Mainly for Men: If your right eye ...

As discussed in my previous blog, adultery is always totally wrong.

In Matthew 5, Jesus expanded the definition of adultery when He said:

However, the overwhelming majority of us are attracted to look at women. God made us that way. But Jesus didn’t say we weren’t to look at a woman or to recognise her beauty. Jesus’ teaching means that for a man to look with sexual desire at a woman when either the woman or the man himself is married to someone else is adultery. No physical contact need take place.

As we all know, the problem is that ‘just looking’ often switches automatically into lusting. How quickly and easily that happens depends on our age, marital status, our personality and character along with the culture we live in and just as importantly how we have trained ourselves to react to temptation.
 
In the Bible (2 Samual 11), King David was attracted by the sight of beautiful Bathsheba bathing, but she was the wife of Uriah, one his soldiers. He could and did have multiple wives, but this one was totally off limits. That probably made her more desirable,
 
So, being the King, he ordered that she was brought to him and he slept with her making her pregnant.

To avoid detection David then ordered that Uriah was brought back from battle and sent home to Bathsheba, hoping that Uriah would believe the pregnancy was his own. However, Uriah considered that such a move would be dishonourable in a time of war and refused to spend the night with his wife.

When Uriah returned to the battle David ordered the commander to put Uriah on his own in the fiercest part of the battle to ensure Uriah was killed. David then took Bathsheba as one of his wives and a son was born.

God was angry and sent a prophet, Nathan, to David to confront him. David repented of his sin, but the son died.

David was on the roof when he spotted her, maybe by accident or maybe not. My guess is that he then couldn’t stop thinking and dreaming about her and returned, hoping for a second look before finally giving in to his fantasy and sending for her. An action that would lead not only to adultery, but to murder as well.

Jesus continued (in Matthew 5):

Following that principle, David should have removed the risk of temptation by not going to the roof at that time of day again.

But as the King, he could also have ordered her to bathe away from the sight of the palace and perhaps could have organised a more private place.

Using whatever means we have to remove a source of temptation, is a key action in avoiding sin.

In future blogs I shall be discussing some practical steps we can take to avoid drifting into sinful behaviour.