Seven!

I'm giving the 10 commandments a closer look by blogging about one of them each Friday. Scroll down for the last seven blogs on the topic.

Number seven is: Thou shalt not commit adultery. 

On the surface, the 7th commandment is about faithful marriages. Like the 6th commandment not to kill, this one is pretty straightforward. So, if you are in a good marriage where both partners are faithful are you off the hook? Well…good for you on the great marriage! And we can always look a little deeper at this commandment.


The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the verb to adulterate as: “to corrupt, debase, or make impure by the addition of a foreign or inferior substance.”

A study of the Bible shows that the first chapter of Genesis presents man (man, woman, and child) as made in the image and likeness of God, Spirit, or Mind. It has to follow then, that man is completely spiritual, because God is completely spiritual. It may be an idea you’ve never considered. But if we start with an all good God, a creator that is Spirit and Mind, and understand that we are made in His likeness, we have to come to the conclusion that we must be spiritual ideas.

Some of you may be thinking, "yes, we WILL be spiritual someday, maybe after we die." But, there are two statements that have been helpful to me, and others, in pondering the great fact that we are spiritual beings right here and now, in spite of what the material senses are telling us.

Both passages are read at the end of the Sunday church service in all Christian Science branch churches and societies around the world. They are considered correlative statements, since they correspond to each other.

The first is referred to as the “Scientific Statement of Being” and is found in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. Mary Baker Eddy writes: “There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter. All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all. Spirit is immortal Truth; matter is mortal error. Spirit is the real and eternal; matter is the unreal and temporal. Spirit is God, and man is His image and likeness. Therefore man is not material; he is spiritual” (p. 468).

The corresponding statement is from the Bible, 1 John 3:1-3. It says, “Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God! Therefore the world does not know us, because it did not know Him. Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.  And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure” (New King James version).

God loves us too much to have created us materially--out of a substance that is temporary, faulty, dying. The hopeful expectation that we will see our pure, spiritual substance right now, is the essence of a deeper concept of the 7th commandment. The leap of faith that consents to the fact that we, and everyone in the world today, is as spiritual right now as divine Spirit is, purifies us and it purifies our concept of others. This purification of thought is a prayer that shows us that, in reality, no substance or thought foreign to God exists. The one and only infinite God has commanded it.

So, let’s keep pondering the fact that we can’t adulterate ourselves, or others, with the belief that, as spiritual ideas, we can suddenly morph into matter-based beings, or even beings who are a mixture of matter and Spirit. By claiming our pure, spiritual nature we are rejecting any substance that is foreign and inferior to God, eternal Spirit.

Keeping the 7th commandment is knowing that our spiritual identity isn’t waiting for us somewhere else. It’s present right now for the seeing!

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