Affairs Of The Heart
The one who commits adultery with a woman is lacking sense; he who would destroy himself does it. Proverbs 6:32
Lacking Sense – The perennial excuse for adultery is an appeal to the heart. “I was carried away by my heart.” “I had this great need for a heart companion.” “I just followed my heart.” The Bible describes adultery as a matter of the heart too, but it has a different take on the matter. The Hebrew words for “lacking sense” is hasar lev, literally “lacks heart.” Adultery is indeed an affair of the heart, but from the biblical point of view, it is a heart that no longer has wisdom, insight or understanding. Since the Hebrew word lev (heart) is the seat of thought, will and emotion, to lose heart is a devastating event. It means that I am held captive by an alien force. I am a prisoner of corruption and subject to all kinds of terrible and destructive decisions. What began as an affair of the heart, ends as a wound that cannot be healed. I might as well attempt to perform open heart surgery on myself. My chances of survival are just about the same.
We have seen the verb hasar before. It refers to a failure to be fully complete. Psalm 23 tells us that if the Lord is our shepherd, we will not lack; we will not be incomplete. This might be a crucial verse when we are faced with those empty feelings that seem to demand out-of-bounds fulfillment. Notice that the Hebrew concept of adultery is the failure to be complete while the cultural idea of adultery is exactly the opposite. We enter into affairs in order to feel complete, but the Bible tells us that the result will be just what we were seeking to relieve. Measure for measure works upside-down too. The emptiness that motivates an adulterous affair simply fulfills its inherent destiny – more emptiness. Adultery does not change its stripes along the way. What begins with a lack of completeness ends in a lack of completeness.
Notice that the biblical point of view on marriage is exactly the opposite. What begins as an act of unity becomes an act of unity. The essence of the thing is the manifestation of the thing. God divides man in order that voluntary submission may lead back to unity. What comes from the Man is intended to become a unity with the Man, bringing back the whole as one.
With all this biblical background and all these godly warnings, why are human beings so stupid? Why are they so self-destructive when it comes to sexual affairs? What is the appeal of a relationship that begins and ends in emptiness? Perhaps part of the answer is 2500 years (or more) of individualism. For a very long time we have been training ourselves to think in terms of our needs. While we certainly do have needs, we seem to have forgotten the role of the shepherd. Behind that is an even deeper level of disobedience, a level that takes us back to the Garden. When we decide what is good, we are eating from that poisonous tree in the Garden. God knows what is good. He has been kind enough to tell us. Furthermore, He promises that what begins as good will remain good. The great temptation behind it all is simply this: I will decide what is good for me.
Adultery is an affair of the heart, a heart that has determined to be the arbiter of good, a heart that has decided that God forgot about this need of mine. In the universe of God’s making, there is room for only one King. All others are pretenders to the throne no matter how appealing they may be.
Topical Index: adultery, affair, heart, lev, lack, hasar, Proverbs 6:32
“Our needs” – individualism – commenced when Eve accepted the invitation to “be like God.” Our needs replaced God’s standards, and it’s been like that ever since. Elsewhere Scripture describes this anti-God’s Law (anomos) position as sin. Which makes for an interesting discussion by St. Paul in Romans 6: “How shall we who died to sin still live in it?”
Ok, I have to ask this because it was a topic of discussion among some of my co-workers last week. It may have nothing to do with the context of the past two Today’s Word, but still bears asking. Why does Scripture seem to suggest that in order for it to be considered adultery it has to be with a married woman? The Bible clearly says that David committed adultery because Bathseba was married to Uriah, but it never states that Abraham committed adultery with Hagar. The Bible also doesn’t call Solomon having many wives adultery. Just asking, but if I were to suggest to my wife that it was ok for me to have an affair with a single woman, I would be signing my own physical death warrant. 🙂 I would like to know how Scripture views this, not today’s culture though.
Jimmy
I saw among the simple, I noticed among the young men, a youth who lacked judgment. (Proverbs 7.7)
This is about a young, naive, “simple” man about to be seduced and taken in by a married woman. “My husband is not at home; he has gone on a long journey.” v19).
G-d’s plan is one man married to one woman for life. The two shall become “one flesh.” We are one in covenant union. This also “typifies” our relationship with YHWH. We (who are His) are joined together as one in covenant union. We (who are His) are the “bride of Christ.” There is a physical adultery and there is also a spiritual adultery- both bring disastrous consequences. Can’t skirt around the issue, I’m afraid “adultery”, dear ones -is sin. It is listed in Exodus 20.14 as the seventh commandment. It seems today- we so easily “forget” those sacred vows we took before the presence of Jehovah. Break those vows and dear sir or m’am trouble will be on the way. Every time. No exceptions. (The word of G-d guarantees it.)
Hi Skip
So true! And sorry, but I’m still stuck at Ezekiel(have been there for a few weeks)
Don’t know if Ezekiel refers to the same “heart”(lev) in Ezekiel 14:4,5 ” ..I myself, ADONAI, will answer him in a manner suited to his many idols, in order to grab hold of the house of Isra’el, in their hearts; since, through their idols, they have all fallen away from me. ”
God says He will answer me according to the idols I have in my heart and if adultery is an affair of the heart, I wonder what other idols I am hiding away.( hi Michael, this was what I ment previously) May be if I start looking at the answers I receive from God, I would start recognising what idols I have hidden in my heart.
Don’t know if this makes any sense to anybody. Its like believing that I may have this affair because my husband/ wife is not a godly person, but the one I am having the affair with, is send from God.
And since you mentioned the garden: Didn’t you say in the Genisis account that Satan could have said to Eve: “Rather listen to your own heart” and then she was answered according to the desire of her heart? And that that her selfish desire(not God’s desire) was the one that made her human(mortal)?
Please excuse any spelling and grammar mistakes, I am trying to translate very quickly.
Hi Luzette,
I was having a hard time picturing an “idol in my heart.”
You know that stuff about the Hebrews out there with the Pagans and the fertility cults.
But I tend to listen to my heart and one of the first things Skip clarified for was regarding this issue.
We have a “check and balance system” called the Torah.
And if what we want to do conflicts with the Torah.
We don’t do it 🙂
Good comment. Just some small corrections. First, the Genesis account does not say haSatan was involved in the Garden conversation (we have added that little bit). Second, the conversation does suggest that Havvah should listen to her heart (that is, her perception of what is good for her), but I don’t believe we can assume that she followed her “selfish” desire. I think it makes a lot more sense to read this as Havvah desire to add to her ability to meet the purpose God designed into her (to bless her man). In other words, as the boundary keeper, her sin was to overstep the boundary. Finally, this does not make her human. If we use that logic, we would have to claim that to be human is to be disobedient to the instructions of God, to break the relationship. She becomes mortal (in whatever that means in the text) but she was made human from the beginning.
I think it makes a lot more sense to read this as Havvah desire to add to her ability to meet the purpose God designed into her (to bless her man).
Skip,
You’re in good company with Jessie Penn Lewis who believed the same thing. Having been created in G-d’s image she saw it as an opportunity to become more like Him.
The Bible clearly says that David committed adultery because Bathseba was married to Uriah, but it never states that Abraham committed adultery with Hagar.
Hi Jimmy,
And then David “resolves” his issue by having Uriah killed and marrying Bathsheba.
And David’s wife has to accept the rules of patriarchal society.
Bill Clinton’s little escapade pales in comparison and I was very angry with him for wasting our time.
This came to my attention today- I thought it appropo for today’s topic.
”Did you know that the thing from which you derive the most pleasure is the thing you worship? Ask yourself, where do you find the most irresistible pleasure? That is what you worship. We must worship and serve G-d for one reason alone: because we can’t help ourselves. We are entranced.”
John Crowder.
The Ecstasy of Loving God
I like Crowder’s statement, with one clarification – a small one. I am not sure we can consider all worship the result of being unable to do otherwise, being entranced. Yes, there is a part of worship that rests on wonder and awe, but there is also obedience, and that is my obligation even when I don’t feel overwhelmed. To suggest that worship is in essence overpowering tends to remove worship from rational expression, and I don’t think the biblical idea of worship pushes us away from rational engagement.
And He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” This, I believe, is the only time Yeshua ever “commanded” anything. Love is one of the constant themes throughout the scriptures and love, (praise His name), is not a duty, but a delight. “I delight to do Thy will”- not “it is my duty to do your will! Christianity is a love relationship between the Creator and His created, made possible by Christ and His cross. Another wonderful book concerning the love G-d has for us is “The Divine Romance” by Gene Edwards. It is one of my favorites. Oh!- How He loves you and me! “He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him, also freely give us all things..” -“For G-d so loved..
Its like believing that I may have this affair because my husband/ wife is not a godly person, but the one I am having the affair with, is send from God.
Hi Luzette,
You have just discribed the worst form of having an idol in your heart. When you follow a god of your own hearts desire at the expense of keeping the commandments you have an idol in your heart. But when you call that god Jesus you’ve climbed over a razor wire fence and are hung up big time. You are leading others to a Jesus who calls YHVH a liar!