The seed that fell among the thorns represents those who hear God’s word, but all too quickly the message is crowded out by the worries of this life and the lure of wealth, so no fruit is produced.
-Matthew 13:22, NLT
Like the good gospel seed, a marriage that ends in adulterous betrayal did not necessarily begin as hopelessly flawed.
Rather, the weeds of life may have choked the marriage to death. Something or someone became more important to the cheater than honoring God and their marriage covenant.
-Maybe the cheater allowed an addiction to inappropriate romantic attention choke out the marriage?
-Maybe the cheater made money their god and evaluated her partner as wanting in the worship of said god?
-Maybe the cheater allowed their selfish sexual gratification to take priority over doing justly and rightly with their spouse and family?
My point is not to shame or blame a faithful spouse. The point is that the cheater could have chosen otherwise.
He or she could have done some godly “weeding.”
I am convinced the slide into adulterous betrayal is a gradual one. Like a weed growing up in a garden, it grows incrementally.
That said, some gardens are better fertilized than others 😉
The weed is the idolatrous temptation. It is the lie that the cheater is somehow entitled to an illicit relationship with another outside the marriage.
That is why I believe healing and repenting from adultery begins by exposing those weeds and killing them by ripping out the entitlement by its deceitful roots.
Just because a marriage ends in adulterous betrayal does not mean the marriage began as a bad “seed.” It just means the cheater really stunk at gardening his or her thought life.
