“Return, O faithless sons,
I will heal your faithlessness.”
“Behold, we come to You;
For You are the Lord our God.-Jeremiah 3:22, NASB
“You should take him back. After all, God takes us back when we have sinned and been unfaithful to Him.”
– Christian “friend”
Even God required repentance as a condition for receiving back His faithless people (see post here). Besides, most “Christians” giving this advice would never suggest that all Jews by being Jews will enter God’s Kingdom (see Romans 11). There needs to be turning to God as revealed in Christ for that to happen (see Romans 10). In other words, God’s welcoming back of His people requires repentance.
The part of this advice that is troubling is how it suggests divorce over biblically warranted grounds is an inferior moral choice. It hints at the divorcing faithful spouse as almost committing a sin by not taking a faithless partner back (plus, with no reference to said cheater’s repentance). I reject such thinking.
Jesus would not give us permission to sin for that would be to lead us into such sin. Such is incompatible with God’s character. God does not tempt us into doing evil (see James 1:13).
Christian Advisor: “You should take her back. After all, God takes us back when we have sinned and been unfaithful to Him.”
DM: “God takes us back out of His great mercy and grace. It is a gift. We don’t deserve it and have not claim to demand it. Plus, God’s forgiveness does not come to us unless we repent to receive it. You are suggesting that we owe it to a faithless spouse. That is not a gift. You are making it an obligation that the cheater is entitled to because we are Christians. As I read Scripture, it is not even a biblical expectation. Plenty of marriages would be ended in the Old Testament over one instance of adultery (e.g. Deut. 22:22), and the same God who instructed them to do so is the same God we follow today.”
