Do spouses who knowingly break their marriage covenant ever realize their error?
Question:
Do spouses who break their marriage covenant knowingly (having true knowledge of what God says on the matter) ever come to a realization of their error? Do they actually regret what they did?
I ask this because having read posts and articles on your web site about spouses (Christians) who are guilty of this and then after many years they start filling guilty and asking God for forgiveness, but at the same time they still want to remain in the relationship that caused them to break up their first marriage.
My ex-wife believes God in time will forgive her, especially if I have moved on, remarry, and am ok in my new life. She still sees herself as a child of God and since God loves her, He will forgive her.
Answer:
"For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, if they fall away, to renew them again to repentance, since they crucify again for themselves the Son of God, and put Him to an open shame" (Hebrews 6:4-6).
The writer of Hebrews states that you and I can't make a person who purposely leaves to come back. It doesn't rule out that a person might choose to come back. It might happen, but from my experience, it is extremely rare. The reason is that there isn't anything with which to draw them back. God saves through the Gospel. "For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe" (I Corinthians 1:21). If a person rejects the method of salvation, then nothing will convince them otherwise.
It appears from what you have said that your wife isn't likely to choose to return to God or you. She is excusing her sin and telling herself lies. "Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God" (I Corinthians 6:9-10). You cannot be an adulterer and a child of God at the same time.
Nor can any person outlast God and say that God will eventually relent and forgive. That is the way a few children attempt to get around their parents, but such doesn't work on God. "The LORD is longsuffering and abundant in mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression; but He by no means clears the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation" (Numbers 14:18). In other words, even if people continuing sinning generation after generation, God isn't going to relent in His stand against sin.
