I committed adultery, divorced my husband, and married another man. What should I do?
Question:
I married in my twenties. We remained married for almost twenty years. I was the one who committed adultery and decided to leave my husband and pursue a life alone. However, I met a man, fell in love, and I divorced my husband and remarried. I am a born again Christian and knew I had sinned by doing this. After nearly ten years of marriage with my new husband, I've been reading about remarriage and the consequences therein. I have truly repented of this sin. However, I'm confused as to what to do in my new marriage. Even though I've truly asked God to forgive me for sinning by remarrying, should I leave my current husband? I don't want to be deceived and find out after I die I will spend eternity in Hell.
Please help with this. Thank you.
Answer:
"For the married woman is bound by law to her husband while he is living; but if her husband dies, she is released from the law concerning the husband. So then, if while her husband is living she is joined to another man, she shall be called an adulteress; but if her husband dies, she is free from the law, so that she is not an adulteress though she is joined to another man" (Romans 7:2-3).
If a woman was living with a man, committing fornication, and she claimed to have repented of her sin and asked God for forgiveness, does her fornication become something that is no longer sinful? I hope you see that it cannot be. The truth is that she really did not repent because there was no change in her life to stop sinning.
You committed adultery and then later divorced your husband so you could marry another man. Since Jesus stated in Matthew 19:9 that only those who divorce because their spouse had committed fornication can marry again, you had no right to another marriage -- something you stated you knew but did anyway. "But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, causes her to become an adulteress, and anyone who marries the divorced woman commits adultery" (Matthew 5:32). Your current marriage has been an adulterous one and remains so. Now years later you say you repented of your adultery, but you have done nothing to change your ways in order to stop sinning.
What should you do? "To the married I give this command (not I, but the Lord): A wife must not separate from her husband. But if she does, she must remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband. And a husband must not divorce his wife" (I Corinthians 7:10-11).
