The Terrible Possibility of Adultery

Newly married and newly enrolled in seminary, I sat in the front row of my classes, trying to absorb everything I could. I knew I had so much to learn.

One day, a seasoned professor warned us how frequently affairs can happen in normal local churches. I didn’t believe him. In my youthful inexperience, I assumed the problem must say more about his ministry than about the church at large. My sheltered life, along with stories in the news about adultery among famous Christian leaders, had convinced me that adultery happens somewhere far away to people I don’t know personally.

But after twenty years of marriage and pastoral ministry, I believe my professor. And I think you should too. However strong a marriage may be, husbands and wives need to take Paul’s warning to heart: “Let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall” (1 Corinthians 10:12).

Do You See the Danger?

The critical first step of “taking heed” is acknowledging that adultery does happen in our local churches to Christians we know and love. Some believers know this all too well, while others still need to learn it (like my younger self did).

Two decades after that seminary class, I can recall a dozen cases of adultery involving people I personally knew. That’s too many mothers and fathers and husbands and wives and friends and church members who caused more damage than they ever could have imagined.

Often, these men and women had not only a spouse but several children, and thus the combined blast radius encompasses perhaps one hundred people. This number does not include those one step removed, such as close relatives and Christian brothers and sisters who engaged with them in small-group Bible studies and served together in various ministries. The impact is staggering.

This is part of what Paul means when he warns us to be careful not to fall into sexual sin. We need to believe that it’s not just a remote possibility but a real danger for us.

Not an Accident

Is fall even the right word to describe adultery? Usually, when we talk about falling, we speak of an accident without moral culpability.

When the Bible speaks of a spiritual fall, however, it doesn’t imply mere accident. Jesus tells the church in Ephesus, “Remember . . . from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first” (Revelation 2:5). The author of Hebrews says, “Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience” (Hebrews 4:11). Both verses, and others like them, imply that actions and inactions set believers up to either stand or fall — and therefore that we are responsible when we fall.

“Our little sins can add up to big sins with big consequences.”

Think of it this way: If we trip and fall on steps covered with ice after a winter storm, the cause might be carelessness or clumsiness, but it’s not sinfulness. However, if I pour a cup of water on the steps every day and continue to do so when winter arrives, I am responsible for that layer of ice, and my fall won’t be as accidental.

This explains what the Bible means by a fall. When Adam and Eve fell, they didn’t just trip. And when Paul warns about taking heed lest we fall, he means we should adopt patterns of holiness and avoid patterns of sin, however insignificant the pattern might seem right now.

Can It Really Happen to Me?

You may still be thinking, Can it really happen to me? To us?

The Bible encourages us to answer this question from two angles. On the one hand, it’s unhealthy and hurtful to constantly worry that two mature believers, both married to others, might suddenly become enraptured with one another. Unfounded paranoia about ourselves and those we love does not reflect a healthy biblical anthropology. Believers don’t simply, out of nowhere, end up in someone else’s bed. We’re not supposed to believe Aaron when he tells Moses that a golden calf just happened to leap out of the fire (Exodus 32:24). The issue was less about the forty days without Moses than about the four hundred years that Israel was surrounded by the idolatry of Egypt.

But on the other hand, if we begin to forsake following the Lord in our hearts, if we reject daily repentance and instead start to feel entitled to “little” sins because we work so hard and have endured so much, then, yes, we can drift from Jesus and hurt others in ways that might currently feel impossible. Over time, a spiritual hole dug with a dinner spoon and not a backhoe can still become a crater.

War Against ‘Little’ Sins

Paul’s words just before 1 Corinthians 10:12 indicate that, like those in the Old Testament, our little sins can add up to big sins with big consequences. Consider how it happened with King David. When we read, “In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle,” we see that David had apparently developed an abdicating pattern of sending people here and there, such that summoning Bathsheba to his bedroom and sending Uriah to the battlefield did not feel terribly wrong (see 2 Samuel 11, where the word sent is used ten times).

In marriage, frequent conflict without reconciliation and quiet disdain without repentance can become lethal — especially when coupled with a frenetic pace of life that leaves little room for rest with God and one another. Then compliments from another person, like “You’re such a good provider” or “How do you stay in such good shape with all you have going on?” can become explosively powerful. We must, for the sake of love, war against the sins that seem so little, the grudges that seem so small, and the coldness that seems so insignificant.

Indeed, this relational vigilance in marriage relates to what Paul says directly after his warning about falling into sin: “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man” (1 Corinthians 10:13). Even healthy marriages undergo common temptations that put a wedge in the covenant. It matters greatly whether we do the work to remove the wedge or whether we hit it with a hammer.

This is why Paul also reminds us of the promise that “God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it” (1 Corinthians 10:13).

Over my twenty years of ministry and marriage, yes, I have seen too many marriages and ministries crumble. But I have also seen the faithful love of Jesus heal and help people in ways and to degrees I never thought possible. I’ve seen Jesus provide ways of escape and ways to endure.

There may be the terrible possibility of adultery, but there is also the wonderful promise of endurance and escape.