According to the New Testament's representation of Jesus' teachings, there are three forms of adultery.

1. THE ACT: A married person commits adultery if he or she physically engages in sexual acts with someone who is not his or her spouse.

Do not commit adultery. (Old Testament writings cited by Jesus: Mat 5:27-30, 32; Mat 19:9, 18, 19; Mar 10:11,12, 19; Luk 16:18; Luk 18:20; Joh 8:1-11.)

[Note also Paul's words: ]

A married woman, for example, is bound by the law to her husband as long as he lives; but if he dies, then she is free from the law that bound her to him. So then, if she lives with another man while her husband is alive, she will be called an adulteress; but if her husband dies, she is legally a free woman and does not commit adultery if she marries another man. (Rom 7:2,3, TEV)

2. THE THOUGHT: A married person commits adultery if he or she has a lustful desire for someone other than his or her spouse.

You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery.’ But now I tell you: anyone who looks at a woman and wants to possess her is guilty of committing adultery with her in his heart. (Mat 5:27,28, TEV)

[As represented in both Paul's and Mark's representation of Jesus words regarding marriage, Jesus' earliest, most authentic teachings treated the man and the woman equally in their marriage responsibility. In this light, these verses have the recipricol message:]

A married woman who looks at a man and wants to possess him is guilty of committing adultery with her in her heart.

3. DIVORCE & REMARRIAGE: A married person commits adultery if he or she divorces and remarries, unless the divorce is caused by a spouse's unfaithfulness.

A man who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against his wife. In the same way, a woman who divorces her husband and marries another man commits adultery. (Mar 10:11,12, TEV)

If a man divorces his wife, for any cause other than her unfaithfulness, then he is guilty of making her commit adultery if she marries again; and the man who marries her commits adultery also. (Mat 5:32, TEV)

Any man who divorces his wife for any cause other than her unfaithfulness, commits adultery if he marries some other woman." (Mat 19:9, TEV)

Any man who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery; and the man who marries a divorced woman commits adultery. (Luk 16:18, TEV)

[Note also Paul's words: ]

A wife must not leave her husband; but if she does, she must remain single or else be reconciled to her husband; and a husband must not divorce his wife. To the others I say (I, myself, not the Lord): if a Christian man has a wife who is an unbeliever and she agrees to go on living with him, he must not divorce her. And if a Christian woman is married to a man who is an unbeliever and he agrees to go on living with her, she must not divorce him. For the unbelieving husband is made acceptable to God by being united to his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made acceptable to God by being united to her Christian husband. If this were not so, their children would be like pagan children; but as it is, they are acceptable to God. However, if the one who is not a believer wishes to leave the Christian partner, let it be so. In such cases the Christian partner, whether husband or wife, is free to act. God has called you to live in peace. How can you be sure, Christian wife, that you will not save your husband? Or how can you be sure, Christian husband, that you will not save your wife? (1Co 7:10-16, TEV)

[Note also S&H 59:27; S&H 66:21]

For a much more thorough examination of "Divorce as understood by the earliest Christians," browse http://www.bibletexts.com/terms/divorce.htm.

Other writings relevant to the standards of marriage, the subject of adultery and moral idiocy, and of the means of one's defense against and rescue from such sins

Gen 39:1-12, TEV

"Joseph and Potiphar's Wife" - 1 The Ishmaelites had taken Joseph to Egypt and sold him to Potiphar, one of the king's officers, who was the captain of the palace guard... 6 Potiphar turned over everything he had to the care of Joseph and did not concern himself with anything except the food he ate. Joseph was well-built and good-looking, 7 and after a while his master's wife began to desire Joseph and asked him to go to bed with her. 8 He refused and said to her, "Look, my master does not have to concern himself with anything in the house, because I am here. He has put me in charge of everything he has. 9 I have as much authority in this house as he has, and he has not kept back anything from me except you. How then could I do such an immoral thing and sin against God?" 10 Although she asked Joseph day after day, he would not go to bed with her. 11 But one day when Joseph went into the house to do his work, none of the house servants was there. 12 She caught him by his robe and said, "Come to bed with me." But he escaped and ran outside...

1Co 5:9-13, TEV

In the letter that I wrote you I told you not to associate with immoral people. Now I did not mean pagans who are immoral or greedy or are thieves or who worship idols. To avoid them you would have to get out of the world completely. What I meant was that you should not associate with a person who calls himself a believer but is immoral or greedy or worships idols or is a slanderer or a drunkard or a thief. Don’t even sit down to eat with such a person. After all, it is none of my business to judge outsiders. God will judge them. But should you not judge the members of your own fellowship? As the scripture says, “Remove the evil person from your group.”

1Co 6:9,12-20, TEV

Do not fool yourselves; people who are immoral or who worship idols or are adulterers or homosexual perverts or who steal or are greedy or are drunkards or who slander others or are thieves — none of these will possess God’s Kingdom...

Someone will say, “I am allowed to do anything.” Yes; but not everything is good for you. I could say that I am allowed to do anything, but I am not going to let anything make me its slave. ...The body is not to be used for sexual immorality, but to serve the Lord; and the Lord provides for the body. God raised the Lord from death, and he will also raise us by his power. You know that your bodies are parts of the body of Christ. Shall I take a part of Christ’s body and make it part of the body of a prostitute? Impossible! Or perhaps you don’t know that the man who joins his body to a prostitute becomes physically one with her? The scripture says quite plainly, “The two will become one body.” But he who joins himself to the Lord becomes spiritually one with him. Avoid immorality. Any other sin a man commits does not affect his body; but the man who is guilty of sexual immorality sins against his own body. Don’t you know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and who was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourselves but to God; he bought you for a price. So use your bodies for God’s glory.

1Co 7:1-5, TEV

...Because there is so much immorality, every man should have his own wife, and every woman should have her own husband. A man should fulfil his duty as a husband, and a woman should fulfil her duty as a wife, and each should satisfy the other’s needs. A wife is not the master of her own body, but her husband is; in the same way a husband is not the master of his own body, but his wife is. Do not deny yourselves to each other, unless you first agree to do so for a while in order to spend your time in prayer; but then resume normal marital relations. In this way you will be kept from giving in to Satan’s temptation because of your lack of self-control.

Heb 13:4, TEV

Marriage is to be honoured by all, and husbands and wives must be faithful to each other. God will judge those who are immoral and those who commit adultery.

Some of the writings of Mary Baker Eddy, who wrote extensively on the subjects of marriage and morality

Christian Healing 7:22 - Jesus knew that adultery is a crime, and mind is the criminal. I wish the age was up to his understanding of these two facts, so important to progress and Christianity.

Miscellaneous Writings (Mis) 112:12-15,24 - The mental stages of crime, which seem to belong to the latter days, are strictly classified in metaphysics as some of the many features and forms of what is properly denominated, in extreme cases, moral idiocy.

This mental disease at first shows itself in extreme sensitiveness; then, in a loss of self-knowledge and of self-condemnation,--a shocking inability to see one's own faults, but an exaggerating sense of other people's. Unless this mental condition be overcome, it ends in a total loss of moral, intellectual, and spiritual discernment, and is characterized in this Scripture: "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God." This state of mind is the exemplification of total depravity, and the result of sensuous mind in matter. Mind that is God is not in matter; and God's presence gives spiritual light, wherein is no darkness.

Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (S&H) 56:15-3 - Infidelity to the marriage covenant is the social scourge of all races, "the pestilence that walketh in darkness, . . . the destruction that wasteth at noonday." The commandment, "Thou shalt not commit adultery," is no less imperative than the one, "Thou shalt not kill."

Chastity is the cement of civilization and progress. Without it there is no stability in society, and without it one cannot attain the Science of Life.

S&H 60:24-6 - An ill-attuned ear calls discord harmony, not appreciating concord. So physical sense, not discerning the true happiness of being, places it on a false basis. Science will correct the discord, and teach us life's sweeter harmonies.

Soul has infinite resources with which to bless mankind, and happiness would be more readily attained and would be more secure in our keeping, if sought in Soul. Higher enjoyments alone can satisfy the cravings of immortal man. We cannot circumscribe happiness within the limits of personal sense. The senses confer no real enjoyment.

The good in human affections must have ascendency over the evil and the spiritual over the animal, or happiness will never be won.

S&H 60:16 - Marriage should improve the human species, becoming a barrier against vice, a protection to woman, strength to man, and a centre for the affections. This, however, in a majority of cases, is not its present tendency, and why? Because the education of the higher nature is neglected, and other considerations, --passion, frivolous amusements, personal adornment, display, and pride,--occupy thought.

S&H 58:12-21 - There is moral freedom in Soul. Never contract the horizon of a worthy outlook by the selfish exaction of all another's time and thoughts. With additional joys, benevolence should grow more diffusive. The narrowness and jealousy, which would confine a wife or a husband forever within four walls, will not promote the sweet interchange of confidence and love; but on the other hand, a wandering desire for incessant amusement outside the home circle is a poor augury for the happiness of wedlock.

Church Manual 46:1 - No person shall be a member of this Church who claims a spiritually adopted child or a spiritually adopted husband or wife. There must be legal adoption and legal marriage, which can be verified according to the laws of our land.

Mis 9:16-3 - Whom we call friends seem to sweeten life's cup and to fill it with the nectar of the gods. We lift this cup to our lips; but it slips from our grasp, to fall in fragments before our eyes. Perchance, having tasted its tempting wine, we become intoxicated; become lethargic, dreamy objects of self-satisfaction; else, the contents of this cup of selfish human enjoyment having lost its flavor, we voluntarily set it aside as tasteless and unworthy of human aims.

And wherefore our failure longer to relish this fleeting sense, with its delicious forms of friendship, wherewith mortals become educated to gratification in personal pleasure and trained in treacherous peace? Because it is the great and only danger in the path that winds upward. A false sense of what constitutes happiness is more disastrous to human progress than all that an enemy or enmity can obtrude upon the mind or engraft upon its purposes and achievements wherewith to obstruct life's joys and enhance its sorrows.

S&H 188:4 - The belief of sin, which has grown terrible in strength and influence, is an unconscious error in the beginning,--an embryonic thought without motive; but afterwards it governs the so-called man. Passion, depraved appetites, dishonesty, envy, hatred, revenge ripen into action, only to pass from shame and woe to their final punishment.

Mis 221:30-17 - Who would tell another of a crime that he himself is committing, or call public attention to that crime? The belief in evil and in the process of evil, holds the issues of death to the evil-doer. It takes away a man's proper sense of good, and gives him a false sense of both evil and good. It inflames envy, passion, evil-speaking, and strife. It reverses Christian Science in all things. It causes the victim to believe that he is advancing while injuring himself and others. This state of false consciousness in many cases causes the victim great physical suffering; and conviction of his wrong state of feeling reforms him, and so heals him: or, failing of conviction and reform, he becomes morally paralyzed--in other words, a moral idiot.

In this state of misled consciousness, one is ready to listen complacently to audible falsehoods that once he would have resisted and loathed; and this, because the false seems true. The malicious mental argument and its action on the mind of the perpetrator, is fatal, morally and physically.

Mis 210:19 - Intemperance begets a belief of disordered brains, membranes, stomach, and nerves; and this belief serves to uncover and kill this lurking serpent, intemperance, that hides itself under the false pretense of human need, innocent enjoyment, and a medical prescription. The belief in venereal diseases tears the black mask from the shameless brow of licentiousness, torments its victim, and thus may save him from his destroyer.

Mis 107:11-110:12 - More love is the great need of mankind. A pure affection, concentric, forgetting self, forgiving wrongs and forestalling them, should swell the lyre of human love.

Three cardinal points must be gained before poor humanity is regenerated and Christian Science is demonstrated: (1) A proper sense of sin; (2) repentance; (3) the understanding of good. Evil is a negation: it never started with time, and it cannot keep pace with eternity. Mortals' false senses pass through three states and stages of human consciousness before yielding error. The deluded sense must first be shown its falsity through a knowledge of evil as evil, so-called. Without a sense of one's oft-repeated violations of divine law, the individual may become morally blind, and this deplorable mental state is moral idiocy. The lack of seeing one's deformed mentality, and of repentance therefor, deep, never to be repented of, is retarding, and in certain morbid instances stopping, the growth of Christian Scientists. Without a knowledge of his sins, and repentance so severe that it destroys them, no person is or can be a Christian Scientist.

Mankind thinks either too much or too little of sin. The sensitive, sorrowing saint thinks too much of it: the sordid sinner, or the so-called Christian asleep, thinks too little of sin.

To allow sin of any sort is anomalous in Christian Scientists, claiming, as they do, that good is infinite, All. Our Master, in his definition of Satan as a liar from the beginning, attested the absolute powerlessness--yea, nothingness--of evil: since a lie, being without foundation in fact, is merely a falsity; spiritually, literally, it is nothing...

Examine yourselves, and see what, and how much, sin claims of you; and how much of this claim you admit as valid, or comply with. The knowledge of evil that brings on repentance is the most hopeful stage of mortal mentality. Even a mild mistake must be seen as a mistake, in order to be corrected; how much more, then, should one's sins be seen and repented of, before they can be reduced to their native nothingness!...

Beloved brethren, Christ, Truth, saith unto you, "Be not afraid!"--fear not sin, lest thereby it master you; but only fear to sin. Watch and pray for self-knowledge; since then, and thus, cometh repentance,--and your superiority to a delusion is won.

Repentance is better than sacrifice. The costly balm of Araby, poured on our Master's feet, had not the value of a single tear.

Beloved children, the world has need of you,--and more as children than as men and women: it needs your innocence, unselfishness, faithful affection, uncontaminated lives. You need also to watch, and pray that you preserve these virtues unstained, and lose them not through contact with the world. What grander ambition is there than to maintain in yourselves what Jesus loved, and to know that your example, more than words, makes morals for mankind!

Mis 147:10-11,14-3 - Have you learned that sin is inadmissible, and indicates a small mind?...

The man of integrity is one who makes it his constant rule to follow the road of duty, according as Truth and the voice of his conscience point it out to him. He is not guided merely by affections which may some time give the color of virtue to a loose and unstable character.

The upright man is guided by a fixed Principle, which destines him to do nothing but what is honorable, and to abhor whatever is base or unworthy; hence we find him ever the same,--at all times the trusty friend, the affectionate relative, the conscientious man of business, the pious worker, the public-spirited citizen.

He assumes no borrowed appearance. He seeks no mask to cover him, for he acts no studied part; but he is indeed what he appears to be,--full of truth, candor, and humanity. In all his pursuits, he knows no path but the fair, open, and direct one, and would much rather fail of success than attain it by reproachable means. He never shows us a smiling countenance while he meditates evil against us in his heart. We shall never find one part of his character at variance with another.

The First Church of Christ, Scientist and Miscellany (My) 131:1-11 - Beloved, that which purifies the affections also strengthens them, removes fear, subdues sin, and endues with divine power; that which refines character at the same time humbles, exalts, and commands a man, and obedience gives him courage, devotion, and attainment. For this hour, for this period, for spiritual sacrament, sacrifice, and ascension, we unite in giving thanks. For the body of Christ, for the life that we commemorate and would emulate, for the bread of heaven whereof if a man eat "he shall live forever," for the cup red with loving restitution, redemption, and inspiration, we give thanks.

[To explore some additional comments on "moral idiocy," see Mis 113:11-27; Mis 354:3-5; My 249:9-16. ]

Other webpages relevant to healing of and salvation from adultery

"Divorce as understood by Jesus and the earliest Christians"

• http://www.bibletexts.com/terms/divorce.htm (web article)

"Marriage"

• http://www.bibletexts.com/topics/marriage.htm (index of links to many articles)

"Premarital sex and homosexuality "

• http://www.bibletexts.com/qa/qa082.htm (question & response)

"Prayer - Some of the many aspects of prayer taught in the Bible"

• http://www.bibletexts.com/terms/prayer.htm (web article)

See also S&H 362:1 - 364:31