This article is a warning and a piece of advice I am giving you, and I write it with sorrow.
At the end of every year I call for a time of fasting and prayer for those going through a marriage breakup. I know that pain. I know what it is to be the one who stays, and I know what it costs to get up every morning when your spouse is no longer there.
The purpose of that exercise has always been one: that you set your eyes on your relationship with God and not on your spouse. Whoever focuses on the one who left wears out; whoever focuses on God receives counsel, comfort and strength. And when a father or a mother is whole, the children suffer less.
That is why it hurts me to say what follows. Some people who fasted and prayed with me in past years are living today in a relationship with someone who is not their spouse. They came wounded by one adultery, and today they are inside another.
What the Word says
I am not the one saying it. Scripture says it:
And so that no one thinks this is said only of the woman, Jesus speaks of both:
Luke 16:18 repeats the same teaching. And to the one who is already separated, the instruction is precise:
There are two paths for the one left alone: to remain unmarried or to be reconciled. A third does not appear in the text.
"But Matthew 19:9 says…"
I know someone will quote this verse to me:
I answer with a question: why does Scripture say fornication here, and not adultery?
The explanation is clear. At the time that text was written, couples were betrothed long before the public act that made them husband and wife. During that time both were still single, and the offense of a single person is fornication, not adultery. If the betrothed man discovered that his bride-to-be had fornicated, for that cause he gave her a bill of divorce. It is what Joseph intended to do with Mary before the angel spoke to him: she was espoused to him, "before they came together", and he "was minded to put her away privily" (Matthew 1:18-19).
That is the case Jesus is speaking of. He is not speaking of a marriage already consummated.
And the law also shows how seriously God takes that union:
The man compensated the father, took her as his wife and could not give her a bill of divorce, because he was the one who dishonored her.
Why it is not a second chance
It is understandable that, after so much weeping, someone who arrives with tenderness may look like an answer from God. But God does not contradict His Word in order to comfort us. What He joined remains joined:
The second chance God gives is a different one: to heal, to forgive, to wait on Him, and, when He so disposes, to see the marriage restored. Calling "blessing" what Scripture calls adultery does not change what it is.
The children see everything
You remember what your children felt when their father or mother left with another person. That same pain returns to your home when you are the one who brings someone else in. For them it is not a new beginning; it is the second time they watch the same thing break. Malachi 2:15 reminds us that God made the two one because He was seeking a godly offspring.
If you are already in that relationship
I am not condemning you. Nor is the sentence mine: it belongs to Jesus, who said to the woman caught in adultery:
The two parts of that sentence go together. There is forgiveness, and there is a way back:
Come back. That is my advice, and this year-end fast is for you too.
"The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit." — Psalm 34:18