Played The Whore…No More?

Thou hast played the whore also with the Assyrians, because thou wast unsatiable; yea, thou hast played the harlot with them, and yet couldest not be satisfied.

– Ezekiel 16:28, KJV (Emphasis Mine)

Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were.

– I Corinthians 6:9-11a, NIV

It is not uncommon for me to read stories from adulteresses who are swift to say that they are not a “whore” for cheating on their husbands (and kids). Often such articles are supposed to disarm angry individuals over the cheating for thinking or inferring the obvious:

“What a whore!”*

“How dare a Christian pastor write that!” some may say.

Guess what? The Bible uses that very language when referring to adulterous partners. I am just using appropriate and Biblical language to label the abhorrent behavior for what it is–i.e playing the whore.

Now, let me season this difficult truth with some mercy and hope:

Someone who has played the whore need not remain in that state.

The Apostle Paul teaches us that we all were caught in sin including adultery in our past. But we chose to make Jesus our Lord and forsake our lives of sin.

You cannot change your past. What you did is done. It is now part of your history for better or worse. However, you can choose what you do with your present.

The glory of the Gospel is that whatever or whoever we were in the past need not be who we are in present or future.

You do not want to be known as a whore?

Good. Then repent and stop playing the whore.

Make no mistake: Stopping and repenting does not entitle you to your marriage. That ship sailed when you chose adultery over godliness. The marriage may still end in divorce. Adultery decimates marriages. God gets that (e.g. Deut. 22:22, Jer. 3:8, Mt. 19:9).

However, it does mean that you can live with yourself as you live with integrity. You can hold your head up again knowing–as the Apostle Paul wrote–that the “adulterer,” “adulteress,” or “whore” was what you once were, BUT choosing God’s way of life has transformed you into a precious child of God.

God’s mercy and grace is offered to us NOT in order for us to return the pigsty of our sin. He offers us His cleansing blood to set us free from such filth. That love and grace empowers us to say “NO!” to the sinful desires of our past so that we are transformed out of what we once were.

*Just because I utilize the term “whore” in this post does not mean I believe this phenomenon is limited to one gender. In fact, the Apostle Paul calls out men in his explicit denunciation of adulterous spouses naming adulterers as such who will be excluded from God’s kingdom (in I Corinthians 6).