KNOW THE DIFFERENCE

 

On Fornication and Adultery

 

In general, we have been taught that fornication is illicit sexual activity — coitus — between a man and a woman who are not married, and that adultery is a coupling between those of whom one or the other is married. That does pertain to many people but not to all, perhaps some require no mate at all!

So where should we look? Scripture uses those terms in the English, so to better understand the English version of those two sins, we should look at scripture.

First off, most people know what sin is since the conscience tells most  people what sin is. The body reveals sin by guilt.

The conscience is a faculty of the body. Whether people are born with a conscious, or not, is ambiguous. Perhaps the conscious is a faculty of the soul that cannot be seen as well. Just as the will is a faculty of the mind within the brain, the conscious is the protector of the soul just as the human will is the protector of the body.

Psychology — the subjective “study of the soul” — has tested the function of the brain. As it turns out, they believe that the left side of the brain is the decision-making, or judgment, half of the brain; and that the right side is the performance side of the brain.

(I believe that the human nervous system is a type of “Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil,” and that Adam and Eve, knowing only goodness, had never had to judge their thoughts and actions before the “first decision” — to eat or not, or to obey God or not.)

Whatever “fruit” they ate, made their minds lose its sobriety as Peter pointed out, “Be sober; be vigilant, because your adversary, the Devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Pet 5:8). That was the devil’s plan for Job and the plan he had for Adam and Eve. The latter too died, so in a sense, the Devil (the “Image”) would have devoured Adam and Eve if God had not intervened and put onto them a “Comforter” to withstand the wiles and “fiery darts” of the “Serpent.”

With the first wrong decision, mankind became “drunken,” in a sense. They were overwhelmed by new knowledge and sought to use it!

Eve demonstrated it first: she said, “I have gotten a man from the Lord…” (Gen 4:1), not the LORD GOD, but just “lord.” She had become the “god” because God Himself had got the first man, Adam, but somehow, she had gotten the second man, Cain.

Perhaps sin caused the left brain to acquire judgment so that God could be fair to mankind, and right then free will and persuasion was the way to salvation, and it provided by the grace of God. Judgment, as everything else, is of God, and free will is a free gift for their protection.

Although everyone is “shapen in inquity” (Psalm 51:5), according to King David, everyone is also shaped with a free will. Paul wrote about the exercise of free will, “And he (Paul) reasoned in the synagogue every sabbath and persuaded the Jews and Greeks” (Acts 18:4) to become Christians.

What must a man do to be saved? Trust God for salvation! That’s it. It is not physical work, but absence of work; trusting God rather than yourselves so that you are not the “Savior” (God).

Eve began to trust herself before God, and as such, became the “god.” She was no longer “sober” in the sense that she was deceived and had wrong thoughts. Most people today are “drunk,” thinking that their own minds are supreme to God, and as such, have no vigilance against impending danger.

Now back to the difference between fornication and adultery. The Old Testament uses “fornication” (zana) as a relationship gone sour between man, or peoples, and God. Zana is best described as “to follow a paramour” in a more general sense. When Eve got for Adam a man, her “lord” was no longer God but her lord, Lucifer. (Plan “A” of Lucifer’s conspiracy was in place; Isa 14:12-14).

Thus, a “paramour” is another god or another person. Eve, ignoring even Lucifer, had herself become the god. It was her own flesh that provided Cain and even Lucifer was not “god,” but just her new lord, or master.

Her flesh had become the image rather than the image of Lucifer, not a snake by any means, but a cunning alien “beast” from another realm who appeared to her as real in a worldly sense.

In other words, the “Serpent” was an inner personality who I believe was Lilith, the “screech owl” within (Isa 34:14). The cunning beast called the “Serpent” was inside of her and since that time, mankind, since she is the “mother of all living,” may have had their left brain impeded. Their judgment became as faulty as Eve and that cunningness is perhaps transmitted in the mitochondrial DNA that only women can pass down.

Sin, therefore is “coming short of the glory of god,” and failing to perform to the image of God in which mankind was created. Sin, therefore is genetic and the consequence is that people have the animal nature within. Foremost, the call to breed is eminent in beasts, also the desire to exist given the threat of extinction. Thus, pride is the nature of not only self-preservation, but self-estimation; that we deserve to live for pleasure. Some say, “Learn to love myself.” That is our problem!

Therefore, the nature of the beast is within mankind. Lucifer had Eve, now because we all are of Eve, we must have flesh as well. Because of that first sin (original sin) our natures are to follow our paramours.

So, what are paramours? It is our flesh; it is that which must be cut-off (Gen 17:11). It was circumcision of the foreskin in pre-Christian times, but now all the flesh must be cut-off; those “who walk not after the flesh” Rom 8:4).

Before Christ, who was the “god” of sinners? Themselves; their gods are their fleshes, and Eve’s new “lord” was her own flesh — the image of Lucifer. She, by fornication had made for Adam another “man” but Cain came short of the glorious image in which Adam was made.

His nature was that of the old creature, Lucifer, whose cunning image was inside. Eve apparently conned Adam that Cain was his, even though he knew that Eve had consummated an affair with the “Beast” that was alien to the “Garden of Goodness.”

Our flesh is the god, and it must be appeased! The world appeases the flesh, all that is in the world is “the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life” (1 John 2:16). That is the nature within everyone that was inherited from Eve’s close encounter with that alien being!

So, fornication is both of the spirit and the flesh. Even for “the spirit is indeed willing, but the flesh is weak” (Mat 26:41), according to Jesus.

People think of their flesh as strong. Some women even wear tee-shirts that expresses the power of women. Not so; the flesh is weak but out of pride, women think they are strong!

Eve thought that when she believed that she had made a man. She had developed pride and no longer was Adam and Eve one flesh but two. Lucifer had divided man and woman from one gen of man to two gens, and thereafter man and woman would be the creators and have the instinctual drive to pro-create… not really to reproduce but to pleasure. Hence, following the paramour is defection from God, even for those who once, like Adam and Eve, had affection for God.

Hence, fornication is apostasy (apostasia; Heb 6:6) — falling away from God — into the arms of another. The closest arms are yourselves and “he (or she) that commits fornication sins against his (or her) own body” (1 Cor 6:18).

That says so much; it means that our body is our own god and by following the paramour it is even defection from yourself; that you abandon your spirit-filled soul for the love of yourself.

The word, “fornication” of which Paul wrote is “porneia” in the Greek. “Pornography” is basically images of prostitutes, or literally to “indulge unlawful lust” (Strong’s Dictionary). So, fornication is not so much coupling, but to lust after the flesh, even of images as it turns out.

In general, therefore, pornography in general is fornication. “Whosover looks on a woman to lust after her has committed adultery with her already in his heart,” meaning his nature, having a willingness to follow the paramour. Hence, fornication would be the lust for the flesh of another, but adultery would be to perform that lustful thought.

Theologians make fornication as things men do and adultery as what a partner does against his or her mate, but pornography in general applies more to fornication and the performance of coitus (sexual intercourse), or even the self-pleasuring of any sort, as adultery because adultery seems to be the satisfying of the flesh whereas fornication is the satisfaction of the mind.

With that said, adultery includes lascivious thoughts because the person thinks what he or she would like to do; they have virtual sexual intercourse within their minds… that is virtual adultery and fornication is the cause. Hence, fornication is the cause and adultery the affect.

Jimmy Carter was made a fool by the public because he said that he had committed adultery in his heart. What he meant by that is that he was tempted and had virtual sexual intercourse with women other than his wife.

James wrote, “¹⁴ Each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. ¹⁵ Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death” (Jas 1:14-15). Therefore, fornication is the pursuit of pleasure — to follow the paramour — and adultery the desire conceived; the performance of the act of the flesh in the heart, or the will of the person.

The “warning” is vigilance — to refrain from temptation because temptation leads to conception, or the actual act.

Why drugs or alcohol? They inebriate and remove inhibitions. The left brain does not perform its duties, and insobriety is the judgment free zone much like Planet Fitness where you can be anything you want to be without repercussions or even judgment. Others may not judge you but God will soon judge everybody!

Now, admit it… everyone has fornicated because everyone has followed the desires of the flesh. Likewise, everyone, according to James and others, have committed adultery, vicariously, and that is coming short of the glory of God who made us. Who made us not by coitus but by Thought from His Supreme Mind.

Dad, at eighty years of age, told me that, that nature does not go away on its own. He had the urge until he died, and knowing so, he was a righteous man. However, dad would not even hug a woman to refrain from temptation. As such, he may have fornicated but never conceived, or consummated, the fornication. We still come short of the glory of God and Christians still sin, but by grace, God credits us for avoiding trespassing into territory that should be avoided.

What was the first sin in reality? Was it eating the fruit or was it entering the space where the image of Lucifer appeared? If Eve had not gone there, neither she nor Adam would have sinned. She sinned by fornication and Adam sinned because he listened to the delusion of Eve. Eve did not even need to touch the Tree (with Lucifer within it) because sin was conceived when she went there, and that may have been the first occasion of sexual knowledge because God had theretofore multiplied only in Spirit, and so had Adam when the Spirit in him was breathed unto Eve. They exchanged flesh by a sort of spiritual “cloning” rather than by pleasuring.

Remembering that fornication is the pursuit of pornography, therefore, when viewing habits of even first-run movies include sexual scenes, then we go where we should not go, just as Eve. Watching performances laced with sex or much exposed skin is fornication, as God might define it. Watching any of the shades of gray may be the trespass that conceives the sin of adultery in our minds. They are not gray but darkness!

We might all deny it, but we all fornicate sometime during the day. You too were shaped in iniquity just like David who fornicated with Bathsheba as he watched the “porno show” and the sin of adultery was conceived in his heart.

David was not immune from natural desires, and neither are you and me. David had no business on the roof watching and Bathsheba for showing. David desired her beauty and she revealed it to David. Oftentimes, we focus on the sin of David but miss the sin of Bathsheba — knowing the possibility that others, even David, might get a glimpse of her beautiful flesh.

So, the prayer to forgive us our trespasses means to forgive our going where we should not goal Rather than sin, Eve should have asked God to forgive her trespassing and there would have been no sin. Going, even virtually (pornography) is trespassing where we should not go. Pornography is not just in the media but in the flesh everywhere in the world.