You shall not commit adultery.

The seventh commandment has a far wider application than just to unfaithfulness in marriage.

It includes any sort of sex outside the marriage relationship for which it was designed.

It includes flirting, experimenting, and solitary sexual experience.

It also includes all sexual perversions, for although men and women are not responsible for a perverted instinct, they are for its indulgence.

It includes selfish demands within wedlock, and many, if not all, divorces.

It includes the deliberate reading of pornographic literature, and giving in to impure fantasies. Jesus made this clear when he said, ‘…every one who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart’.

Just as to entertain murderous thoughts in the heart is to commit murder, so to entertain adulterous thoughts in the heart is to commit adultery.

This commandment in fact embraces every abuse of a sacred and beautiful gift of God.

To read samples of the content of John Stott's book (from which this material originates), please click this... seventh commandment link ... then click on the title "Basic Christianity".