No Friendship With Darkness - Divorce Minister

Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? -2 Cor. 6:14, NIV

I never understood the push to become friends with one’s ex-spouse following the adulterous end of a marriage. While I get how one might become friends after the adulterous spouse fully repents, I do not see how it would be either healthy or wise to be friends with someone who continued to treated both the faithful spouse and God with such utter contempt. As the verse I quoted today puts it: how can light have fellowship with darkness?

In fact, I think a faithful, Christian spouse would be doing an unbiblical thing maintaining friendship with an unrepentant adulterer/adulteress. After all, the Apostle Paul instructed the Corinthian church not to even eat with such people (see I Cor. 5:11)! Such instructions were given in the hopes that the sexually immoral brother/sister would repent and own their choices thereby doing good for their own souls’ future. You see, Paul was more interested in seeing souls saved than in people feeling comfortable or human relationships continuing to look “good” on the outside.

In the twisted and distorted “Christian” world, I experienced a push for such a friendship to be achieved. Who doesn’t love a great redemption story (especially if you are a Christian)?

However, do we push rape survivors to be friends with their rapists? Do we ask the parents of a murdered son to become friends with their son’s murderer? No?

If not, why do we insist that those who were soul raped then ought to become friends with their rapists? Forgive them, yes (with God’s power and grace enabling us). But friendship requires more than just forgiveness. It requires reciprocity and trust.

As a rule, a friend does not abuse a friend. Nor do they betray them. And if they do, then they do all they can to repair the damage understanding that they were the ones that harmed or even destroyed the friendship.

By committing adultery, the unfaithful spouse has demonstrated to the faithful spouse that they are no longer a friend. They have raped the faithful spouse’s soul. They have broken trust and betrayed the faithful spouse at the highest known level of human relationships.

If the Christian world really wants the couple to become friends, then they ought to come down like a ton of lead bricks on the cheater exhorting him/her to repent and repair what he/she destroyed through his/her sins.

So, Christian world, want to see more redemption stories with spouses as friends after adultery? Let’s start by calling the cheater to full repentance.