Adultery

Adultery is sexual intercourse between a married person and someone other than their spouse, and Scripture treats it as a breach of the marriage covenant that begins in the heart. Both Matthew 15:19 and Mark 7:21 list “adulteries” among the evils that come “from within, out of the hearts of men,” alongside murder, theft, and false testimony. Paul quotes the commandment itself, “You shall not commit adultery,” as one of the commands summed up in “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Romans 13:9). As a matter of language, the Greek word ordinarily used for the act, moicheia, is narrower than the general term for sexual immorality, porneia, and 1 Corinthians 6:9 lists “adulterers” separately from “the sexually immoral” — a distinction that names adultery specifically as the wrong of breaking faith with a spouse.

The New Testament ties the act to the community’s standing before God rather than to private morality alone. Paul warns that “the unrighteous will not inherit God’s Kingdom,” naming adulterers in the same breath as idolaters (1 Corinthians 6:9), and he classes adultery among “the deeds of the flesh,” warning that those who practice such things “will not inherit God’s Kingdom” (Galatians 5:19, 21). Colossians 3:5 tells believers to “put to death” sexual immorality and depraved passion; Ephesians 5:6 says that “because of these things the wrath of God comes on the children of disobedience”; 2 Peter 2:9 says the Lord knows how to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment. Revelation places the sexually immoral outside the city and among those whose part is “in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur” (Revelation 21:8; 22:15). In these lists adultery stands with idolatry, murder, theft, and lying as one grave item in a catalogue of covenant-breaking.

Scripture also uses the word figuratively. The prophets describe Israel’s and Judah’s turning to other gods as adultery against the Lord (Hosea 2:2–4; Jeremiah 3:8–9), so that the term can name covenant unfaithfulness that is not sexual at all. How far that prophetic metaphor should shape the reading of the New Testament warnings is something interpreters weigh differently.

Christian traditions agree that adultery is sin and differ over how to apply that judgment. The Catholic and Orthodox churches hold marriage to be indissoluble in principle and treat adultery as grave matter that does not by itself dissolve the bond, though Orthodox pastoral practice allows remarriage in some cases by economy; many Protestant churches instead read Jesus’ teaching on divorce as permitting divorce, and in some cases remarriage, on the ground of adultery (Matthew 19:9). Traditions also differ over discipline and restoration — whether the sin bars someone from communion for a time, and on what terms the repentant are received back — and over how far the prophetic metaphor of adultery as idolatry should govern the word’s use. These are disagreements about application, not about whether the texts condemn the act.

AI-generated reference entry, grounded in the passages where this term appears — history and Scripture stated as such, interpretation labeled as interpretation. Not a substitute for the text itself.