"You shall not commit adultery.
Exodus 20:14
The seventh commandment is designed to preserve and maintain the sanctity of marriage and family life. It is because in marriage a man and a woman are made 'one flesh' that adultery is so unthinkable, for it violates and vitiates something God has brought into being. By implication, of course, the commandment applies to all kinds of sexual impurity, and our Lord Himself extends its challenge from act to look and thought. 'Out of the heart', He says, 'proceedeth ... adulteries, fornication, lasciviousness ...'.There could hardly be greater need for such a reminder than today, for the whole of our society has fallen a victim to the commercialism of highly efficient business interests intent upon making profit from the lusts that have been fanned in the hearts of men. Cinema, TV and Press alike pander to this, and must be held as guilty in the sight of God. The incitements to impurity in the imagination are legion today, and the adultery that can be committed by a thought or with a look is made much more likely by the deliberate feeding of men's lusts. It must surely be a duty incumbent upon Christian people to make definite protest against the immorality that makes its insidious claims on the minds of so many at the firesides of their homes through TV and radio, minds that are being conditioned to the idea that unfaithfulness to the marriage bond is a glamorous thing, and that purity and honour are old-fashioned. The need of society today, in relation to this commandment, is for men and women, and perhaps especially young men and women, who are proud of the ideal of chastity and proud and unafraid to stand for it in face of the ridicule of their fellows, and thus to bear testimony that it is not loss, but gain, to die to sin and to the tendency to impurity and uncleanness which is a reality for all of us. True life and fulfilment lies not in the gratification, but in the transformation, of lawless and imperious instincts.