Am I still an adulterer?
Question:
I am writing to you because I'm trying to find what held me back from God's blessings and promises. I was born in a Christian family, and ever since I was a Christian with strict standards. My parents taught me well.
I never had a girlfriend until 18. Then I met her. We developed a relationship over the next five years. In the beginning, she was non-Christian and I prayed that God would reveal Himself to her. After two years she got baptized. We loved each other much, and she started coming to church. We were involved in connection groups and regularly went to church.
Soon after we came together, I asked her if she was a virgin. I found out she only had sex once. It was a big blow for me, but because we loved one another we got over it. Unfortunately, I felt it was like a loss and a hard thing to accept inside of me. I never talked with her about this, that I can't forget.
Soon we started having sex, even though I knew it was wrong. That went on for the coming years, and after five years of friendship, we got married. Somehow I said, well God will forgive me for having sex with her because she will eventually be my wife.
We started our marriage and lived with her parents, who were not Christians. The first five years of marriage were nice, going to church, reading the Bible, and sometimes praying together. At some point, she developed her career and started her own business. She was involved in a lot of meetings and activities, even on Sunday when I always said that Sunday was for God. But she started to not care so much about this aspect. Then she got an important role and also kept her business. This later proved to be the downfall of our marriage. I started showing up by myself at church or to the weekly study group. Everyone was asking me where my wife was. The only answer I could give was to say that she had business meetings. Sometimes she would come at the end of our study Bible group.
At work, she met her boss, which developed into a strange relationship. They would drive together on business trips and she would tell me that her boss is going to this city tomorrow, so I can go with him because I can manage some other stuff for my business. She always found reasons to go with this guy although he was married, much older than her, and with kids. There were times when she would leave at 9 pm with him on so-called business trips. That was the time when I became more suspicious. Unfortunately, one Sunday she was out and forgot her work mobile at home. I heard the phone beeping and grabbed it. Soon I found out she was texting her boss, saying she loves him and other intimate messages. I thought hell broke loose in my world.
Confronted with the messages, she said nothing. I talked with the pastor and he advised me to leave home for a period of time. It took only four days of being away from home before I gave in and returned to her. I loved her too much and was afraid people in the church would talk about us in the eventuality of getting divorced, so I stayed with her. In front of the pastor, she promised she would quit the job and never talk with this ex-boss. After a couple of months, I saw on her computer messages to her former boss. I again confronted her. She remained silent.
After a while, as a family, we had planned to move to another country, but it only remained my dream. She was wrapped up in her business and wanted to stay home. I viewed it as the only chance to save our marriage, to start new, away from her parents and her career. Before going abroad, she took two trips alone abroad for various reasons. At the beginning of the next year, I left my country and moved without her. She said she would stay home, manage her business, save some money and come to me after a couple of months. It took her six months to decide to come to me.
While being alone and waiting for her I cheated on her with a woman. I started to think that I gave her so many chances, I forgave her, now to saw myself alone, struggling to prepare for her a good place where to come, and somehow I didn't have any power to fight back. This is how I gave in and slept with another woman, who was also married.
When my wife came to me, we spent two months trying to accommodate her with the new home. Surprisingly, she told me she would go back home. She came just to visit me and her business is growing and needs to be taken care of it.
Three months after she left, she called me and said that some man wrote her that I cheated with his wife. I confessed to her that this is what I did and that I felt sorry. But between us, everything was broken. Because I felt so guilty, and also from some sort of rage, I said I wanted to divorce her. She agreed, never felt sorry, and never tried to fight to keep our marriage. Of course, she told the whole community that I cheated on her although I decided to keep silent about what she had previously done.
My life continued and shortly after I met this girl. She is from a different country. I decided to move in with her. I can say God somehow brought her into my life to ease the pain of the divorce. She loves me like nobody else ever did, and I feel the same toward her. Regarding my past, she knows everything and I told her about my adulterous life. On her end, she told me she had sex with a couple of guys over a period of a couple of months, a thing which I still try to accept. Spiritually we started to be involved in the church's activities and draw close to God. The first year of our relationship we had sex, but we stopped because we realized God wants us pure and clean and that He will bless our marriage if we kept ourselves until the wedding.
Now I'm in this period where I find it very hard to abstain from sex, as it appears that sex plays an important role in my life. I think of her, the relationships she had, the sex she had with all these guys and I feel sort of second hand. Oppositely she forgave my past, she loves me enormously and stays positive that God will bless us too with good intimacy.
Am I forgiven that I cheated on my wife, divorced her and now I'm about to marry my fiancee? How can I stop thinking that my fiancee had a couple of sexual relationships and that I feel that I am just a number, although she loves me and she says I'm the most important man in her life. She wants to spend her life together with me and be a family together. Am I to some extent still linked to my ex-wife? Can an adulterous person still be forgiven and receive God´s blessing?
I mention that I repented in front of God. It was a one-time mistake. I always cared about my family. Perhaps I got caught just like David. I know that I will never do this horrible thing again. I felt like it wasn't me in those moments. I never stopped going to church or praying to God, although I knew how sinful I am. I know God forgives everyone who truly repents, and I tried to avoid any thought from the devil that God won't forgive me. I am involved in church and still serve God. I recognize how shameful my sin was, but I never gave up on God.
Sorry for this long and mixed-up message. My questions are:
- Am I still an adulterer in front of God?
- Am I still connected to my ex-wife?
- Is it right in front of God to marry my new fiancee?
- How does God view my relationship now?
Thank you so much and God bless you.
Answer:
I hope you realize that when you were younger, you were being a hypocrite. You stated you held it against your wife for having sex before she met you, but then you turned around had committed fornication for years with her. "Therefore you are inexcusable, O man, whoever you are who judge, for in whatever you judge another you condemn yourself; for you who judge practice the same things. But we know that the judgment of God is according to truth against those who practice such things. And do you think this, O man, you who judge those practicing such things, and doing the same, that you will escape the judgment of God?" (Romans 2:1-3). This continued when you were upset with her committing adultery, but then you went and did the same thing. Then you repeat the same illogical blame toward the woman you are dating, having committed adultery with her and harboring ill because she was involved in sexual sins in the past.
All through your note, you offered reasons why your wife was worse in her behavior than you, but it is clear that you have both sinned repeatedly.
The fact remains that your wife divorced you because of your adultery. "And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery; and whoever marries her who is divorced commits adultery" (Matthew 19:9). You gave her the excuse she was looking for to end her marriage to you. I don't believe that gives her the right to another marriage since she has been actively involved in adultery and probably was still involved. But at the same time, her adultery never was an excuse for your sin.
The problem is that you made a covenant before God and you are still bound to that covenant for as long as your first wife lives. You did not meet the one reason Jesus allowed for releasing you from that covenant.
You want to claim that God brought this second woman into your life, but this is only your desire to justify marrying her. Why would God bring a woman into your life for you to commit adultery with when you are still bound by your prior covenant to God? If you marry this current woman, it seems to me that you will be continuing your adultery.
Adultery, like all other sins, can be forgiven when the person involved in adultery repents. Repentance is changing your attitude toward sexual sins and changing your behavior to stop the sin. I don't see that being portrayed in your note.
Question:
Dear Mr. Hamilton,
Thank you for your quick response. There is certainly no excuse for what I did, to sin and even after the divorce continued to engage in sexual sin. Now I am determined to stop this and ask God for forgiveness, as well as to repent in a deep and conscious way. I am at the point where I said I can't go like this anymore. I am already passing through a deep depression, I can't be happy or enjoy life because thoughts of guilt haunt me. I even think that this world is better off me. I feel God closing doors against me, e.g. I'm struggling with finding a job, but on the other side I hear people are praying for me. Today is the day when I want to turn my back on sin and take God's hands.
To clarify some things that perhaps were wrongly understood. I know that what I did was wrong, but just for the record: As a young adult, I only had a girlfriend. We engaged in sexual sin before marriage. That lasted five years. I have never had sex with any other girl, so I didn't hide from her anything during our marriage. I was her only boyfriend and she had been the only girlfriend for me. Secondly, after five years into our marriage, she became more interested in her career and that was when she started getting closer to her boss, traveling with him and finally admitting she loves him. (I told you about the conversations I found on her mobile phone.) If she committed adultery with him, I will never know. I can only suppose by her deviant behavior. As you said, yes, it's true that after I gave her a chance and she still kept in touch with this guy, I decided to leave the country and somehow from fury and depression I slept with another woman. So indeed that shouldn't have given me any reasons to commit adultery while I was married, even if our marriage was going into a steep fall. At least I admitted to her, which of course led to our divorce. That was the one time when I did something inappropriate while being married. Now, the fact that I am together with this new girlfriend and being sexually active is of course something that shouldn't have happened. After the first year in our relationship, we both decided to stop having sex and keep ourselves pure until our marriage. It was the first sign that I want to personally repent and never make the same mistake. She agreed and is convinced God will bless our marriage. Paul says that any kind of sexual immorality is a sin. Definitely, this is the next step that I firmly have to make and I begin today.
Thank you for your time, effort, and advice.
Answer:
It appears much of what I tried to say didn't register.
