Adulterer, Me?

If he take him another wife; her food, her raiment, and her duty of marriage, shall he not diminish. (Exodus 21:10)

Allow me to delve into a very sensitive topic; sex and marriage.

I want to state that adultery is not simply when one is sexually involved with someone other than their spouse.

Adultery happens long before the actual act of sex outside marriage occurs.

You could actually be the best example of chastity when to God you are hopelessly lost in adultery. You could be the person everybody looks up to for marriage counsel when you are sunk to your neck into whoredom.

What am I saying? You may be wondering.

Jesus said that adultery, like any other sin, starts in the heart.

We must therefore seek to understand the heart’s yielding to be able to look at sin the way God looks at it.

Let me throw another spanner into your works by also stating that divorce does not happen when a couple legally separates.

You could actually be a serial divorcee even before getting legally married.

What people call dating is actually marriage even before the consummation of the same. Yet these days it is treated as normal when dating people have sex. And the same people will not feel any guilt when they decide that they have discovered that they were not meant for each other.

Let me scare you with this.

Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost.Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing to make her a publick example, was minded to put her away privily. But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. (Matthew 1: 18 - 20)

Why is Joseph planning on divorcing Mary yet they were not married according to us?

That pledge is the same as marriage when looked at with God’s eyes. That is why God says that Joseph should not fear to take Mary HIS wife and not as his wife.

God recognises marriage when two people agree to get married and not when they actually get married.

Sex is the seal of what was recognised in heaven.

Breaking of the engagement is therefore akin to divorcing the person.

That is the reason I will always stand to be counted when declaring dating as not of God since it opens wide the door to divorce even before people become legally married.

Let me get back to our topic.

Defraud ye not one the other, except it be with consent for a time, that ye may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again, that Satan tempt you not for your incontinency. (1Corinthians 7:5)

Unfaithfulness starts when the deficiency of sex in a marriage is not by mutual consent and especially not driven by joint prayer and fasting. That is when the seed of adultery sprouts.

When sex starts being an optional aspect of marriage, adultery starts manifesting in ever increasing ways.

When the excitement and electric shock feeling from that touch becomes a bother or disappears, you can be sure one has gotten a notch higher in the path to full blown adultery.

You see, the desirability of a spouse is the running oil in the engine called marriage.

And by adultery I am not just speaking of the guilty party. The one becoming adulterous in their heart is an active partner in driving their spouse to adultery.

This means that not only are you committing adultery, you are forcing your partner into adultery.

But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery. (Matthew 5:32)

Denying your partner sexual rights causes them to commit adultery, and I do not think they have to physically do it to be so though it drives them in that direction.

But it happens long before that.

That denial or sparsity of sex happens because adultery has already happened in the heart.

When your partner stops being the prime object of your companionship, it is because your heart has already strayed elsewhere.

If your pastor commands more respect than your husband, you can be sure that God has already condemned you of adultery. If your boss’s word carries more weight than your husband, you are in the same place.

If prayer and other spiritual exercises are the reason your husband cannot enjoy your undivided attention, you are actually serving the devil, sorry I have to be so blunt.

Numbers 30 puts that in black and white.

What am I saying?

We many times blame the wrong person for adultery.

You could be crying to all that your partner is straying when you are the trigger that is actively driving them away. Your spiritual adultery drove him up the wall that they committed physical adultery in frustration.

Or do you think that it is a wonder that the women with the most unfaithful husbands occupy very prominent positions in church?

Does it surprise you that all that fasting and prayer for a husband to change takes forever to happen if ever?

The husband becomes a spare wheel in the marriage, however key he may appear to be.

His desirability is exchanged with somebody or something else; children, church, job, spiritual leader, chama, and anything else in between.

That is what drives him away from home. Because he has already been spiritually and emotionally kicked away from that home.

Look also at this

Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; that, if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives; (1Peter 3:1)

That lack of submission, however justified you might think you are, is actually adultery because someone or something else has become your authority, which in spiritual terms means husband.

That is how God looks at it.

And you expect a husband you are cheating on to follow you to those places that will continually remind him how much of an adulterer you are because they are the ones that have kicked him out of his marriage! If folly was a person, you would be it.

Let us get to scripture before you kick me out of your attention.

We of course know that marriage is a picture of our relationship with God.

This means that we can understand marriage better if we looked at the model it is taken from.

Remember Israel in the wilderness?

Apart of the golden calf that occupied probably a week or at most two of the forty-year journey, is there any other idol you have seen that Israel worshipped?

I for one have never seen any other, except probably Baal Peor, and even then it was being outsourced.

It is in Judges that we see the presence of idols.

Yet why do we read this?

And your children shall wander in the wilderness forty years, and bear your whoredoms, until your carcases be wasted in the wilderness. (Numbers 14:33)

Why is God accusing Israel of idolatry and prostitution? And he is mentioning, not one or two incidents of adultery but uncountable and stinking levels of prostitution.

Idolatry is not the bowing down to an image. It is not being completely sold out to God. It is a wavering of our desire and devotion to God that God terms as idolatry.

We must therefore understand that God was judging them for idolatry that did not involve actual images and prostitution that did not include sexual intercourse.

I hope you understand what I mean.

Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love. (Revelation 2:4)

That church was doing everything perfectly. They had no complaint as to their doctrine or conduct.

They looked like you and the way you run your marriage.

There is no verifiable breach of performance.

But God sees the heart. And that is where He judges from.

Do not therefore be offended when I say that you could be a serial adulterer though there is nothing that is outwardly connecting you to adultery or even inappropriate conduct.

Do not be offended when I call you a prostitute when you are the leading lady of the church.

But you may be forced to agree with me if you decided to look at your marriage in the eyes of the One to whom we will have to give an account.

And I do not want to give an account that I feared to confront the corruptions that are breaking our marriages so that I am not hated.

Allow me to close with this

Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. (Psalm 139: 23, 24)

Because

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? (Jeremiah 17:9)

Will you allow God to examine your heart and give you His verdict?

Will you take His prescription?

This is because I believe you do not have time, nor do I, before God exposes our hearts to the world.

Or like He says in the prophets, He will uncover our nakedness before all our lovers.

God bless you.