Marriage and Adultery

[LesStrat]

Situation:
Man and woman meet. Both are married to others.

Man separates from wife and files for divorce due to her instability. Other women begins offering counsel and consolation. Eventually the relationship becomes adulterous.

Woman and husband "try" to work it out for several months, but man finally files for divorce.

Woman continues seeing other man, and eventually marry.

ALL parties are believers.

Can the relationship founded in known sin ever be blessed?

[Kitty]

CAN it? I know that Christ can redeem anything.

But WILL it? Who can say? My thought is that the people involved have already shown a history of not being accountable to others in fellowship, nor trusting Christ to rescue them from what feels like a hopeless circumstance. So it doesn't seem likely from here. But... we can still learn, can't we?

Kitty

[scooteraz]

I see that Kitty beat me to the punch. Agreed.

Biblically, I believe that David and Bathsheba had a relationship based on sin (not just the adultery, but also the murder of Uriah the Hittite). But they were blessed with Solomon. One could argue that through David and Solomon's excesses, the downfall of Israel was started, but OTOH, Jesus was of the line through David and Solomon. So obviously, the blessing of the Christ was routed through the sinful relationship of David and Bathsheba.

[Crunchyriff]

There is grace before, during, and after sin. There is forgiveness, absolutely. There are also consequences.

[LesStrat]

Good stuff.

Additional info: Their justification for their sin is that they have found their "soulmates" and that God told them they were married to the wrong people.

[ptrallan01]

Interesting.
In reading Matthew's geneology you come across the 4 sinful women, Tamar, Rahab, Bathsheba (whose name isn't even used) Ruth (a decendent of incest and outsite the legally marrigable tribe). Yet each of them was part of the blood line that ran to Christ. Clearly what these people have done is outside the expectation and approval of God as told to us in His word, yet He is the final arbiter of who gets blessed and who forgiven. Even the woman at the well with her five (ex) husbands and live in lover was not beyond the reach of Christ's love and God's grace. So in the end my answer is I don't know.

[Micter]

The entire picture painted reeks of deception. My how people justify sin! Can God take that relationship and bless it? Yes. Will he? I think it depends on if the couple will admit their sin and repent. If they continue to act as though their actions are God ordained when they obviously aren't it will most likely result in some sort of reap what you sow.

There is a friend of mine. We dated in high school nothing serious. When we were in our late 20's she was starting to hang out with a mutual friend. The guy was married. I told the lady that she shouldn't be hanging out with him as he was married. Well, one thing led to another and this friend talked the guy into adultery and then leaving his wife. They were married, had 3 kids, and it lasted about 15 years when a car pulled up next to them at a stop light. The girl in the car next to them motioned my friend to roll down the window. When she rolled the window down, the girl in the other car yelled out. "I'm sleeping with your husband". Now, I am just saying, she got exactly what she did to her husband's first wife. Not saying that God made it happen but pretty ironic huh?

[LesStrat]

Agreed.

Grace really IS available to all. Repentance is the prerequisite.

I see no evidence that these two are repentant. When their behavior initially became known the man gave a plethora of justifications for it. My immediate response was, "That ain't God."

He asked how I could say that. "Because you're committing adultery."

The conversation degenerated from there until I disengaged.