How Can Couples Heal After Adultery?

00:00:00.000 | We get a lot of very heavy marriage questions like this one today asking the following,

00:00:09.800 | "How do you care for marriages after the pain of adultery?"

00:00:15.800 | An anonymous woman writes in to ask it.

00:00:18.080 | "Dear Pastor John, thank you for your podcast.

00:00:20.640 | My husband and I have been married for several years and are walking alongside several other

00:00:24.600 | couples who are struggling.

00:00:26.640 | We pray for them often and do the best we can to encourage them to seek the Holy Spirit's

00:00:30.680 | leading in their lives while also keeping healthy boundaries in what we can give.

00:00:36.600 | Specifically, do you have any advice for couples impacted by adultery?

00:00:42.040 | These are the hardest questions for us to handle.

00:00:45.200 | How can trust be rebuilt?

00:00:48.020 | From your pastoral experience, what are some biblical realities and hopes that we could

00:00:53.160 | use to serve couples whose marriages are falling apart due to the devastating sin of infidelity?"

00:01:00.680 | Two things about this question make me especially thankful, and it's not the pain of the adultery

00:01:10.500 | being addressed.

00:01:11.960 | First, it's that this couple has enough courage and compassion to lean in to other

00:01:20.320 | people's sorrow rather than leaning away, which is the easy thing to do.

00:01:26.960 | And second, they're not assuming that divorce is the right counsel.

00:01:32.520 | We live in a day where people are trying, it seems to me, to see divorce as more legitimate

00:01:39.560 | rather than less legitimate, and I am thankful that's not the way this couple is leaning.

00:01:46.560 | Some would say that adultery has been committed and that's a pass for divorce, so there

00:01:52.040 | you go.

00:01:53.040 | Take your biblical pass and leave.

00:01:55.840 | I don't think adultery is a biblical pass for divorce.

00:01:59.440 | I think our counsel should always be to encourage the highest level of faithfulness, according

00:02:07.640 | to Jesus' words to Peter when he asked, "Lord, how often will my brother sin against

00:02:14.640 | me and I forgive him?"

00:02:16.320 | As many as seven times.

00:02:18.320 | And Jesus said to him, "I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times."

00:02:24.160 | Matthew 18, 21.

00:02:27.800 | Seventy-seven is not meant to be a limit.

00:02:31.160 | It's meant to say more often than you think, Peter.

00:02:35.540 | And when Paul was asked his advice about Christians going to court against each other, he said,

00:02:41.960 | "To have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you.

00:02:49.400 | Why not rather suffer wrong?

00:02:52.100 | Why not rather be defrauded?"

00:02:55.080 | First Corinthians 6, verse 7.

00:02:57.640 | And when God's wife, Israel, was unfaithful, the language of divorce in Jeremiah 3 and

00:03:06.080 | Isaiah 50 does not mean decisive divorce, followed by God's remarriage.

00:03:14.260 | We know this because four verses later, this so-called divorce in Jeremiah 3, 8, God says

00:03:22.360 | to his estranged wife, "Return, faithless Israel," declares the Lord.

00:03:29.080 | "I will not look on you in anger, for I am merciful," declares the Lord.

00:03:34.240 | "I will not be angry forever."

00:03:37.480 | That's Jeremiah 3, 12.

00:03:39.960 | And we know it because God says in Isaiah 54, verse 5, "The Lord has called you like

00:03:47.100 | a wife forsaken and grieved in spirit, even like a wife of one's youth when she is rejected,"

00:03:57.120 | says your God.

00:03:58.120 | "For a brief moment I forsook you, but with great compassion I will gather you."

00:04:07.240 | In fact, God has only ever had one wife.

00:04:13.920 | And the book of Hosea is the most daring description of his faithfulness to his adulterous wife.

00:04:23.060 | God tells Hosea, "Go, take yourself a wife of whoredom," harlotry, "and have children

00:04:31.480 | of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the Lord," Hosea 1, verse 2.

00:04:41.120 | So Hosea represents God in marrying an unfaithful wife.

00:04:47.160 | And believe me, I have seen in my ministry this book, this picture of Hosea rescue couples

00:04:55.620 | in impossible situations who are this very day still faithful to each other years later.

00:05:03.960 | And what will be the outcome between God and his adulterous wife?

00:05:09.360 | Here's one glimpse of it in Hosea 2, 14.

00:05:12.360 | "Behold, I will allure her and bring her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to

00:05:18.880 | her.

00:05:19.980 | And there I will give her her vineyards and make the valley of Achor a door of hope.

00:05:27.520 | And there she shall answer as in the days of her youth as at the time when she came

00:05:34.040 | out of the land of Egypt."

00:05:36.640 | So the whole point of God's history with Israel is that she was never deserving of

00:05:42.540 | his faithfulness to her, ever.

00:05:45.160 | But he would eventually, with unspeakable longsuffering, by the power of the new covenant

00:05:52.920 | and the blood of Jesus, bring her to be the beautiful bride he deserves.

00:05:59.800 | That's the point of Ephesians 5.

00:06:02.800 | Husbands, love your wives.

00:06:05.620 | "Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her that he might sanctify her, having

00:06:13.560 | cleansed her by the washing of water and the word, so that he might present the church

00:06:18.400 | to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy

00:06:25.880 | and without blemish."

00:06:27.440 | That is what God makes of his unfaithful wife by his longsuffering and sacrifice.

00:06:38.140 | So in answer to the question, what are some biblical realities and hopes when ministering

00:06:45.480 | to a couple where there has been the unfaithfulness of adultery, I would say this.

00:06:51.680 | Two miracles are required for the will of God to be done in the preservation and renewal

00:06:59.980 | of such a marriage.

00:07:02.460 | One miracle is forgiveness by the one who was wronged, and the other miracle is repentance

00:07:10.260 | and longsuffering—longsuffering and patience by the one who has committed adultery.

00:07:17.780 | Let's take these one at a time.

00:07:20.380 | And remember, both are miracles.

00:07:23.820 | That is, they will seem, in the moment of your counseling and in the moment of their

00:07:28.320 | deepest darkness, they will seem impossible.

00:07:33.900 | They will say to you, "That's not going to happen.

00:07:36.860 | That cannot happen for us.

00:07:40.540 | It's too late."

00:07:43.920 | So we need to be clear about how such a miracle happens.

00:07:47.900 | Galatians 3, 5, "Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you

00:07:56.060 | do so by works of law or hearing with faith?"

00:08:00.020 | Galatians 3, 5.

00:08:01.840 | The key to how the miracles happen is hearing with faith—that is, hearing the Word of

00:08:09.700 | God and believing God that he can do the impossible.

00:08:14.700 | That's the channel through which the miracles that seem so impossible happen.

00:08:21.380 | The first miracle is forgiveness.

00:08:23.180 | Ephesians 5, 32, "Forgive one another as God in Christ forgave you."

00:08:30.240 | Only by being overwhelmed—I mean stunned—with our own forgiveness from Jesus at the cost

00:08:38.500 | of his infinitely valuable life will we be able to forgive such a horrible and painful

00:08:45.040 | betrayal as adultery.

00:08:47.920 | And this is exactly the way Jesus explained the miraculous psychological dynamics of forgiveness

00:08:55.020 | in Matthew 18.

00:08:56.020 | "A servant owed his king ten thousand talents, and the talent was worth twenty years' wages."

00:09:04.580 | That's two hundred thousand years of wages.

00:09:10.820 | In other words, Jesus was saying every husband and every wife who is a Christian has been

00:09:19.880 | forgiven thousands of adulteries against God.

00:09:26.380 | Two hundred thousand years of wages means zillions and zillions of what we cannot pay

00:09:36.060 | back.

00:09:37.340 | All of that forgiven at the cost of the life of the Son of God.

00:09:43.420 | Oh, God, help us.

00:09:45.860 | Help us feel this.

00:09:48.660 | It will change us.

00:09:50.800 | And when the king discovers that the servant would not forgive his fellow servant, he said,

00:09:56.340 | "You wicked servant, I forgave you that debt."

00:10:00.980 | Two hundred thousand years of wages.

00:10:04.940 | In other words, an incalculable debt, thousands of times greater than anybody's ever done

00:10:10.380 | against you.

00:10:11.380 | "I forgave you that because you pleaded with me, and should you not have had mercy on your

00:10:17.020 | fellow servant as I had mercy on you."

00:10:20.720 | So that's the first miracle that seems impossible for a marriage to survive and thrive again.

00:10:28.520 | It's a miracle.

00:10:29.720 | It's a miracle.

00:10:32.040 | Here's the second one.

00:10:34.280 | Repentance and longsuffering on the part of the one who has committed adultery.

00:10:39.480 | Repentance meaning a deep change of heart that hates the sin and turns toward utter

00:10:44.400 | faithfulness for the longsuffering that has to happen.

00:10:49.600 | He or she recognizes that receiving forgiveness is not the same as receiving trust, nor should

00:11:00.200 | it be.

00:11:01.840 | The rebuilding of trust requires a patient, humble, longsuffering endurance.

00:11:10.840 | Being forgiven is not a right to be demanded, but a gift of grace to be received with humility

00:11:18.440 | and thankfulness and tears.

00:11:21.240 | And trust coming from the spouse who has been betrayed is not like a stake you drive in

00:11:29.080 | the ground and walk past.

00:11:31.920 | It's like an acorn you plant in the ground, and someday, God willing, it may be an unshakable

00:11:40.880 | oak tree of trust, but it will grow through tender stages by patient protection and watering

00:11:53.000 | and nurturing through storms that will threaten to kill the little sapling of trust.

00:12:02.120 | Both these miracles, forgiveness and years of longsuffering, lived by faith in the promises

00:12:09.960 | of God, "I'll never leave you, I'll never forsake you, either of you," that kind of

00:12:15.720 | promise, all of those years, that's the way the miracle will happen.

00:12:21.560 | I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you, I will not let anything befall

00:12:27.320 | you that I will not give you grace to endure, and I will make even the inevitable scars

00:12:36.000 | that will not go away, you cannot remove.

00:12:39.520 | I will make them serve my grace, and I will keep you and bring you to your old age, one

00:12:47.800 | of my favorite images, the both of you sitting across from each other, holding your wrinkled

00:12:55.640 | hands and with tears and smiles saying, "We made it.

00:13:00.080 | We made it."

00:13:01.840 | That is beautiful.

00:13:02.840 | Amen.

00:13:03.840 | Thank you for speaking into this really incredibly challenging situation, Pastor John, and using

00:13:08.800 | a vision of the future to do it.

00:13:11.360 | And thank you to the anonymous woman who wrote in to ask this question.

00:13:14.720 | It's a great one.

00:13:15.720 | It's an urgent one.

00:13:16.720 | Thank you for writing in.

00:13:17.720 | Thank you for leaning in to these kinds of situations.

00:13:20.800 | It's quite a servant's heart that you display.

00:13:24.120 | Thank you.

00:13:25.120 | Well, whether you listen in your car, at the gym, doing chores, thanks for inviting us

00:13:29.760 | into your day.

00:13:31.080 | If you haven't done so yet, you can subscribe to Ask Pastor John in your favorite podcast

00:13:34.480 | app in YouTube or on Spotify, and to find other episodes in our archive, or to submit

00:13:38.440 | a question of your own to us, go to DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.

00:13:46.120 | And speaking of challenging marriage questions, how can a spouse lead the home toward joy

00:13:51.960 | in Jesus when the other spouse struggles with depression?

00:13:56.280 | It's a super important episode coming up next time.

00:13:59.320 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.

00:14:00.720 | We'll see you back here on Monday.

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How Can Couples Heal After Adultery?

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