Action Packed Ministry: 1 Corinthians Study: Chapter 6: "1 Corinthians 6 (Scripture Passage: New International Version) Lawsuits Among Believers 1If any of you has a dispute with another, dare h..."
Just thinking about the term "adultery", which is from the same root as "adulterate" :
From Merriam-Webster -- "to corrupt, debase, or make impure by the addition of a foreign or inferior substance or element ..."
I think this helps illuminate why even wrong or inappropriate thinking is destructive both to us and to our relationships, in ways we often do not quickly detect or realize. It also shows how constant the battle is, because wrong thinking is always trying to get a stronghold in our minds and hearts. The more spiritually sensitive we become (by ingesting and making use of the Word under the guidance of the Spirit), the earlier we can catch and nip things in the bud before they really start to grow and produce those thorns and bad fruit.
Also, regarding "it's just sex": how like the Corinthians our culture is today ! The Hebrew view of humanity did not separate body, soul, and spirit for practical purposes, although it acknowledged all three. It was assumed that a dysfunction in one was associated with a dysfunction in the others -- although sometimes they got it backwards ("it is not what goes into a man that defiles him"). The idea that you can do something "just with your body" without necessary spiritual consequences is more in line with the pagan world view that the body and what we do with it (except where humanitarian concerns are invoked) is ultimately unimportant. That is not really the biblical viewpoint. If our faith is not "private", our sins are not either.
