“Take heed to yourselves. If your brother sins against you, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him.”

-Luke 17:3, NKJV

“Did you rebuke her?”

This question never came up in my ecclesiastical trial to retain my ministerial credentials.* They were quick to ask me about “forgiveness,” yet they did not ask this important question as far as biblical forgiveness is concerned.

What would it be like if we had pastors whose first impulse was to ask this question rather than the forgiveness one?

This is the proper order of things as it comes to biblical forgiveness. Yet I suspect many of us never were asked this question. In fact, the question might never have occurred to the religious people in our lives.

The focus is almost always on the faithful spouse, and rarely do pastors suggest the issue is Cheater repentance (thank God, if you have a good pastor who did this in your situation). If they really have to put something on the faithful spouse, they could ask this question about rebuking the cheater. That is fair game, biblically.

I suspect many of us have rebuked our cheater expressing our displeasure at their sins, yet they did not care.

 

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*I did this in a letter form to my cheater demanding she chose between ending her infidelities and proving such to me or going forward with the divorce. We all know how that ended–i.e. with the divorce.