I thought I was married but found out I wasn’t. I had cheated on the man I thought was my husband. Does that prevent me from marrying him?
Question:
I have a question about committing adultery while being married. My boyfriend and I believed that we were married and had sexual intercourse. But during that time I strayed and committed adultery with another guy. I know this is a sin and I continually asked for forgiveness from God and my boyfriend forgave me for cheating on him.
Recently my boyfriend and I found information from your church's web site that allowed us to conclude that we were never married so we prayed for forgiveness for everything wrong we had done.
Since my boyfriend and I still want to actually get married in the future, I wanted to know if since I had cheated on whom I thought was my husband but was forgiven, if it would be a sin to actually marry him in the future.
Answer:
In writing this, I'm assuming that neither you or he have been married before.
For the moment, let's just assume you were married, then you had committed adultery, but since you repented and he took you back, then nothing prevents you from going further through life together. If you have another ceremony, it won't change your relationship as wife and husband, but it will make your commitment more public.
Since your conclusion is that you aren't married, then the two of you have been committing fornication. And what you did with the other guy was also fornication. Fornication is having sex outside of marriage. Adultery is when a married person has sex with someone to whom he isn't married. Asking forgiveness for one sin of fornication while continuing to commit fornication with another person doesn't make sense. If you are going to repent of sin, you have to stop doing it.
What you should do is get married. It doesn't have to be anything large or elaborate. I had a couple last summer who finally decided to get married after my talking to them on numerous occasions. I got all of an hour's warning and they had a nice simple wedding in a local park in front of several of their family and friends.
If there are real reasons to delay the marriage, then you two need to separate until you do get married. Continuing to sin in the hopes of one day repairing the damage you've caused doesn't excuse the fornication.
