This afternoon, I've been thinking about a question someone posed in regards to a particular situation (I'll spare you the details): "Was it adultery for me to kiss a man on New Years at a party who isn't my husband?"
Now, on the surface the question seems odd. While demonstrating any sexual intimacy with a person is adultery, a kiss isn't necessarily so. The problem with kissing is that our culture reserves it largely for sexual purposes. But that isn't entirely true. I can offer my friends a "kiss of peace", much as Meditteranean cultures do. So, I'm left with a question: What is there to say Christianly about adultery?
We all know the old -- and simple -- injunction from Exodus 20: "Do not commit adultery". But we often forget the way in which Jesus expands adultery in Matthew 5.27-32. "Whoever looks with lust on another has committed adultery already in the heart". The Bible is full of references about how a lustful look can land us in destructive situations (Proverbs 5-6). So God's desire has always been that we reign in how we look at one another. Jesus, though, goes even further.
Because Jesus connects lust and having committed adultery already.
How is that possible?
Well, because quite simply adultery isn't a matter of inappropriate sexual contact. No, the problem of adultery is a much deeper problem. Jesus isn't just issuing a cautionary note. He isn't saying, "Stay away from lust, because lust will compromise your ability to avoid the really bad sin of adultery". Jesus says lust is adultery -- already -- "in one's heart".
The real problem of adultery (as Bonhoeffer rightly says in his Cost of Discipleship, Chapter 10) is the problem of obedience. To whom will we listen for our identity? Who and whose are we?
Obedience is to listen and to submit to God's authority. Jesus is Lord -- not just in a personal and spiritual sense. In a cosmic sense. He defines the parameters of fidelity. That fidelity includes sexual fidelity.
In short, the problem of adultery is the problem of discipleship, of worship.
Was kissing him adultery? Yes, but not simply because there was inappropriate sexual contact. It's a matter of your heart, of who's in charge. It's not enough to refrain from particular actions for Christians. Our ethics -- including our sexual ethics -- grows out of our following Jesus, not just certain rules.
Jesus' insistence here is that even how we act and think sexually demonstrates how we approach life generally. The life of the disciple isn't the lesser life of devotion to a rule. It's devotion to Jesus. A devotion that reflects in our marriages.
So, yes, Virginia, it's a adultery. It was adultery long before you puckered up. It's adultery because you're allegiances are out of whack.