Does God Want Me to Stay Married If My Spouse Is Cheating On Me?

Does God want me to stay married if my spouse is cheating on me? That's just one of the questions we'll be answering on today's edition of Core Christianity. Well, hi, it's Bill Meyer along with Pastor Adriel Sanchez, and this is the radio program where we answer your questions about the Bible and the Christian life every day. Our phone lines are open. We'll be taking your calls for the next 25 minutes or so. Here's the number. It's 833-THE-CORE.

That's 1-833-843-2673. By the way, we also have a YouTube channel. You can go on YouTube right now, watch Adriel live in the studio, and send him your question that way. And of course, you can always email us at questions at corechristianity.com.

First up today, here's a voicemail from one of our listeners that came in earlier this week. I work in a Christ-centered home where we disciple young women. I am noticing that we are allowing false teachers to teach these young women—popular false teachers that are out speaking today. And the Lord has been revealing to me that they are false teachers. And I've been studying Scripture. I'm understanding that I'm not to have anything to do with them.

I just kind of wanted to hear your thoughts on that. I believe I'm supposed to leave the organization from where I'm at, and I just wanted to hear any input in regards to this with working in a place that claims Christianity but yet is allowing false teachers—numerous false teachers—to be speaking. Thank you. Well, sister, the first thing I would want to do is just encourage you in your love for God's Word, this zeal that you have, and for sound doctrine. This is something that we all need as Christians, to be Berean, to search the Scriptures, to be able to refute those who are in opposition to the Word of God.

Jude says very clearly, Jude 3, Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ. This is, look, people are creeping into the Church or to Christian organizations. It sounds like this is what's going on here, and I would suggest, one, I mean, if it's really clear that they're teaching false doctrine, having a conversation with the organization, with the people that are there appealing to the Scriptures, if it's something where, yeah, people are being led astray and I can't, with a clear conscience, continue to work in this environment knowing that I'm helping to hold up or sustain this thing that is actually not helping people.

I'd be curious, if I had you on the phone right now, I'd be curious to know what specifically these false doctrines are that you're identifying, but let's just assume that there is heresy, really bad heresy, that's being taught and allowed to be taught there in the organization. I think you address, you confront it, you have a conversation with the people who are maybe over the organization, and maybe it is something where you realize, okay, I can't contribute to this, or maybe it's something where they just aren't very discerning, and the leadership is not very discerning, and you have an opportunity to continue to work there and to shine the light of Christ and to bring the true word of God to bear for people who desperately need it, and so that could also be an option. I need some more information, really, and so my suggestion is, have a conversation, but definitely be praying and asking God for wisdom and guidance with regard to this decision. Maybe God opens up the door for you to build relationships with some of the women there and to point them in the right direction, and I wouldn't want to just say, well, get out because of these other people who aren't doing the right thing, when you might have an opportunity to minister to some women who really need it, and so God bless.

That is really good counsel, and you're right. I mean, she may have an opportunity to speak truth to some of these young women, where they're not hearing truth, and to gently maybe confront or challenge some of that teaching, but I love your admonition, your counsel, to go to leadership first, and the same thing applies in the church, doesn't it? When we hear things, or we think we hear things that we're concerned about theologically, doctrinally, it's our responsibility as followers of Christ to first and foremost go to leadership of that organization or that church and to have a discussion. I think absolutely, yeah, especially if it's something you're hearing from the pulpit, or even within the church, if someone within the church is teaching something that's out of line, talking to that person, sort of like a Matthew 18 situation, talking to that person and saying, hey, how do you make sense of this belief that you're holding? But at some point, yeah, it does also, I think, have to go up to the leadership of the church.

You know, Paul said a little leaven leavens the whole lump. So we take immorality within the church seriously, but we also have to take false doctrine, bad theology, seriously, because that kind of thing can spread and be really damaging for the health of the church. And so, yeah, again, God give us discernment and help all of us to contend for the faith, as Jude says.

Amen. This is Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. Our phone lines are open right now. If you have a question about the Bible, the Christian life, doctrine, theology, you name it, we'd love to hear from you. Here's the number. It's 833-THE-CORE.

That's 1-833-843-2673. You can also email us at questionsatcorechristianity.com. Here's an interesting email from one of our listeners named Rob, and he says this, is it biblical to end a life that has a terminal disease to prevent suffering? I'm referring to things like fetuses with genetic diseases, withholding nutrition to a sedated cancer patient, or assisted suicide where it's legal.

Wow. You know, this is becoming something that's being discussed more and more. I've seen situations where, outside of the United States, I think specifically, where people for all sorts of reasons are just saying, well, I'm going to do an assisted suicide because of the suffering that I'm experiencing, and people are appealing to all sorts of different things. A wonderful book that I think addresses this more deeply than I can on a short broadcast like this is Dr. David Van Droonen's book, Bioethics and the Kingdom of God.

There's a section on sort of end-of-life ethical issues, especially as we think about technology and medicine and all of those things. My answer, though, simply is no, it's not right for us to take a life in those kinds of situations, in those contexts. Now I recognize, you know, people would think about the issue of suffering here and, you know, wanting to end someone's suffering, but the real question is, well, does God permit us to do that? Is that okay for us to do, or is that a violation of God's commandments? And I would say it's a violation of God's commandments, and that's not something you see in Scripture as, well, I'm experiencing this great suffering, therefore I'm just going to end my life, this sort of, you know, mercy killing type of a thing. No, that's contrary to the word of God. And so I know, obviously, you know, as you're talking to people who are going through suffering, really, really intense suffering, you want to be sensitive in addressing that, but I don't think we should compromise our understanding of God's word here, and I again would commend to you that book by Dr. David Van Droonen.

I think he gets into it and addresses this question really well, too. You know, it's very concerning to see some of these nations that have legalized assisted suicide in some states now, in the United States, that are even saying, you know, if someone is severely depressed or just simply doesn't want to live any longer, then we should help them end their life. Yeah, no, it really is concerning, and I think it speaks to, I mean, we see this with abortion, right, just a low view of the sanctity of human life. So it speaks to that in our culture, in our society today, not just when we're thinking about the unborn, those in the womb still, but also those who are suffering. You know, it's like, well, we just want to end that suffering. It speaks to a low view of human life, and that's obviously, I mean, when you think about what the Scripture teaches about humanity, about being made in the image of God, this is an area where the teachings of the Bible are against or contradict the sort of broader cultural consensus that seems to be out there with regard to life and the value of human life.

Well said. This is Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. We'd love to hear from you if you have a question about the Bible. Maybe there's a particular passage of Scripture that you've always wondered about. You're kind of confused. You don't really know what it means, or you think there's a contradiction there you'd like to ask about. Feel free to give us a call at 833-THE-CORE.

That's 1-833-843-2673. This question came in from Glenn in Oklahoma. Glenn says, Someone told me that God is the devil. Is that blasphemous? I read in Matthew 1033 that says, Whoever denies me before others, I will also deny before my Father in heaven.

Yeah, that is totally blasphemous. In fact, when Jesus talks about the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, the one unforgivable sin, you know, he's rebuking the religious leaders, but what were they doing? They were attributing the works of God, in particular the works of the Holy Spirit, to Satan. They were saying Jesus does his miracles by means of some satanic force, by Beelzebub, by Beelzebub. And Jesus said, Whoa, wait a minute there.

You're walking on really dangerous ground. I mean, what it was was it wasn't some, you know, one-time sin. For them, it was this hard-hearted rejection of the work of God that was right there in front of them, attributing it to the devil. And so you have this real serious offense, this real serious sin. So when somebody says something like, you know, God is the devil, I mean, that's just right. I mean, I don't know who this person was, but obviously they're not well. And that would be blasphemous.

It's just wrong. And so, yeah, my encouragement would be to correct that error and to say, no, actually you're wrong. God, the good God, created all things, including the angels, and the angels fell, the devil fell, into sin. And God, the good God, the Lord, is sovereign over all things as well. He's made all things for his glory, including the angels. And so if there's anything we don't want to confuse, it's who God is. Thanks for that.

Rightly understanding who he is. And if you think that God is the devil, then you need to repent. Good counsel. Thanks for that, Adriel. This is Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. Love to hear from you. If you've got a question about the Bible or the Christian life, maybe something going on in your church that you're wondering about, you're thinking, is that really biblical, what they're doing? Hey, feel free to give us a call at 833-THE-CORE.

That's 1-833-843-2673. Also want to mention a great free resource we have available, especially if you are a parent or a grandparent that has a high school student who's just graduated or about to graduate, head off into the working world or going off to college. This is a resource that will help them focus on what's important in keeping their faith intact while they go on to the next stage of life. Yeah, the resource is called How to Keep Your Faith After High School, and we've been encouraging you, if you know somebody who just recently graduated or is getting ready to go off to college or, you know, to some other, something else, maybe they're not going to college, maybe they're joining the workforce, whatever that may be, really want you to get a hold of this resource, How to Keep Your Faith After High School.

It's a short booklet. I think it'll be encouraging for them, and it'll be encouraging for you too as you read it and you think about how to do a good job preparing our children for the world and for entering into the world. What do they need to know about church, about the gospel?

So maybe even it's not that you know someone who just recently graduated, maybe you just have kids and you're wrestling through these questions for yourself. Get a hold of this resource. This is Corps of Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez, and we do receive voicemails here at the Corps. Here's one that came in from one of our listeners named Rose. Good evening, Pastor. I am married to my husband. However, he's committing adultery. What is God's idea about staying in marriage with someone who's committing adultery? Thank you for your response, and I'm asking for a prayer for my marriage so that God's Spirit can recover my marriage.

Thank you. Okay, well let's take a moment first, brothers and sisters, to pray for Rose as she's requested a prayer for her marriage. Our Father in Heaven, we come before you, and Lord, our hearts are heavy thinking about this situation, this woman who's experiencing this broken marriage and being sinned against in a very grievous way, and yet it seems, Lord, still wants to be with her husband and wants to see you bring healing. And so God, I know that that healing, true reconciliation, is dependent upon genuine repentance, and so we pray for her husband to truly and genuinely repent, that he would come under the conviction of your Holy Spirit and that he would turn from his sins, recognizing, Lord, how deadly they are, how they threaten him, his soul, how they're destroying his family, his marriage, so that he would see this for what it is, and that he would confess his sins to you and turn from them, Lord.

Would you would you do what only you can do in in this situation and bring healing, Lord God, and be with our sister, granting her strength, also granting her wisdom, Lord, to know what to do in this situation as she seeks to honor you. In Jesus' name, amen. Jesus gives teaching in the Gospels on divorce. I think of Matthew chapter 19. The Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause? And he answered, Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh?

So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate. They said to him, Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away? And he said, Because of your hardness of heart, Moses allowed you to divorce your wives.

But from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you that whoever divorces his wife except for sexual immorality and marries another commits adultery. Generally speaking, many churches, church-high pastor, you know, allow for divorce in certain contexts. One would be there's been an affair, adultery was committed, the part of the the party that's been sinned against would be free to to get a divorce in that situation. Think also of abandonment, as the Apostle Paul seems to allude to that in 1 Corinthians chapter 7.

And so, but just because it's permissible doesn't necessarily mean that that's that's what you have to do. And I don't think anywhere in Scripture says that, you know, you're being cheated on for you have to do this. It does seem to me, sister, like you're being subject to terrible abuse. I mean, obviously, I do hope that your your husband repents, and I do pray that God gives you wisdom.

I mean, functionally he's a bandit, sounds like he doesn't have any interest, and my heart breaks for you. I pray that the Lord gives you strength and grace and wisdom. I don't know if you're in a church or if your husband goes to church. Ordinarily, this would be one of those situations where the church should step in and exercise church discipline and address this sin that's, you know, just out there.

But to answer your question, just straightforwardly, being cheated on doesn't necessitate that you have to get a divorce, but that might be the right course of action. Again, this is where you need wisdom, this is where you need the people around you, your local church encouraging you and giving you advice, the people that know you best. And so I hope, Rose, that you have that, that you have a community of family and believers, those who love Jesus, who can wrap their arms around you and walk with you through this difficult time, and also confront your husband in in his sin.

And so may God sustain you and be with you. You know, it's interesting, Bill, throughout Scripture, God is depicted as the faithful husband who is being cheated on by Israel. I mean, in just these heinous ways, you think of jumping into idolatry immediately as they're waiting to get the law of God delivered to them from Mount Sinai, you know, from the hands of Moses, and that's depicted in the Bible as this spiritual adultery. And again and again, I mean, you think of the book of Hosea, that's the picture that we're given of God's unfaithful people, and yet the Lord, in his mercy and in his kindness, woos his people back to himself.

There's, I mean, again, the book of Hosea talks a lot about this, and so there is the hope of restoration, there is the hope of forgiveness, but that doesn't always pan out that way in these situations. And so this is where you need God's wisdom, and I pray that the Lord would be with you, Rose. This is Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. Just a programming note, when our program ends here in just a few minutes, we're going to be recording a second episode of Core Christianity, so if you weren't able to get through in the last half hour or so, you can still call us for another 35 minutes or so with your question for Pastor Adriel.

Here's the number, it's 833-THE-CORE, that's 1-833-843-2673. Let's go to Devon in St. Louis. Devon, what's your question for Adriel?

Hi, good morning, or good afternoon. My question is the passage in the Bible, in Genesis 2 24, where God created Adam from the dust, and then He took, He created woman from the ribs, but then underneath all of that, where He says a man is to leave his mother and father and become one with his wife, my question is, if a man is supposed to leave his mother and father, who was the mother and father that God was talking about? Because neither, you know, they didn't have a mother and a father, so I guess I'm trying to understand that scripture. Okay, well, I mean, in that situation, you know, it's not like Adam and Eve had, I mean, they were the first created human beings, they didn't have a mom or a dad in the sense that we have mom and dad.

God created them from nothing. And then, you know, when God created Eve for the man, He said the two are going to be joined together and become one flesh. That's not literally one flesh. That speaks of the union, in particular the sexual union, I think, that's in marriage, the consummation of the marriage. The one flesh language is used to refer to that sexual union in places like 1 Corinthians chapter 6 verse 16, where Paul is rebuking the Corinthians. But there's also some implications to this idea that we are one flesh as husband and wife. I think this is what Paul is getting at in Ephesians chapter 5, for example, where he's talking about how we should care for each other, in particular how husbands should care for their wives.

He says in verse 29, Ephesians 5 29, for no one ever hated his own flesh but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the Church, because we are members of His body. And so we have this mutual care for each other, obligation, right? It's like we are one. We're for each other, we're on the same team. That's why it's so tragic when in marriage, I mean, just think of the previous scholar, what a heartbreaking situation, where the two are not operating as one, but we're against each other. We're in opposition.

We're on different teams all of a sudden. And I know there are too many marriages that function in that way. We ought to recognize that by the grace of God, what the Lord has done in marriage, He's made us one flesh so that we might love each other.

We're on the same team so that we might love each other and serve each other, as God calls us to. Ephesians 5 is a great text to look at in terms of what that looks like in marriage. And so this is God's intention for man and woman being brought together in marriage, what a healthy marriage looks like, and boy, we really need to recover that in our world today. This is Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez.

You can email us anytime with your question at questions at corechristianity.com. Hannah's asking this, why does the Bible seem confusing or unclear when God is a God of order and clarity? For example, the Bible mentions the four corners of the earth, but we know the earth is actually round.

How are Christians supposed to approach these questions? Yeah, we call that phenomenological language, kind of a big word, but we use that kind of language even today. You know, when you turn on the weather channel, you know, the guy who's given the weather will say, well, you know, the sun rises going to be at whatever, 652 p.m.

It's phenomenological language. It's not that the sun is going to rise in the sense that, you know, in the sense that, you know, he's making a literal statement. This is how we observe things, and so we have to be careful that we don't read too much into those texts as though, you know, when the Bible talks about the four corners of the earth, it's trying to communicate, you know, that the earth is a big flat square or something like that. God is not the author of confusion.

The Bible is clear, especially when it pertains to things related to salvation, our salvation, so we have to understand it in its context, the genre, and when we do, we recognize, yes, it's clear. God bless. Thanks for listening to Core Christianity. To request your copy of today's special offer, go to corechristianity.com forward slash radio, or you can call us at 1-833-843-2673.

That's 833-THE-CORE. When you contact us, let us know how we can be praying for you, and be sure to join us next time as we explore the truth of God's Word together.