Your honest confession has been read with much tenderness and with prayer, and we thank God that you have not hidden your sin nor hardened your heart against its heinousness. To feel guilt and shame is a painful but needful work, for it shows that conscience is yet alive and that the Spirit has not left you to sleep in sin. Yet guilt must not become your dwelling place. There is forgiveness with God, and that forgiveness is to be found in Christ alone.
Hear the blessed whisper which the Word of God gives to every repentant sinner, There is forgiveness. It is a divine forgiveness, I, even I, am He that blotteth out thy transgressions for Mine own sake. It is a surprising forgiveness, so full and free that God Himself speaks as though to assure the trembling heart that it can indeed be so. It is a complete forgiveness, not a partial payment but an absolute blotting out of the debt, so that when you come and say I have nothing to pay with, He answers that for His own name's sake He has cancelled all. Where God draws no limit, do not you draw any. Though your sin be great, the atonement which covers guilt is greater. If by faith you look to the sin forgiving God and accept the matchless atonement of His Son, you are even now among the blessed whose sin is not imputed.
And mark this, the work of the Son in removing guilt is linked with the work of the Spirit in removing guile. When Christ forgives, the Spirit changes the nature. You speak of accountability, of therapy and of desiring to flee the environment where you fell, and this is right and wise. He who truly confesses his guilt heartily humbles himself in the sight of God and takes the lowest place. He does not excuse his sin, but owns it fully, and then he watches and prays and turns his feet from the place of temptation. To seek a new situation that takes you away from that snare is not mere prudence, it is part of forsaking guile as well as mourning guilt, and we will pray that the Lord in His providence will open such a door for you.
For your husband, whose hurt is deep, we also pray. The pattern set before every wounded Christian is this, Even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye. The Lord not only forgave us at the first, but He continues daily to forgive, and His forgiveness is eternal. He does not forgive and afterwards accuse. To forgive as Christ forgives will be impossible in mere human strength, yet it becomes natural to those who have themselves received so much manifest forgiveness. It is a joint stock business of mutual forgiveness, and in a marriage covenant which God has ordained as the lifelong union of one man and one woman, where alone such nearness belongs, that grace is most needed and most beautifully displayed. Reconciliation after such a wound is not easy and it will not be hastened by pretence. It requires truth, time, tears, and much prayer, and the help of faithful counsel. Your intention to seek couples therapy together, under God and with wise and godly counsel, is a proper step toward healing.
Do not let the adversary tell you that you must remain forever under the dreadful walls of guilt which have risen around you, nor let him tell your husband that his wound is beyond healing. There is forgiveness now, at this moment, for the penitent heart that turns to Christ, and there is power to forgive and to be restored in Him who makes all things new.
We have prayed and will continue to pray for you both.
O Lord our God, with whom there is forgiveness that Thou mayest be feared, look upon this husband and wife who are both saved by Thy grace and yet sore wounded by sin. Wash the guilty conscience in the blood of Christ, lift the burden of shame, and grant a true and deep repentance that forsakes guile as well as mourns guilt. Heal the hurt of the wounded heart, give grace to forgive even as Christ has forgiven, and knit together again what sin has torn. Keep them in the covenant of marriage as Thou hast ordained it, make them faithful to one another and to Thee, grant wisdom to all who counsel them, and in Thy mercy provide a way of escape from temptation through honest labour elsewhere. Let this heavy trial become, by Thy Spirit, a testimony to Thy restoring mercy, for Jesus sake. Amen.
Trust not in your sorrow, nor in your accountability, nor in any effort of your own, but in Christ alone who blots out transgression and remembers sin no more. Continue in prayer, continue in the Word, walk honestly before God and before one another, and the Lord who has begun a good work will perfect it.
