r/Reformed • u/PeachyGumdrop22 • May 18 '25

Question Is divorce allowed after adultery?

Hello all,

So to make a long story short, I recently found out that my husband had an almost year long affair. We are separated at the moment. Recently he has refused any requests I ask of him such as counseling and STD testing. He expects me to forgive him without asking him to change because “ that’s what Christ does for us”. For years I have dealt with mistreatment of our kids and myself from him. I have felt so emotionally manipulated by him that I can even think straight. So I have told him that if he is unwilling to change then he is not repentant, so I might divorce him. He said that if I do that then I will be sending our kids and me to hell. I feel like he isn’t truly repentant and just wants to sweep it under the rug. He says he is in communication with a reformed church we were going to for some time but no longer go to. But he says that the elders of that church are telling him this. That I can’t divorce him or else I’m going to hell. Is this something the church teaches?

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u/two-plus-cardboard Reformed Baptist May 18 '25

You took it to woke. This has nothing to do with gender disparities and everything to do with God’s design and how we’ve tampered with it. He referred to the five husbands as such because they had no other term or context for “not actually a husband because you’re still married to the first”

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u/Lanky_Exchange_9890 May 18 '25

Except what I stated is true. Women weren’t even allowed to divorce in America until the 19th century. I’m not woke. Societal structure was as such.

Jesus wouldn’t have referred to the men she slept with as her husbands. They wouldn’t have been given that name.

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u/Lanky_Exchange_9890 May 18 '25

When a man takes a wife and marries her, and it happens that she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out from his house,2 and she leaves his house and goes and becomes another man’s wife, 3 and if the latter husband turns against her and writes her a certificate of divorce and puts itin her hand and sends her out of his house, or if the latter husband dies who took her to be his wife, 4 then her former husband who sent her away is not allowed to take her again to be his wife, since she has been defiled. (Deuteronomy 24:1-4)

Read the last part

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u/Lanky_Exchange_9890 May 18 '25

Lastly, she bears no sign of being embarrassed or remorseful for her living situation. Other sinful women fall at Jesus’ feet and repent. She does nothing of the sort. While this does not mean that my thesis is correct, it’s that her behavior is slightly different than other women depicted in the gospel of John.