the word moichalides (adulteresses), he strikes a chord we would rather not hear.  By the way, it was the same in the first century.  Men and women have not progressed much in 2000 years of moral corruption.  The same old sins prevail.

You might be interested to know that in about half of the ancient manuscripts, both genders are included in this descriptive phrase:  adulterers and adulteresses.  Male and female He created them, and both genders have done their best to destroy the sacredness of that creation. 

What’s unusual about this verse is not the implied immorality.  What’s unusual is that James chooses this very strong word to describe not sexual behavior but rather a love (the word is phileo) for the world.  Did you get that?  Maintaining a loving friendship with the world is the equivalent of sexual infidelity in your relationship with God.  Every time you let the world’s system set your priorities, every time you fall prey to its seductions of power, wealth and glory, you participate in adultery.  You willingly give yourself to another. 

Do you know what that’s like?  Do you know the agony, the guilt, the shame, the excuses and lies, the broken trust, the terror of abandonment?  Do you know the shattered life, the numbing denial, the terrible truth, the twisted logic, the hopelessness?  Have you felt the emptiness, the anger, the destruction, the death that accompanies unfaithfulness?  Then you know something about God’s heart, some tiny bit of the crushing blow that adultery brings in its wake.  But remember, this kind of adultery is not about sex.  It’s about your love affair with the world’s standards.  It’s about I, me, mine.  It’s about my protection, my goals, my needs, my agenda and my desires.

Don’t you know that going to bed with the world breaks the heart of God?