How Can Couples Heal After Adultery? // Ask Pastor John

[Music] we get a lot of very heavy marriage questions like this one today asking the following how do you care for marriages after the pain of adultery an anonymous woman writes in to ask it dear pastor John thank you for your podcasts my husband and I have been married for several years and are walking alongside several other couples who are struggling we pray for them often and do the best we can to encourage them to seek the Holy Spirit's leading in their lives while also keeping healthy boundaries and what we can give specifically do you have any advice for couples impacted by adultery these are the hardest questions for us to handle how can trust be rebuilt from your pastoral experience what are some biblical realities and hopes that we could use to serve couples whose marriages are falling apart due to the devastating sin of infidelity two things about this question make me especially thankful and it's not the pain of the adultery being addressed first it's that this couple has enough courage and compassion to lean in to other people's sorrow rather than leaning away which is the easy thing to do and second they're not assuming that divorce is the right counsel we live in a day where people are trying seems to me to see divorce as more legitimate rather than less legitimate and I am thankful that's not the way this couple is leaning some would say that adultery has been committed and that's a pass for divorced so there you go take your biblical pass and leave I don't think adultery is a biblical pass for divorce I think our counsel should always be to encourage the highest level of faithfulness according to Jesus words to Peter when he asked Lord how often my brother sin against me and I forgive him as many as seven times and Jesus said to him I do not say to you seven times but seventy-seven times Matthew 18:21 77 is not meant to be a limit it's meant to say more often than you think Peter and when Paul was asked his advice about Christians going to court against each other he said to have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you why not rather suffer wrong why not rather be defrauded 1st Corinthians 6 verse 7 and when God's wife Israel was unfaithful the language of divorce in Jeremiah 3 and Isaiah 50 does not mean decisive divorce followed by God's remarriage we know this because four verses later this so-called divorce in Jeremiah 3:8 God says to his estranged wife return faithless Israel declares the Lord I will not look on you in anger for I am merciful declares the Lord I will not be angry forever that's Jeremiah 3:12 and and we know it because God says in Isaiah 54 verse 5 the Lord has called you like a wife Forsaken and grieved in spirit even like a wife of one's youth when she is rejected says your God for a brief moment I first took you but with great compassion I will gather you in fact God has only ever had one wife and the book of Hosea is the most daring description of his faithfulness to his adulterous wife God tells Hosea go take yourself a wife of whoredom harlotry and have children of whoredom for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the Lord Hosea 1 verse 2 so Hosea represents God in marrying an unfaithful wife and believe me I have seen in my ministry this book this picture of Hosea rescue couples in impossible situations who are this very day still faithful to each other years later and and what will be the outcome between God and his adulterous wife here's one glimpse of it in Hosea 2:14 behold I will allure her and bring her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her and there I will give her her vineyards and make the valley of Achor a door of hope and there she shall answer as in the days of her youth as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt so the whole point of God's history with Israel is that she was never deserving of his faithfulness to her ever but he would eventually with unspeakable long-suffering by the power of the New Covenant and the blood of Jesus bring her to be the beautiful bride he deserves that's the point of Ephesians 5 husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her that he might sanctify her having cleansed her by the washing of water in the word so that he might present the church to himself in splendour without spot or wrinkle or any such thing that she might be holy and without blemish that is what God makes of his unfaithful wife by his long-suffering and sacrifice so in answer to the question what are some biblical realities and hopes when ministering to a couple where there has been the unfaithfulness of adultery I would say this two miracles are required for the will of God to be done in the preservation and renewal of such a marriage one miracle is forgiveness by the one who was wronged and the other miracle is repentance and long-suffering long-suffering and patience by the one who has committed adultery let's take these one at a time and remember both are miracles that is they will seem in the moment of your counseling and in the moment of their deepest darkness they will seem impossible they will say to you that's not going to happen that cannot happen for us it's too late so we need to be clear about how such a miracle happens Galatians 3 5 does he who supplies the spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of law or hearing with faith Galatians 3 5 the key to how the miracles happen is hearing with faith that is hearing the Word of God and believing God that he can do the impossible that's the channel through which the miracles that seem so impossible happen the first miracle is forgiveness Ephesians 5:30 to forgive one another as God in Christ forgave you only by being overwhelmed I mean stunned with our own forgiveness from Jesus at the cost of his infinitely valuable life will we be able to forgive such a horrible and painful betrayal as adultery and this is exactly the way Jesus explained the miraculous psychological dynamics forgiveness in Matthew 18 a servant owed his King ten thousand talents and the talent was worth 20 years wages that's two hundred thousand years of wages in other words Jesus was saying every husband and every wife who is a Christian has been forgiven thousands of adultery's against God 200 thousand years of wages means zillions and zillions of what we cannot pay back all of that forgiven at the cost of the life of the Son of God oh god help us help us feel this it will change us and when the King discovers that the servant would not forgive his fellow servant he said you wicked servant I forgave you that dead two hundred thousand years of wages in other words an incalculable debt thousands of times greater than anybody's ever done against you I forgave you that because you pleaded with me and should you not have had mercy on your fellow servant as I had mercy on you so that's the first miracle that seems impossible for a marriage to survive and thrive again it's a miracle it's a miracle here's the second one repentance and long-suffering on the part of the one who has committed adultery repentance meaning a deep change of heart that hates the sin and turns toward utter faithfulness for the long-suffering that has to happen he or she recognizes that receiving forgiveness is not the same as receiving trust nor should it be the rebuilding of trust requires a patient humble long suffering and Durance being forgiven is not a right to be demanded but a gift of grace to be received with humility and thankfulness and tears and Trust coming from the spouse who has been betrayed is not like a stake you drive in the ground and walk past it's like an acorn you plant in the ground and someday God willing it may be an unshakable oak tree of trust but it will grow through tender stages by patient protection and watering and nurturing through storms that will threaten to kill the little sapling of trust both these miracles forgiveness and years of long-suffering lived by faith in the promises of God I'll never leave you I'll never forsake you either of you that kind of promise all of those years that's the way the miracle will happen I will strengthen you I will help you I will uphold you I will not let anything befall you that I will not give you grace to endure and I will make even the inevitable scars that will now go away you cannot remove I will make them serve my grace and I will keep you and bring you to your old age one of my favorite images the both of you sitting across from each other holding your wrinkled hands and with tears and smiles saying we made it we made it that is beautiful amen thank you for speaking into this really incredibly challenging situation Pastor John and using a vision of the future to do it and thank you to the anonymous woman who wrote in to ask this question it's a great one it's an urgent one thank you for writing in thank you for leaning in to these kinds of situations it's quite a servant's heart that you display thank you well whether you listen in your car at the gym doing chores thanks for inviting us into your day and if you haven't done so yet you can subscribe to a special John and your favorite podcast app and YouTube born Spotify and to find other episodes in our archive or do submit a question of your own to us go to desiring god org /a specced ur John and speaking of challenging marriage questions how can a spouse lead the home toward joy in Jesus when the other spouse struggles with depression it's a super important episode coming up next time I'm your host Tony ranky we'll see you back here on Monday you

Channel: Desiring God

Views: 17,124

Rating: 4.938343 out of 5

Keywords: Desiring God, John Piper, God, Jesus Christ, Christianity, Christian Hedonism, Ask Pastor John, APJ, Adultery, Marriage, Couples, Husband, Wife

Id: 8egfUoyZlRA

Length: 14min 12sec (852 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 28 2020