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The Practical Consequences of Adultery

We have written before about the practical consequences of sin. This is the idea that even though moral law exists in the Bible and there are spiritual consequences for disobedience, there are also palpable, understandable physical consequences of violating the moral law. Here we will discuss the practical consequences of adultery.

Proverbs chapter 5 keeps with the theme of the rest of the book, which is practical wisdom. In this chapter, the practical consequences of adultery are listed out for our understanding.

1 My son, pay attention to my wisdom;
Lend your ear to my understanding,

2 That you may preserve discretion,
And your lips may keep knowledge.

3 For the lips of an immoral woman drip honey,
And her mouth is smoother than oil;

4 But in the end she is bitter as wormwood,
Sharp as a two-edged sword.

5 Her feet go down to death,
Her steps lay hold of hell.

6 Lest you ponder her path of life—
Her ways are unstable;
You do not know them.

7 Therefore hear me now, my children,
And do not depart from the words of my mouth.

8 Remove your way far from her,
And do not go near the door of her house,

9 Lest you give your honor to others,
And your years to the cruel one;

10 Lest aliens be filled with your wealth,
And your labors go to the house of a foreigner;

11 And you mourn at last,
When your flesh and your body are consumed,

12 And say:
“How I have hated instruction,
And my heart despised correction!

13 I have not obeyed the voice of my teachers,
Nor inclined my ear to those who instructed me!

14 I was on the verge of total ruin,
In the midst of the assembly and congregation.”

15 Drink water from your own cistern,
And running water from your own well.

16 Should your fountains be dispersed abroad,
Streams of water in the streets?

17 Let them be only your own,
And not for strangers with you.

18 Let your fountain be blessed,
And rejoice with the wife of your youth.

19 As a loving deer and a graceful doe,
Let her breasts satisfy you at all times;
And always be enraptured with her love.

20 For why should you, my son, be enraptured by an immoral woman,
And be embraced in the arms of a seductress?
Proverbs 5:1-20

Verse 3-4

This verse embodies a practical exercise that we must perform as Christians – it is the ability to look past the immediate pleasure of sin and look to the end results. In the case of sin, it is often an evil, negative end result. This passage teaches that the end of the immoral woman is as bitter as wormwood. What looked so enticing in the beginning looks disgusting once you are finished with it.

You do not even have to commit adultery to understand this.

How do you feel about yourself the moment you orgasm after masturbating? Most men report feeling disgusted with themselves, making an oath never to commit that sin again. Yet it only takes a day (or even a few hours) for the craving to hit again. At that moment you forget your oath and go back to war with the craving itself.

You lose sight of how you felt in the end after the sin and can only think about satisfying the craving again. Of course, the war on lust and masturbation is not that simple and we have applied some reductionist thinking to it, but it serves to illustrate this point. We forget the long-term consequence and become overwhelmed by the short-term desire. It does not take adultery for this to happen.

Exercise I – Train yourself to look past the immediate pleasure/benefit of the situation and look forward to the negative consequences of it.

Visualize what will happen in the days, weeks, and months following your action. Are those results positive or negative?

Verse 6 is a continuation of the exercise. You have to stop yourself from even thinking about engaging in adultery. Because if you start pondering it, it will not be long until you have rationalized it quite effectively. It is not hard for us to create a train of thought that is nonsensical when others examine it, but that makes complete and perfect sense to us in our own thinking.

Verse 8 teaches to remove your way far from the adulterous woman.

Why? Because you do not even need to be in an environment where you could be faced with that temptation. Solomon understands the powerful pull of a man’s sex drive. It would be extremely difficult for a man to resist an adulterous woman. So you need to control your environment.

75% of discipline is controlling your immediate environment. If you control your environment it will pay you dividends of discipline.

Verse 9 is where Solomon begins to list the practical consequences of the sin of adultery. It is quite the laundry list, and it could be expanded even further. Use your power of observation.

Look at the men in the world and in the church who have engaged in extramarital affairs. How has that turned out for them? If you find a man for whom it has turned out positively, he is the exception, not the rule. Practically speaking, it makes no sense to engage in adultery. It has only the short, fleeting excitement of one orgasm followed by hours of paranoia and secrecy. Do not waste your time in an affair when you could be spending your time creatively, productively, and profitably.

The first thing you lose as a consequence of adultery is your honor (v. 9).

And this makes rational sense. A man is dishonored when he is caught in an affair. His years are given to “the cruel one”, which in this case seems to be the adulterous woman. You can also observe this phenomenon as well – how quickly does a woman go from alluring and exciting to cruel and spiteful after an affair? They become so cruel that you can see them change. They no longer need to be exciting and alluring because they have already sunk their hook into the man who was not sexually disciplined. This leads us directly into verse 10.

You lose your wealth (v. 10).

The most practical and easily observable of all the consequences of this sin. You can see around you how many men lose their wealth and entire estates due to their sexual indiscretion. They lose it in the form of alimony, they lose the wealth of their time which is their most valuable depreciating asset. And they lose the wealth-building tool of their reputation. A woman has but to sink her hooks into you and will leech your finances for years.

Exercise II – Ask yourself, is one ten-second orgasm in a woman work thousands of your dollars and the freedom you have built through work?

Verse 11 is a possible allusion to the sexually transmitted diseases of the day. Your “flesh is consumed”. That does not sound like something any man would want to be a part of. And back in Solomon’s day, there was no protection from those pathologies.

You were risking disease every single time you engaged sexually with a female (or male). Even today people still risk their health by not wearing condoms during intercourse. And even if they wear condoms, there is still the possibility of contracting a disease due to incomplete coverage of the genitals or because some diseases can be spread through kissing alone.

Look up some pictures of what the various diseases do to the human body. It is not good. While I disprove fearmongering in the church and I do acknowledge that the only way most church people can motivate purity is through the threat of punishment and consequence, the physical consequences of STDs are readily apparent and a wonderful deterrent to sexual sin.

Sometimes you need a good reminder of all the consequences of adultery because motivating yourself only by looking to the positive can be ineffective. Remind yourself of the physical consequences of sexual sin in the form of an STD. If you are able to keep your lunch down, you will not forget those images for a long time. And you will be motivated beyond belief to keep your genitals to yourself.

The man who does not remain disciplined is found in the following verses.

After he suffers all the practical consequences of sin, he mourns. He wakes up from his delusion, perhaps enlightened by the post-orgasm clarity of mind, and realizes what he has done. He has wasted his wealth, his time, his career, his name, and his health and has nothing left. Do not let yourself be that man. Keep yourself under control if for nothing more than to avoid the negative consequences of adultery.

Verses 15-20 instruct you to stay with your own wife. Be committed to her and let your sexual satisfaction come only from her. Some in the church would like you to believe this is fulfilling or easy – it is not. The supposed allure and excitement of worldly women have pulled many Christian men away from the faith, from their marriage, and into immorality. It is not enough just to look to your wife for sexual satisfaction, but you must also meditate on the negative consequences of adultery.

Proverbs 5 is not the only place where adultery is warned against. Solomon mentions the practical consequences of adultery and its overarching disadvantage to the young man.

16 To deliver you from the immoral woman,
From the seductress who flatters with her words,

17 Who forsakes the companion of her youth,
And forgets the covenant of her God.

18 For her house leads down to death,
And her paths to the dead;

19 None who go to her return,
Nor do they regain the paths of life.
Proverbs 2:16-19

This passage briefly touches on a few of the main points mentioned before. The way of the adulterous leads to the destruction of a man’s honor, health, wealth, and life. This passage teaches that they do not regain the paths of life. After adultery, most men do not recover in life.

You might say “Well I can list plenty of instances where man engaged in adultery and went on to be successful”.

Well, imagine how much more successful he would be if he did not lose portions of his wealth and time to an immoral woman.

24 To keep you from the evil woman,
From the flattering tongue of a seductress.

25 Do not lust after her beauty in your heart,
Nor let her allure you with her eyelids.
26 For by means of a harlot
A man is reduced to a crust of bread;
And an adulteress will prey upon his precious life.
27 Can a man take fire to his bosom,
And his clothes not be burned?
28 Can one walk on hot coals,
And his feet not be seared?
29 So is he who goes in to his neighbor’s wife;Whoever touches her shall not be innocent.
Proverbs 6:24-29

The seductress is alluring. You are going to want to be involved with her. She is a siren from the tale of Odysseus, and it is your responsibility to tie yourself to the mast of the ship of your life and avoid any interactions with these women.

She will attempt to pull you in and destroy you in the end.

The Bible says a man is reduced to a crust of bread. He is reduced to nothingness. Again, his name and wealth are destroyed. If a man does not have his reputation, wealth, and health, what exactly does he have? An adulterous woman can take all of these things away from him.

32 Whoever commits adultery with a woman lacks understanding;
He who does so destroys his own soul.

33 Wounds and dishonor he will get,
And his reproach will not be wiped away.

34 For jealousy is a husband’s fury;
Therefore he will not spare in the day of vengeance.

35 He will accept no recompense,
Nor will he be appeased though you give many gifts.
Proverbs 6:32-35

This is the culmination of what we have learned – “he who commits adultery with a woman lacks understanding”. He quite literally lacks knowledge. The Bible also teaches that departing from evil equals understanding (Job 28:28). The adulterous woman robs a man of everything valuable he has. Again, If a man does not have his reputation, his health, or his wealth, what does he have? These are all of the possessions that an adulterous woman leeches away from a man.

Losing these is a practical consequence of adultery.

The adulterous man “destroys his own soul”. Perhaps he is ridden with guilt (though not always – as I mentioned, guilt is largely unnecessary and poorly defined in religion). Or his mind is never at rest because of his need to maintain secrecy about his affairs and his paranoia in thinking that all of these things will come to the light of the all-seeing public eye.

Then lastly in this passage, we see what happens when a man commits adultery with a married woman. He quite literally puts his life in danger. The husband cannot be appeased. He will only accept payment in the form of violence. This is one of the most natural reactions a human being can have. The man who commits adultery will have the raw, unbridled anger of the husband to deal with, and that will not end well for anyone.

Some men will take it so far as to murder the adulterous man who engaged sexually with his wife. A brief orgasm is not worth that risk.

6 For at the window of my house
I looked through my lattice,

7 And saw among the simple,
I perceived among the youths,
A young man devoid of understanding,

8 Passing along the street near her corner;
And he took the path to her house

9 In the twilight, in the evening,
In the black and dark night.

10 And there a woman met him,
With the attire of a harlot, and a crafty heart.

11 She was loud and rebellious,
Her feet would not stay at home.

12 At times she was outside, at times in the open square,
Lurking at every corner.

13 So she caught him and kissed him;
With an impudent face she said to him:

14 “I have peace offerings with me;
Today I have paid my vows.

15 So I came out to meet you,
Diligently to seek your face,
And I have found you.

16 I have spread my bed with tapestry,
Colored coverings of Egyptian linen.

17 I have perfumed my bed
With myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon.

18 Come, let us take our fill of love until morning;
Let us delight ourselves with love.

19 For my husband is not at home;
He has gone on a long journey;

20 He has taken a bag of money with him,
And will come home on the appointed day.”

21 With her enticing speech she caused him to yield,
With her flattering lips she seduced him.

22 Immediately he went after her, as an ox goes to the slaughter,
Or as a fool to the correction of the stocks,

23 Till an arrow struck his liver.
As a bird hastens to the snare,
He did not know it would cost his life.

24 Now therefore, listen to me, my children;
Pay attention to the words of my mouth:

25 Do not let your heart turn aside to her ways,
Do not stray into her paths;

26 For she has cast down many wounded,
And all who were slain by her were strong men.

27 Her house is the way to hell,
Descending to the chambers of death.
Proverbs 7:6-27

Solomon first perceived a young man lacking understanding (v. 7), which means that he would not depart from evil. He was already in the wrong part of town.

Solomon then gives some key characteristics of this immoral woman – she is loud, rebellious, and would not stay at home (v. 11). This is the opposite of how the ideal woman should have behaved – to be quiet, submissive, and stay at home.

She lurked, looking for an opportunity to ensnare a man. The bible also describes her as “impudent”, or “sexually forward” (v. 13) and tempted him with sex. Like most men, he gave in and the bible says it cost him his life (v. 23). We do not fully understand what it means that “an arrow struck his liver”, but it does not seem rational to test the waters of adultery in order to find out.

This passage is one of the principles stories about avoiding adultery as well as the consequences of adultery.

Women will constantly be looking for ways to ensnare men, especially if those men have a high value. You need to guard yourself against these kinds of women. Protect your reputation, health, and wealth by maintaining sexual discipline. Keep yourself away from these women. Spend time investing in yourself.

Men and women cannot be friends. Do not waste your time with women, especially if you find yourself physically attracted to them. It will be a complete waste of your time, money, and life.

These are the practical consequences of adultery. Think about them, meditate on them and plan in advance how you will deal with these women.

You need to have a battle plan ready for every possible scenario. Be ready to go to war and be alert at all times.

Conduct yourselves like men.

Responsibility – Take Ownership of Everything in Your Life

It is not natural to take responsibility for our actions. Look at the first man and the first woman who ever existed in the world. When they inevitably failed and were not obedient to the rules that God had set, what did they do? They shifted blame away from themselves (Genesis 3).

What this means is that is natural to shift blame to someone else and it is unnatural to take responsibility for our actions. But as we so often note, the right thing is seldom the natural thing. Christianity itself involves many unnatural behaviors. From avoiding pre-marital/extra-marital sex to loving our enemies, many of the commands of God require us to put aside our humanity for the betterment of humankind. Literally, we reject our physical nature and transcend to the divine by behaving unnaturally – or perhaps it would be better said that we act supernaturally. Not ghostly, but literally “above nature”, and the word itself is defined.

That said, taking responsibility for our actions is not natural.

It is easy to understand this because it is painful to take responsibility. And the greatest motivation for all human beings is the dualistic power of the pain and pleasure principles. We are constantly looking to either gain pleasure or avoid pain. And I argue that the urge to avoid pain is much greater than the desire to gain pleasure. Mediocrity is pleasant enough, why should I work to gain something better? But if the pain will reach me if I do not act and the only way to avoid that pain is to act, then somehow I can find the energy and motivation to take action.

Therefore, the push to avoid responsibility might be so strong because responsibility can be painful. It would be much easier to shift that pain onto someone else and have them take it for us. But this is not the masculine way to behave.

Being a man involves taking responsibility especially during the moments when it is neither fun nor enjoyable to do so.

That is one of the critical pieces of manhood – you take on the pain of life for the betterment of others. Usually, this is for the benefit of your immediate family. But you also think about how each act of taking responsibility will better your own life.

The next time you find yourself wanting to shift blame or make an error someone else’s fault, take a look at yourself. Examine your own contribution to the situation and think about what you could have done differently. Or think about what you still have the power to affect. It is a bad habit to constantly be looking at others and blaming them. It robs us of the power to direct our own lives because we suggest that “If this guy had just done XYZ then this wouldn’t have happened!”. That is not masculine. By definition, if we blame or shift responsibility we are behaving in effeminate ways.

A simple way to be more masculine is to take personal responsibility for everything in this life. If you are not happy with something in your life, take a look in the mirror at the creator of that situation. Become aware of your habit of pointing fingers at others. It is not their responsibility why your life turned out the way it has.

Stop blaming everyone. No longer can you blame:

Your parents
The economy
Your environment
Your friends
Your lack of resources (money/time/connections/skill)

If it is in your life or a part of who you are, it is your responsibility. You have to take charge of your life if you ever want to be free. No longer are you content to sit around pointing fingers at everyone else. The moment you begin to take responsibility, you begin to be free. And you find satisfaction with your life, no matter what state it is in. Because even if it is the worst life ever created, it’s still yours, you made it, your name is attached to it, and that has to mean something to you. So take responsibility and find the freedom and masculinity therein.

God is Glorified by YOUR Success

Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house.Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.
Matthew 5:15-16

Ask any father when it is that they are proud of their children. No doubt they will tell you that they are proud of their kids when they do well at something. It does not really matter what that something is. They could be doing well in school, sports, or displaying good character. Whatever it is, the father is proud when his kids do well.

Does it then make sense that God the father would be proud of His children when they do well? God is glorified when you do well in life.

When you succeed, the glory goes back to He who made you.

Some people have made it virtuous to aim low in life. This is especially true of modern Christians. These are the people we have talked about before who think success is evil. They also think that poverty is a virtue.

I do not see anything noble associated with aiming low and achieving few successes in life. It does not matter what those successes are. Whatever you can define as success, somewhere you can find a Christian who thinks it is good if you do not reach that successful image.

Instead of aiming high, giving credit to God along the way, they aim low. They think that the less they achieve, the nobler they are. Or that the less money they make, the more spiritual they are. Wealth and spirituality are not inversely correlated.

If you work as hard as you can, you glorify God. This is a biblical principle.

And whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men,knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance; for^[a] you serve the Lord Christ.
Colossians 3:23-24

Bondservants, be obedient to those who are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in sincerity of heart, as to Christ; not with eyeservice, as men-pleasers, but as bondservants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, with goodwill doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men,knowing that whatever good anyone does, he will receive the same from the Lord, whether he is a slave or free.
Ephesians 6:5-8

God is glorified by your success.

it does not bring glory to God if you aim low in life and achieve very little. Others will look at you and mock you. Every man, religious or secular, has the responsibility to achieve. This is an integral part of man’s nature. It was built into him from the beginning of time. God created you to not just work mindlessly at a 9-5, but to improve and achieve both personally and professionally.

It is not masculine to wallow in failure and lack of success. It is not noble to try to lead others down the same path you are on.

This is one of the many reasons you must be careful about who you allow being your friends. You have to control your circle of influence very carefully. Treat it like your immune system and always be on the lookout for someone who is a parasite.

Parasites are thousands of times smaller than their human hosts, but cause massive problems to the human machine. Negative influences around you are the same way. They must be rigorously controlled, monitored, and modulated.

Do not associate with anyone who promotes the idea that your lack of success is okay. You are not okay just the way you are. That has never been true and it never be will be true. You must at all times be working to cast off your current self and be more.

to put off your former way of life, your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be renewed in the spirit of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.
Ephesians 4:22-24

Nobility exists in facing our personal insufficiencies and working to correct them. Never content with staying in the same place, we always look for ways to improve our weaknesses. Even if we can only make small progress, that is infinitely more profitable and masculine than making no progress.

Do not let limiting beliefs hold you back from being successful. If some Christian is trying to get you to limit your personal or professional success on the grounds that it is spiritual, get away from them. They have no biblical backing for their belief. They are propagating false doctrine. Only listen to men you admire and want to emulate. And then only listen to those who can back up what they believe with scripture. And not only with scripture, but with rational thinking as well.

It is one thing to quote a verse. It is another thing to be able to quote and think about the bible with a rational mind. Use your own mind to decide what you believe. Never take someone’s word for anything. Make sure everything passes the test of logic so you can be a man. And never limit your success. It is not spiritual, it is fatal.

Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world.
1 John 4:1

Now the Bereans were more noble-minded than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if these teachings were true
Acts 17:11

Intrinsic Motivation – Lasting Drive

You can be a good Christian by simply obeying commandments. But you can be an excellent Christian if you develop personal, intrinsic reasons for obeying the commands. This is called “Intrinsic motivation“.

To develop intrinsic motivation, you must have your own drive generated from within.

You cannot have it forced upon you from an outside source – which is called “extrinsic motivation“.

We all start out by being intrinsically motivated. When we were kids, we had the authority of our parents over us. And if we wanted to stay in their good graces and avoid punishment, we would do what they say. Hopefully, as we got older, we began to see some of the truth and logic in what they were telling us. Not that everything they did had good reason, but much of their guidance was rational and intelligent.

As we start to make sense of the reasons why we were told to do certain things, we can begin to be intrinsically motivated by them. We started to see the value in the action itself, rather than just a tool for avoiding pain.

This transformation sometimes takes years and is certainly not completed all at once. But if we are wise, we begin to look for the internal reasons why we should act a specific way.

The best motivation you will ever have is the motivation that comes from within.

Now I cannot dismiss the intense motivation you feel after listening to a motivational speech or watching motivational videos. But that motivation often does not last long enough to make a huge difference in our lives. Perhaps it will keep us motivated for one workout, but where do we go for motivation once the workout is over?

As powerful as every mentor is, you have to develop your own source of internal motivation that you can tap into at any time. This comes from internalizing those motivational speeches and images until they are a part of your thinking.

The most powerful motivation for work, life, or Christianity is that motivation that comes from within.

Just like you begin to see the wisdom of your parents only after several years, you also begin to see the wisdom of the Bible only after years of study. You begin to see the truths in the Bible and understand how they can benefit you in a very practical way. There is nothing fluffy or mystical about the commandments, they are all designed to protect us and to better our lives.

Every time you observe people in the world violating the commands of God, you inevitably see the consequences of those actions shortly after. Many times the commands act as a guardrail, keeping people away from the brutal, negative consequences of their own actions.

Recognizing this allows you to be more likely to keep the commandments. We see the built-in benefits and wisdom, so we stay on the path of discipline. This understanding of the benefits also leads to intrinsic motivation.

This type of motivation will be very unlikely to run out as often as extrinsic motivation. While you will certainly have days where your focus and energy wavers, if you have the motivation that is developed internally, you will have more lasting reservoirs of power, concentration, and discipline.

To build intrinsic motivation, look at and study the benefits of the commandments. Try to understand their practicality. Remember back to all the times in your life where you avoided consequences because of good decision-making. Think of all the times you made your life better by behaving properly.

By thinking this way, you begin to build evidence in your mind for the Christian lifestyle. The way you live begins to make more sense. You understand the roots of your own actions. This understanding allows you to put some positive behaviors on autopilot. This automation of good behavior is the holy grail. If you can behave properly without even thinking about it, you can win. That is what intrinsic motivation and the development of good habits can do for you.

Outlast The Enemy – Colossians 1:11

“Being strengthened with all power according to His glorious might so that you may have full endurance and patience, and joyfully“

What we learn here is that strength, in this sense, is the combination of patience and longsuffering. The ability to outlast the enemy.

These two traits combined give us endurance. That is our ability to continue to press forward despite discomfort. That is one of the traits we must develop as men if we are going to survive this world.

But even more important is the last word of this verse – joyfully. Some versions say “with joy”. Patience and longsuffering joyfully is our ability to not only bear the difficulty of life but to do so with a smile.

We all admire those men who can smile and laugh through the darkest of hours. Through the horrors of combat or the normal difficulty of life, they somehow find humor. They somehow find a way to smile through it all.

We can develop that ability to laugh through the pain if we remember the goal we have. That is the goal of eternal life. We can develop patience if we also submerge ourselves into the present moment. Pain only becomes unbearable when we start wishing it would end or wondering how much longer it is going to last. Then we start to scramble and look for relief and it only makes it worse. But if we can train our minds to sit calmly, even joyfully, in that discomfort, we will have massive power.

Pain is reduced when you just allow yourself to feel the pain in the present moment. You can even test this in the gym when you are doing a painful exercise. When you start to think about how many reps you have left or wonder if you should just drop the weight, the exercise becomes much more difficult and painful. But if you just submerge yourself in the pain and allow yourself to feel it, the power of it is lessened. you begin to be able to manage it and even work through it. Learning how to do that provides you with great power.

Once you learn this in the gmy, you can transfer it to life. Then you can outlast the enemy.

That is all you have to do, just last longer than they do in order to win.

This life is an extreme experiment in endurance. You can either learn to manage the difficulty or get crushed by it.

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