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Pastors Wouldn’t Have Affairs if They Did This

6. Put marriage in its place.

Why marriage? That’s a great question.

The best pastors I know recognize that marriage is not about finding comfort or satisfaction. Instead, marriage is a God-given means for becoming more holy and extending life into the world.

When we expect marriage to make us happy, we will be disappointed and go looking for happiness elsewhere. But if we approach marriage as an instrument in the hands of a God who wishes to craft us into a holy person, then we are better able to lean into the rarely comfortable, but always sanctifying, relationship.

For a great read on this notion of marriage, see Tim Keller’s recent book The Meaning of Marriage.

7. Finally, an affair is not the end of the story.

While we should not make too little of sin, we should not make too much of it either. The gospel is grace, not law.

God bestows unmerited favor on us through the cross of Christ, and this grace does not simply get us into heaven, it also mends us from the harm we cause ourselves and others.

Some pastors allow sin to have more gravity than the gospel. But the good news truth is that which has the power to straighten the crooked and make smooth the rough.

If you think an affair is THE thing that happened in your (or someone else’s) life, then let me introduce you to someone who makes the affair look like a snow pea compared to the sun.