The seventh commandment

Leviticus 20.19

“You shall not uncover the nakedness of your mother’s sister or of your father’s sister, for that is to make naked one’s relative; they shall bear their iniquity.

Leviticus 20.21

“If a man takes his brother’s wife, it is impurity. He has uncovered his brother’s nakedness; they shall be childless.”

Here is the second instance in which uncovering nakedness and fornication are equated. Clearly, God intended His people to make the connection between these. If you look on the naked body of your neighbor, it’s as if you had committed adultery already. This is doubtless the basis for Jesus’ remark in Matthew 5.27, 28. Jesus went on to emphasize the importance of guarding against this by every means, using hyperbole to make the point that we must not allow in our lives anything which inclines us to commit adultery, if only in our hearts (vv. 29, 30).

In recent years, as in other generations prior to ours, sexual sin has compromised and undermined the Church’s witness to the world. The wisdom of God’s Law in teaching us to guard against even the beginnings of illicit sexual activity is justified by the effects of our ignoring these statutes in the believing community today.

This series of In the Gates we present a detailed explanation of the Law of God, beginning with the Ten Commandments, and working through the statutes and rules that accompany each commandment. For a practical guide to the role of God’s Law in the practice of ethics, get The Ground for Christian Ethics by going to www.ailbe.org and click on our Book Store.