347. Exodus 20:14: The Sixth Commandment, Chastity, Marriage, and the Holiness of the Body

"Thou shalt not commit adultery." - Exodus 20:14

The Commandment Guards Chastity In Act And State Of Life

The Sixth Commandment teaches that the body, sex, marriage, and procreation belong under God's order and may not be used according to appetite alone. Adultery is the clearest named violation, but the commandment extends more broadly to fornication, impurity, misuse of the body, and every outward act by which sexuality is separated from truth, covenant, and lawful end.[1]

This is why the commandment must not be reduced to one marital offense alone. It protects the whole order of chastity. The married are bound to fidelity. The unmarried are bound to purity. All the faithful are bound to reverence the body as belonging to God rather than to lust, vanity, experimentation, or emotional self-assertion.

Adultery Violates Covenant, Not Only Feeling

The wording of the commandment is exact. Adultery is not merely a strong personal failure or an unfortunate romantic complication. It is a violation of covenant. It profanes what God has joined, wounds justice between persons, attacks the peace of the household, and teaches the body to speak falsehood.

This is why Scripture treats adultery with such severity. The evil is not only bodily pleasure sought wrongly. It is betrayal. It turns what should signify fidelity into contradiction. The commandment therefore protects marriage not sentimentally, but juridically and sacrally. It reminds the faithful that love is not made true by intensity alone. It must remain under law, vow, and right end.

That same principle also explains why the commandment judges fornication, impurity, and all sexual acts outside lawful marriage. The issue is not merely whether feelings are present. The issue is whether the act stands inside God's order. When sex is detached from covenant and law, it no longer speaks truth with the body.

The Body Is Not Material For Appetite

The Sixth Commandment belongs closely to the Church's teaching that the body is a temple and that the Christian is not his own.[2] The body may not be used as though it were private material for pleasure, display, experiment, or emotional relief. It has meaning under God. It is ordered toward chastity, vocation, and holiness.

This is one reason the commandment is hated by the modern world. It refuses to let desire define reality. It insists that not every longing deserves satisfaction, not every attraction deserves enactment, and not every bodily possibility is morally lawful. The body is good, but its goodness is not preserved by surrendering it to impulse.

The commandment therefore is not anti-body. It is anti-disorder. It protects the body from being reduced to appetite. It teaches that purity is not contempt for embodiment, but reverence for embodiment under truth.

The Sixth Commandment Requires Different Forms Of Chastity

Chastity is one virtue, but it is lived according to state. Virginity, widowhood, marriage, youth, courtship, priesthood, and consecrated life all require chastity under their own conditions. The Sixth Commandment therefore is not a narrow rule for one class of people. It is a commandment for all.

This point matters because many speak as though chastity were mainly a burden for the unmarried, while the married are judged only by mutual consent. Catholic teaching is much stronger than that. Marriage itself is a chaste estate, governed by fidelity, justice, modesty, and openness to God's order. The unmarried are to keep purity in expectation or renunciation of marriage. The widowed and consecrated are to live with reverence for the body's offering to God.

In every case the body is to be governed by truth rather than by appetite. That is the unity beneath the different forms.

The Present Age Revolts Against This Commandment Publicly

The present age breaks the Sixth Commandment aggressively and systematically. It glorifies fornication, normalizes adultery, celebrates impurity, dissolves shame, mocks virginity, cheapens marriage, and teaches the young to regard bodily experimentation as maturity. It treats modesty as repression and fidelity as unrealistic seriousness.

This revolt has not made people freer. It has made them lonelier, more suspicious, more emotionally unstable, and more spiritually weakened. Families are fractured. Courtship is prolonged and inflamed without truth. Marriage is reduced to emotional self-definition. The body is displayed constantly and reverenced rarely.

This is why the commandment must be taught with clarity. A Catholic cannot live by the sexual assumptions of the age and remain inwardly whole. The world's doctrine of the body is not merely permissive. It is false. It teaches the faithful to seek tenderness without truth, pleasure without covenant, and freedom without form.

The Sixth And Ninth Commandments Must Be Kept Together

The Sixth Commandment cannot safely be separated from the Ninth. Outward impurity grows from inward indulgence, and inward indulgence tends toward outward act. Yet the two commandments remain distinct. The Sixth judges the act. The Ninth judges the desire preparing the act.

That distinction matters pastorally. Some souls excuse interior impurity because they have not acted. Others imagine that if outward conduct is restrained, the battle is over. The Decalogue refuses both illusions. God wants chastity in body and in heart. The act matters. The desire matters. The person belongs wholly to Him.

This is why modesty, custody of the senses, guarded courtship, and mortification remain necessary. They are not side customs. They are the ordinary defenses of the commandment.

What Catholics Must Do

Catholics should keep this commandment positively as well as negatively.

• Honor marriage as a real covenant under God.
• Refuse fornication, adultery, and impurity in act.
• Guard courtship with serious intention and moral limits.
• Protect modesty in dress, speech, and bodily bearing.
• Keep sacramental life and confession central in the struggle for chastity.

These duties are not decorative. They are the forms by which the commandment becomes livable. Chastity is preserved by grace, but it is also guarded by rule, sacrifice, and practical custody.

Final Exhortation

Exodus 20:14 teaches that sexuality belongs under covenant, truth, and holiness. The Sixth Commandment therefore stands against adultery, fornication, impurity, and every bodily act that separates desire from God's order. It is not a merely negative commandment. It protects marriage, restores reverence for the body, and makes love answerable to truth.

The faithful should not treat this commandment as a relic of stricter times. It is one of God's standing mercies against the chaos of lust. Where it is kept, the body becomes more peaceful, love more truthful, and marriage more honorable. Where it is broken, persons are reduced and households are wounded.

For the inward battle that accompanies this commandment, continue with Exodus 20:17: The Ninth Commandment, Interior Chastity, and the Government of Desire. For chastity and modesty as stable virtues, continue with Chastity and Modesty as Virtues of Order. For marriage as divine bond rather than private arrangement, continue with Matthew 19:6: What God Hath Joined Together, Divine Bond and the Indissolubility of Marriage. For the Pauline condemnation of fornication and the holiness of the body, continue with Hebrews 13:4 and 1 Thessalonians 4:3-5: Marriage Honorable, Fornication Judged, and the Holiness of the Body.