What does the Bible actually say about adultery? Is it a sin? Is there any hope of forgiveness if it happens? What counts as adultery?
10 Likes
Joseph is a good example⌠Someone elseâs wife came after him and he left, fast.
I donât buy that a cold or unhappy marriage makes stepping outside it something other than adultery. The Bible still calls it that, and both people are responsible for it.
There is forgiveness for someone who turns around, though. Renaming what they did doesnât count.
The Bible is clear that adultery is a sin. Itâs right there in the 10 Commandments. Jesus widened it in the Sermon on the Mount, saying that looking at someone with lust is already adultery in the heart (see this).
Itâs also clear that it can be forgiven. See the woman caught in adultery in John 8. Jesus refuses to condemn her and tells her to go and sin no more.
Years ago a close friend at church confessed an affair to their spouse. I watched them do the slow, painful work of rebuilding. It took about 3 years. Trust had to be earned back inch by inch.
Whether thereâs a way back depends a lot on whether the repentance is real. Iâve seen it work once.
1 Like
Yes itâs a sin (look at Exodus 20:14) and yes, there is real forgiveness through Christ for anyone who confesses and turns from it but it still a sin and if you do it willfully and just give lip service⌠you know where that will lead.
It doesnât erase the consequences and trust doesnât rebuild overnight
The âinch by inchâ part rings true, rebuilding trust after infidelity seems to take years rather than one heartfelt apology.
Three years sounds right to me, since dawn after that kind of darkness tends to come slowly, a little more light each morning.
Itâs âwhosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her.â Thatâs a deliberate look, with intent behind it, and the sin is in dwelling on it and feeding it.
The commandment was always about the heart. The Pharisees had shrunk it down to âdonât physically cross the lineâ and Jesus pulled it back to where it starts.
Theyâre both sins, but Scripture uses the two words differently. Adultery is when a married person sleeps with someone who isnât their spouse. Fornication is sex between two people who arenât married. It helps to know the difference.
Adultery means breaking a marriage by being unfaithful to your spouse. Fornication is broader and covers any sexual immorality outside of marriage, including sex before marriage, which is why Paulâs line in 1 Corinthians 7:2 makes sense: âto avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband.â
We badly underestimate the damage adultery does. It snowballs into lying and hiding until it splashes onto the spouse and the kids.
Itâs a lot harder to resist when everything around us puts temptation in your face all day.
Read 2 Samuel 11-12. David takes Bathsheba and has her husband killed, then Nathan tells him a story about a rich man who steals a poor manâs beloved lamb and David sees right away how cruel it is. âYou are the man!â
Itâs so easy to spot wrongdoing in someone else while making excuses for yourself.