The Unspoken Heartache: Adultery’s Lies

Two things have laid the burden of adultery on my mind this morning.

This week, a friend in another state emailed that the membership of her church is being plundered and savaged by adulterous affairs. She is asking for prayer.

Yesterday, healthy “ministry marriages” was the subject of our “Interpersonal Relationship Skills” class at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. Toward the end of the session, we talked about how the enemy sabotages the Lord’s people through the lies of adultery.

I recommend J. Allan Petersen’s 1984 book “The Myth of the Greener Grass.” It should be bought and devoured and kept by every married person, particularly those in the Lord’s work.

Here is my own personal list of the devil’s lies concerning adultery. See if any have been dangled before your eyes.


1) “What I feel for him/her is real love. What I felt for my husband/wife was never the real thing.”

This line is heard by every marriage counselor, usually spoken by a truly nice person who is being torn apart by an affair, and trying to justify the damage they are inflicting on their marriage.

Say this to yourself real slowly: “Marriage is not about love; marriage is about commitment.” Carve it in stone. Erect it over your doorway. Inscribe it on your heart. Teach it to your children.

2) “This affair is a harmless bit of fun.”

Men are more likely to buy into this. The adage goes that “women will use sex to get love; men will use love to get sex.”

For reasons I don’t pretend to understand, men tend to separate sex and love more than women do. For women, they go together “like a horse and carriage,” as the song puts it.

The quickest way to dispel the myth that this is all harmless is to answer one question: Would your husband/wife agree?

As a longtime pastor, I have seen the damage adultery has wrought on ministries and marriages. It drops a bomb into the trust and the very soul of the faithful mate. I can see them as they sat in my office, broken-hearted, wondering why he did this, why he was willing to destroy everything for this dalliance. I had no answers beyond Romans 3:23.

One wife sat across from my desk, wringing her hands endlessly, as she cried out what she had learned about her husband’s unfaithfulness. I had always heard about people “wringing their hands,” but until that moment had never actually seen it. The image has been permanently inscribed on my mind.

Had that unfaithful husband seen the pain he was going to inflict on this woman who had given her life to him in marriage, he would never have done what he did.

That’s why it’s a lie, that this is all harmless. It’s as harmless as swallowing strychnine, as innocent as force-feeding rat poison to your children, as benign as Timothy McVey’s parking that U-haul truck filled with ammonia nitrate in front of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. It’s deadly business.

“My punishment is greater than I can bear.” Those words from Cain (Genesis 4:13) after slaying his brother have been echoed in every generation since, as those who disobey God’s laws to get their own pleasure keep finding out. Too late we discover it was not harmless at all. On top of all the pain we caused, we threw our own hearts and souls into a cauldron of misery and torment.

3) “I deserve this.”

“I’ve worked hard and long. My spouse doesn’t appreciate me. This is going to meet a real need in my life. It’s for my own good.”

Liar, liar, pants on fire.

Tiger Woods now admits that this was the lie he bought into as he engaged in serial adulteries. He was different from lesser mortals. The only difference, he discovered, was that he could play golf better and had more money. But when it came to the expectations of his wife and the relationship with his children, he was no different from the guy across the street who teaches math at the local college.

4) “The rules that apply to other people do not pertain to me.”

A variation of Myth #3 (“I am different”) is what I call the “rich person rule.” It also goes under the name of “the celebrity principle.” As he confessed the sinful behavior that brought down the PTL empire, Jim Bakker said, “Somehow, we just felt that the rules did not apply to us.”

They do. Whether you are the box office heart-throb of Hollywood or the CEO of a Fortune 500 company or the pastor of the biggest church on the East Coast, you too are human. Step off a curb into traffic and you will die, overeat and skip the exercise and you will get fat and die early, cheat on your spouse and he/she will be devastated and you will find your marriage in big trouble.

The rules that govern all our lives make no exceptions.

5) “I can do this and walk away from it unharmed and go right on with my life as before.”

The Apostle Paul says that when a man “goes into a harlot,” he becomes one with her. (Can’t find the reference at the moment, but when I do, I’ll insert it here.) Whatever else that means, it surely implies there is a spiritual joining of the two people in an affair that neither expected or can account for. Perhaps they thought this would be an innocent bit of fun; they discovered they have entangled themselves in each other’s psyche.

Nothing will ever be the same. The gate is open, the fence is down, and all kinds of forces will flow in and out now.

My observation is that the person who participates in a single affair–particularly if he/she is in the ministry–will be surprised to discover opportunities for more such illicit connections on every hand and doing them easier and easier to achieve.

Warning: disaster ahead.

6) “I can have all the great things in my life–the love of my family, the adoration of my children, the ministry God has given me, the respect of my community–and this also. I do not have to give up anything for this.”

This one is targeted to ministers more than the others. At least, they seem to buy into its lie more than non-ministry people.

Suppose it didn’t happen that way. Suppose the devil said to a minister who is considering a tryst with some sweet young thing who has caught his eye, “All right, pastor. Go ahead and do this, but you need to know what it’s going to cost you. It will cost you everything. Your wife will find out, she will be devastated and take the children and leave. The church will learn of it and be horrified. The deacons will fire you and you will be the butt of jokes all over town.” No one would ever do it.

That never happens, of course, because it’s the very thing the enemy of all that is good and holy does not want you to know.

Instead, the voice saying these very things is the Holy Spirit within you.

I can take you to so many longtime friends who learned this lesson the hard way. They know the reality of the adage that “sin will take you farther than you wanted to go, keep you longer than you wanted to stay, and cost you more than you ever wanted to pay.”

7) “This will meet a need in my life.”

An affair might meet a need for some attention and comfort, I’ll grant that. But dishonoring your vows, forsaking your Lord, betraying your spouse, and violating everything you have ever stood for will create a thousand more needs for every one it meets.

Your life has never been as complicated or as messed up as you are about to make it when you cheat.

8) “I deserve to be happy.”

This seems to be a “biggie” for women, for reasons I do not understand. Perhaps it’s because there is so much unhappiness among married women; I don’t know. Ruth Bell Graham wrote that many women make the fatal error of expecting their husbands to be to them what only Jesus Christ can be. It’s a sure recipe for misery since no man can meet the deepest needs of his wife’s heart. Only Christ can.

The ache inside which she is trying to quieten with another man will not be filled by him or anyone else. It’s a spiritual void, meant to be satisfied only by a genuine, living relationship with the Creator who made her. “He satisfies the hungry with good things,” said a young woman of her Lord in Luke 1:53.

9) “Being married to that other person would be light years better than my present marriage.”

This is probably the biggest myth of all. A man or woman is locked into a boring marriage. The daily routine of cooking meals, going to work, cleaning house, paying bills, taking care of the kids, and running endless errands necessary to live in this world take their toll. Gradually, he/she begins to fantasize about some hunk or beauty they know. Discovering that the other one is interested serves to fuel the imagination.

Psychologists speak of something called “the expulsive power of a new affection.” When you fall in love with a new person, the emotional charge blows the old affections out of the water. Compared to the way you feel about Edna Faye, you never did love Mary Sue at all. Marriage to Edna Faye would be heaven on earth.

Too many good people have learned the hard way that after they divorced Mary Sue and married Edna Faye, life was pretty much the same as before. The house still had to be cleaned, the meals cooked, the jobs done, the bills paid, the kids seen to, the inlaws dealt with. Very little had changed. Too late they discovered they had paid too great a price for too small a return.

10) “After what my husband/wife has done to me, this is just evening the score. He/she has this coming.”

A leader of the FBI used to say that no one ever committed a crime without first justifying it to himself. I suspect it’s the same with adultery. We see something we want and start searching for a justification. Fortunately–or not!–there is one around who specializes in supplying an endless assortment of reasons for Christians to do what they really want to do even if it means disobeying God and destroying everything dear to them.

A woman sat in my office once and used these very words, saying that since her husband had cheated on her, she was thinking of getting back at him the same way. As she fluttered her eyes in my direction, I realize long afterward that I should have probably shown her the door. What I did was simply to say, “Get it out of your mind, lady. That’s the worst possible thing you could do.” When she saw her fluttering and flirting did not work with me, we were able to talk about what she could do to work on her marriage.

Many years later, leading a revival in another state, hundreds of miles away, I encountered this woman and her husband (the same one, thankfully) in the congregation. They had weathered the storm.

I’d like to leave with two observations, one my own and the other from Dr. J. Allan Petersen.

First: No one ever gets up one morning and says, ‘Today, I think I will destroy my marriage, wreck my ministry, devastate my children, and ruin my reputation.’ Every adulterous affair I’ve ever heard of began innocently and respectfully. Two people were doing what normal people do, working in the same office, giving and receiving counsel, serving on the same board, traveling in the same automobile with friends, whatever.

We must train ourselves to recognize the danger signs and deal with them harshly early on, or we are goners.

Dr. Petersen lists the lessons on this subject from the life of King David, from his affair with Bathsheba (II Samuel 11-12):

1. No one, however chosen, blessed and used of God, is immune to an extramarital affair.

2. Anyone, regardless of how many victories he has won, can fall disastrously.

3. The act of infidelity is the result of uncontrolled desires, thoughts, and fantasies.

4. Your body is your servant or it becomes your master.

5. A Christian who falls will excuse, rationalize, and conceal, the same as anyone else.

6. Sin can be enjoyable but it can never be successfully covered.

7. One night of passion can spark years of family pain.

8. Failure is neither fatal nor final.

Nothing safeguards a person’s heart against infidelity like keeping the relationship with his God and his spouse alive and healthy.

2 thoughts on “The Unspoken Heartache: Adultery’s Lies

  1. Dear Bro. Joe,

    Thank you, thank you for a much-needed article on adultery. It is ripping apart the fabric of our lives on an ever-increasing basis and believers seem to be the most affected.

    I would add two things: 1. The adultery doesn’t have to be physical. It can begin with an emotional affair and can destroy a marriage just as surely as the physical aspect.

    2. I have to respectfully disagree with your statement: Had that unfaithful husband seen the pain he was going to inflict on this woman who had given her life to him in marriage, he would never have done what he did. No, sir! When that husband or wife is eaten up with selfishness, they aren’t even swayed by the pain they might inflict on their spouse, children, congregation, etc.

    Again, thank you. I know that if God uses this article in a mighty way to save even one marriage, it’s worth all the time, energy, and thought it took for you to write it.

    Blessings, Becky

  2. Bro. Joe,

    That was very well said, but I also agree with Becky that some people will commit adultery even if they know the pain and hurt it will cause.

    The best way to stop adultery is never to put oneself in a potential compromising position. Ministers should use the same guidelines that Dr. Billy Graham has used and they should be fine. Lay people have a harder time ensuring that they are never alone with someone that is not their spouse.

    However, I submit if you sincerely ask yourself the following question before doing anything (no matter what it is) you can not go wrong: What would Jesus say if He walked in the door right now? If that doesn’t stop you, then ask “what would my grandmother say?”

    Blessings!

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