Mike Novotny - How Do I Help Friends Caught in Adultery?
One of the toughest times, I think, to be a good friend is when one of your friends cheats or is cheated on. There’s just something about that situation, that sin, that rattles even the strongest connections. As friends, we want to be there with the love of Jesus, the light of Jesus, but when one of your friends has chosen to cheat, or their partner has chosen to cheat on them, that’s one of the most difficult situations in which to know what to do and what to say.
Like when one of your friends cheats and is just totally in the pit of shame, sees the consequences up close, knows that it’s all his fault, and doesn’t even have ears to hear the fact that God is love and that Jesus forgives even this—it’s hard. It’s hard to be a good friend. Or when that same friend maybe doesn’t feel enough shame, isn’t willing to face the consequences of what he did, and just wants to move on into the future, not think about the past, and not go over these same questions and conversations. What do you say to a friend who’s in that situation? Or maybe when your friend who has been cheated on is so angry, so confused, and so furious that a hundred percent of this is just on him or her, and they’re not even willing to talk about anything else but what they did and the sin that they committed. When your friend’s hurting but they need to hear a hard truth, it’s hard to be a good friend.
Or maybe on the flip side, when that person feels so inadequate, wondering what must be wrong with them and why they’re not good enough or pretty enough or sufficient enough, and they feel totally inadequate, and you’re trying to encourage them with good news, true news, but they don’t have ears to hear it—it’s hard to be a good friend.
And when you’re not the only third wheel in the situation, but there are maybe two parents and a whole bunch of friends and other people from the Bible study, and some people are handling it well and some are not. Some people are picking sides, pointing fingers, suggesting «Well, he really had it coming if only she would have done more.» Some people are running away from the messiness of the situation; others are getting too much in the middle of it without any boundaries. It’s so incredibly complex and complicated when friends cheat. It is really hard to be a good friend.
Now, I wish I didn’t have to preach this sermon, but sadly, according to statistics, sooner or later, if adultery doesn’t happen to you or by you, it will happen near you. Right? If one out of five husbands statistically will cheat and one out of eight wives will do the same, then just by the numbers, you’re going to have a friend, or a brother, or sister, or son, or daughter, or a mother, or a father, or a next-door neighbor, or someone from your church who will pull you into a situation you didn’t choose, but you’re going to be there.
So the big question we’re going to wrestle with today is what do you do, and what do you not do? How do you help when everything is so complex, so powerful, and so emotional? How can you be a good Christian and a good Christian friend when a friend chooses to cheat? Now, that’s a huge question that probably deserves its own sermon series by itself, but I want to give you just a really high-level answer with an open Bible, and I’d love for you to write this down. So if you have a program or a pen, if you’re watching at home, write this down too: When friends cheat, the best thing we can do as Christians is to give them grace and truth.
I chose those words with intention: give them grace and truth. All right, so this isn’t about being pro him or pro her; I want to give grace to the one who cheated, and the one who was cheated on—the betrayer and the betrayed. My job as a Christian is to minister to their marriage, to minister to them, and when I do so, I want to give them grace and truth. I want to give them Jesus, and forgiveness, and compassion, and empathy—grace. But not just that; I also have to give them truth: obedience, holiness, humility, work. If I can come as a Christian with grace and truth, with the law and the gospel to both people in the situation, I can’t fix it, and I can’t flip a switch and make all the pain go away, but I can be a living, breathing, walking representation of what Jesus did in complex situations just like that.
Have you ever heard that passage in John 1:14 that describes what Jesus was like? It says this, that Jesus came from his Heavenly Father, full of grace and truth. Two thousand years ago, when Jesus was ministering to people—here’s God in the flesh—what was he full of? Grace and truth. He would meet people who had sinned and he gave them grace and truth. He met people who had sinned against others, and he gave them grace and truth. And so today, I want to try to get specific and apply that. What does it mean to give grace and truth to the betrayer and the betrayed?
I need to warn you right upfront; normally, when I preach, I have a goal, and my goal is, when you get into the car after this and you’re there with your kid, your boyfriend, or your friend who brought you, that you’d be able to say, «Oh, I remember, the sermon was about—boom!» Remember we filled in that one blank? That was the big idea. That’s not going to happen today. After the first time I went through the sermon, I realized, «Oh my goodness, this is so complex. Should I change the sermon? Should I have you throw away your bulletins just to come up with one big idea?» And then it kind of hit me—no, we can’t—it’s because infidelity isn’t like that. It’s not just «remember this one big thing and you’re going to be amazing.» It’s messy, it’s complex, and you stumble. It’s like loving someone who’s grieving. There’s no one thing you can do to fix it.
So today, I’m just going to warn you upfront: there’s going to be a lot of writing, a lot of notes, a lot of complexity. I’m not going to expect you to remember everything you write down. If you can, free coffee on me in the lobby, all right? But here’s kind of my goal: that maybe there’s one thing, if you know someone who’s cheated, just one thing from this message that you’re like, «Yep, yep, that’s it, ” just one takeaway. And if you don’t know someone like that right now, I hope that you remember that this message happened, that it’s going to exist online, and that someday, when that sin does get close to your life, you’re going to have a resource to go back to, and listen again to what we learned today from God’s Word, and you’ll be better equipped to help someone who desperately needs help.
All right, so we’re going to cover a lot of things; we’re going to cover grace and truth for the betrayer and the betrayed. I want to start first of all with your friend who has been cheated on. All right, so grab a pen. What does it look like, first of all, to give grace to someone who’s been cheated on? Here’s my answer: show up and share Jesus. That’s what grace looks like—showing up and sharing Jesus with a victim of infidelity. You don’t have to be a professional marriage counselor; you don’t have to read a hundred books on infidelity. The very basic thing you can do to be a powerful advocate and friend is just to show up and share Jesus.
There’s a proverb in Proverbs 27 that says this: „Better a neighbor nearby than a relative far away.“ Is that true? Like maybe my brother lives three states away, but if I have a friend who’s closer to help me through something, then it’s so much better to have someone who just shows up, who sees your expression, who can read your non-verbals, and help. And that’s what the Bible says—show up; be the friend who’s nearby, the one who’s there to read the room, to get how they’re feeling, and to respond with the Word of God.
It actually sounds pretty simple, but let me be candid with you—it is not. Because here’s what happens: most experts say it takes between one to two years for a couple really to turn the corner after an act of infidelity, to rebuild that trust, to start thinking thoughts that are true and not just jumping to worst-case conclusions, to be able to forgive and move forward with hope into the future. And if that’s true, that means you’re going to have to show up not just for a cup of coffee to see how he’s doing, but invest in the marathon of rebuilding that marriage. Right? That means your buddy or your brother is going to need help this week, and next week, and next month, and maybe next year.
Practically, because infidelity is messy and embarrassing, he’s probably not going to tell everyone that he knows. He’s not going to get up in front of the church with a microphone to let everyone know what’s happening. Maybe he only tells ten people, or eight people, or five people, and if you’re just one of the five resources he has, that means because there are fewer people to show up, that those few people need to show up more often. Hard enough, you’re going to need to find some extra time to show up. The dynamics of those conversations are going to change drastically, and it will not be easy.
I remember a few years ago we had a sermon series on friendship, and I learned that friendships really survive when overall, you feel positive about the conversation. There are hard moments, but there are a lot of jokes, dumb memes, funny things, and experiences you have together. But after infidelity happens, lots of that doesn’t happen. It’s not like you show up, „How are you doing?“ „Oh, it’s still tough.“ And „How are you doing?“ It’s like the relationship does this, and you might be doing great, and you have a little bit to share, but they’re not doing so great. They need a lot of help, a lot of encouragement, and a lot of prayer.
And I think that’s why most Christians stop showing up. Like, „I wanted to be there as a friend, but it’s really hard, and it’s kind of depressing to be honest, and I just don’t leave feeling great about it.“ And so, you know, you hold on for the 5K, and then you drop out of the race. And so God is saying to some of you today, „It’s time to show up; they really need you.“ If everyone burns out after six weeks, ten weeks, three months, they’re going to have to try to heal for the next year or two without love and encouragement and friends and prayer.
Now, I’m not asking you to be God. All right? God is the only 24/7 counselor that exists; he’s free, he’s amazing. You don’t have to sleep with your cell phone next to your head so you can be there every single waking moment that he needs you or she needs you. But I want to challenge you with this: What if for the next year, you would commit one hour a week? Okay, every Friday, we’re going to do coffee for the next 12 months. God can rebuild things, but it’s going to be hard. So every Friday, we’re getting together, we’re going to talk about how you’re doing—good week, bad week, I’m going to encourage you, pray for you, forgive you, correct you. What if you just showed up? Could you invest 52 hours in a friend when your friend needed you the most?
It won’t be easy; it’ll be a 12-month marathon. But I think if you show up and bring that kind of grace, you can be a lot like Jesus. And while you’re showing up, you get to share Jesus—that’s the second thing that grace looks like. I’m not sure if you’ve seen this up close, but sometimes when a person gets cheated on, their whole identity crumbles. It’s like their spouse was their rock, and then that rock moved. And going home was their haven and refuge, their safe place, except now it feels like shifting sand.
When a person experiences that, you can’t depend on a human being entirely, and it is such good news to hear about Jesus, right? That Jesus is this firm foundation; he’s the rock on which we stand; we can never be shaken. We’re so glad when we know that Jesus doesn’t leave; he doesn’t change; he doesn’t cheat and he doesn’t move—if he hasn’t and he won’t.
It’s an amazing passage in the Book of Romans, chapter 8, where the Apostle Paul says this: „I’m convinced.“ And he lists all these things, saying, „I’m convinced that there is nothing in all of creation that will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.“ Like that’s the rock—you might be a total train wreck right now, but the mess of this moment has not separated you from the love of God. That God still loves you even though your head is running a million miles an hour, that God is not going to leave you or forsake you in a person’s trauma. They will forget that their greatest identity isn’t as a husband, a wife, a perfect mother or father; it’s as a child of God, and for maybe one year, you’ll get to remind them of that every seven days. God is the same; God is still love; Jesus is still forgiving. You get to preach it and preach it and preach it, and there are few things you can do that matter more in this world than to share Jesus with someone who desperately needs it.
That’s grace. And your same friend will need truth. All right? Showing up, giving them God’s love—amazing; that’s part one of four. But they’re also going to need the truth. And here’s the truth I don’t want you to forget. I shared it last week, and I want to share it again today. The truth is that healing—remember the healing equation? —it equals time. Can you help me out? Time equals work. Time equals work. Yeah! For a person to heal, it’s going to take some time to heal trust in a relationship, and it’s going to take work from both parties involved.
And one of the things that you’re going to get to do as a friend when you show up is to remind them in a humble, gentle, and respectful way that they’re going to need some time. You know, I’ve seen a lot of couples that have done this: like, „affair, rebuilding, rebuilding, rebuilding, rebuilding.“ They feel this dip like, „It’s not working, ” and you get to be the friend who says, „No, no, remember four months ago, you were here, and I’m sorry it was a bad week; I’m sorry you got triggered by whatever, but this is working; he’s working, you’re working. It takes time.“ We’re going to get back on track to where we were.
We need to remind them of the truth that healing takes time. And you ready for the tough part? You’re going to have to remind them that they have to work. I reached out to a guy from our church in preparation for the series, whose wife cheated on him, and I asked him, you know, as your pastor and your friend trying to help you through the situation, what do you think you needed more of—grace or truth? Like, did you really need me, more than anything else, to remind you, „God is love; God is with you; he’s not going to break his promise“? Or did you need me and other people to come and say, „Hey, I know you’re hurting, but you don’t get to hurt people; two wrongs don’t make it right; you don’t get a free pass to break your vow and sin“?
And without needing to think—guess what my friend said? That’s what I needed. He said, „I was so mad; I was so bitter; I literally wanted to see the other guy suffer. I wanted to see his relationships and his family completely fall apart. That was evil; it was wrong; it was sinful, but it was my natural reaction. And I needed someone who loved me; I needed good books, good podcasts, a good church, and good friends to say, ‘Hey, no, no, no, no, no—that’s not going to make you better. It’s not going to make you better. It’s not going to make God happy. You can’t; you must not, and you shall not.’“
And it’s a tentative situation because when a person’s hurting, you don’t want to kick them while they’re down, but they really need you to give them the truth. „Don’t sin; it’s not going to remedy the situation; it’s going to feel good in the moment like a drug, and then you’re going to be hungover the next day with your own iniquity.“ So don’t. This is what friends do: grace and truth. We show up and share Jesus, and we remind them that healing equals time times work.
I picture your job as a friend of a friend who has been cheated on like this weight—pick these up very often. So let’s see how this goes. All right, so it’s 25. I want to do an Anchorman, you remember that when she walks into the office—999, a thousand! I just did a thousand—did everyone see it? So this 25-pound weight—like even me as a scrawny guy, this muscle right here is strong enough to lift it a whole bunch— not too many times, but enough. But this same weight, with this muscle, I can’t marry without infidelity. It’s like this—it’s hard; it’s not easy to love another person, to say „you first“ day after day.
But it’s possible, right? It’s not like I need a whole group of family and friends to be praying for me to be nice to Kim if things are going well, if she’s loving me and I’m loving her back. It’s not easy work, but it’s possible work. But here’s what happens; once infidelity enters the picture, that same command from God becomes so hard. And this is where friends come in. You can lift the weight if a friend gets on the other end—a friend who has his other faith muscles to lift it with you.
But when a person is stuck and simply can’t do something on their own, you can help bear that weight with them, and they’ll need you to do it. So I want to challenge you today. If you’re thinking of a friend right now who’s been cheated on, what can you do? What’s that small little step you can take to show them grace and truth to show up, share Jesus, remind them how healing happens, to do the good work that leads to restoration and hope?
I’m going to put this down before I drop it, because there’s someone else we need to talk about today. So we’ve talked about the one who has been cheated on. Now let’s kind of shift to part two: what about the one who cheated? How do you show grace and truth to them in that situation? Well, write this down: here’s what grace looks like. Grace looks like showing up and sharing Jesus. And if that sounds kind of easy, I want to repeat to you again today: it isn’t.
Because when a person chooses to cheat, when, for the sake of an escape, they bring devastation upon their family and friends, for you to take a step and meet them where they’re at will get people talking. When that woman pursues just the high of that and left this trail of consequences in her wake, for you to meet her where she’s at will get people talking. It will not be easy.
I think of what happened to Jesus in Luke chapter 15. You remember this? It says the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus, but the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, „This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.“ What did Jesus do wrong? He was with them. And once Jesus took a step in their direction, once he didn’t kick them away from the table, once he broke bread with people who had hurt people—oh, people started to talk. „Jesus doesn’t take sin seriously; he acts like it’s not a big deal. That’s a tax collector who robbed my family.“
And sadly, the same thing can happen when your friend cheats. The fact that you spend time with them—this has happened to me before—is like, „What? Don’t you take the sin seriously? You think it’s not a big deal?“ Listen, you can hate adultery as much as Jesus did and love adulterers as much as Jesus did. Stay far, far away from the edge of infidelity in your personal life, and yet draw as close as can possibly be to someone who’s fallen over the cliff.
This is what God is calling you to, because that person needs you to show up, and they need you to share Jesus. I remember another guy from our church who had cheated on his wife. He had crossed first an emotional line, and then a physical line. And thankfully, by God’s grace, he took his sin very seriously. He knew he had messed up; he knew he couldn’t go back; he knew it was foolish, evil, and sinful.
In fact, he knew that it was so bad in the eyes of God that he had trouble believing the very basic things about the love and forgiveness of Jesus. And that’s why I got the chance to give him a lot of grace. I told him, „For the next 30 days, I’m going to text you a Bible passage about God’s forgiveness every single morning.“ I had the Bible app on my phone, which made it pretty easy; I’d find a passage, underline it, click share, and text it. And every single day when he woke up, before the devil could pounce and say, „How could you? You can’t be loved by God, ” he got Jesus and Jesus and grace and grace and forgiveness and forgiveness.
And I wonder, I wonder if you could do the same thing. Like if you have a friend who’s kind of stuck in that shameful spot, they’re just beating themselves up because they see the consequences up close—could you just, for 30 days, give them Jesus and Jesus and Jesus? Now some of you are thinking, „Pastor Mike, I don’t know the Bible that well. I won’t even know where to start.“ Let me give you a tip—maybe you’ve never heard of this before: Google! Yeah, you just Google „verses on forgiveness, ” click return, and you will have more than 30 days’ worth. It’s so easy. Leverage the technology to find those passages where God speaks of unconditional love, forgiveness, even for this sin, and just keep grace upon their heart till the soil of their soul softens and that little seed gets in and produces the hope and peace that we all want when your friend cheats.
That’s what grace looks like: you show up no matter what people say; you share a whole bunch of Jesus.
And finally, the last thing I need to share with you today is you give them truth. Well, what truth does your friend need to know? You might not know this, but there’s this healing equation that helps people get through adultery, which I’ll write down one last time because your friend is going to need to know it takes time, and it takes work, and it also takes work. Yeah! Now, your friend’s going to need to know, „Yeah, you can’t fix this in a week; the issues and problems in the relationship that led to this confession probably lasted a long time; it’s going to take a long time to fix.“
And maybe most of all, what your friend is going to need is encouragement as they do good work. Let me tell you what I mean. My wife’s a preschool teacher; she tells me often about the power of positive encouragement. Right? As an educator, she’s just jumping on a kid, „You messed up, you messed up, you messed up, ” and a kid just gets crushed—he’s never good enough, right? But she tries to catch him doing good and will say, „Wow, that was amazing.“ So when he does the good thing, she’ll say, „That was amazing”—and the kid’s like, „Oh, sweet! I should do good things.“ So he does more good things, and she says, „Well, you did it again, that’s amazing.“
And it just creates this cycle of encouragement and obedience, right? Marriage is like that too. If I’m a husband and I do a really good thing, and my wife’s like, „Wow, thank you, ” I’m like, „Well, you’re welcome, ” and so I do the good thing again, and she notices me, and she holds my hand, maybe she kisses me—maybe things go well for me for the rest of the day. You know? This is just a cycle of obedience and encouragement.
I’m going to love you, and you love me back; I put you first, then you put me first; I try to meet your needs, and you try to meet mine—that’s how marriages work. But here’s what happens when adultery gets in the middle: the person who cheated can do the right thing, but the person who has been cheated on is so hurt, it’s really hard to respond right.
„Oh yeah, you washed the dishes? Great! If you wouldn’t have slept with her, this would be a better night.“ It’s going to take a long time for their hearts to soften and for their motivation to be to serve the spouse who cheated on them, and this is where friends like you matter so much. If your friend is doing the right thing, and he’s doing the work, he’s probably not going to get a ton of encouragement and love and response from a spouse. But if you can come in and say, „Yes, like God saw that. It’s going to take some time, right? That’s how healing works, ” but the fact that you are increasing the number of the work you’re doing—you’re on a good path; don’t change it.
I know it was tough; I know you wish you would have noticed; you would have said something; you would have thanked you for the work that you did, but it’s still the right work, even if he doesn’t—even if she doesn’t. You get to be the person who responds with positive affirmation, and they’re going to need tons of it. You can encourage them with the words of Philippians 2, where the Apostle Paul encouraged us: „Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit; this isn’t about self. I’m not just being nice to you so you’ll be nice to me back. No, rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of others.“
So, put all this together, and you have the complex, difficult way that you can help friends who cheat. You give them grace and truth—all of it at once. You show up and share Jesus—that’s grace. You remind them of the healing equation—that’s truth. You do it for both of them, and it won’t be better tomorrow or next week, but bit by bit, things can change.
Now, some of you know for the past few weeks we’ve talked about incredibly difficult topics. We’ve talked about love and respect; we’ve encouraged husbands to act without being asked; we’ve encouraged wives and all spouses to remember how much physical touch, intimacy means often to their spouse. We talked about living together, the dangers of that, getting too close to the line. We’ve talked about how infidelity happens and how you get through it. And so after all that difficulty, and maybe after all the difficult memories it brings up, I want to leave you with a picture of something that happened to me this week.
I came home from a long day at work, and there, this big, wrapped in bright silver tin foil, was banana bread. And I don’t know about you, but in my heart, there’s like Jesus, and it kind of depends how the kids are behaving, so often sometimes it’s banana bread right here in the second spot behind juice. It’s so delicious, isn’t it? When the chocolate chips are inside, and the layer of butter is like, you can measure it with your finger, like, that’s as close to heaven as you can get here on Earth. You’re welcome.
So, I just—I’m like a vulture; I tear off the silver foil. My youngest daughter, Maya, makes the banana bread, and I just take like half the loaf in one end. It’s so, so good. And then it hits me: banana bread. It’s so delicious; it’s so good. You know what the number one ingredient of banana bread is? Bananas. But not just any bananas—bad bananas! Isn’t that baffling? Like you would never peel an overripe, mushy, nasty, soggy banana and say, „This is delicious.“
And yet somehow, a chef can take something that’s nasty and bad, and with the right extra ingredients, can turn it into something that is so, so good. Yeah, you see where I’m going. Adultery, infidelity is bad; none of us want it. But there is a master chef—a Father in Heaven—who can take that primary ingredient and with enough other ingredients can turn it into something really, really good, not by itself. A person, that situation—they need friends and family; they need grace and truth; they need people who show up and share Jesus; and they need encouragement.
They need to be applauded; they need to be reminded of the work. There are lots of other ingredients involved, but you and I get to be the ingredients. We get to be part of the divine plan that God has of taking something that was so bad and somehow, in some way, with enough time, turning it into something really good. That something really good might be a restored marriage; it might be a couple who thought that they just couldn’t do it, and somehow they could. They got through it, God helped them, and they communicated about everything, and they ended up stronger than they were before—that might be what God creates.
Or if the marriage doesn’t make it, if the trust is too damaged, if he still wants to run off after his fling and not work on things at home, God can still use you to bring something really good—a person whose life isn’t consumed by bitterness and vengeance, but a person who’s following Jesus, who can forgive the person who hurt them and move forward with hope in a future because God is still here with me.
I want to leave you today with this: you matter so much. You are the way that God brings good out of evil things. It won’t be easy; it might be some of the hardest work you’ve ever done, but sometimes what’s hard leads to a happy and holy home.
So let me wrap up this series with a blessing from the book of Jude. Here’s what Jesus’s half-brother wrote to the early Christians: „Be merciful to those who doubt; save others by snatching them from the fire; to others, show mercy mixed with fear, hating even the clothing stained by corrupted flesh. Now to him—to God—who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, be glory, majesty, power, and authority through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore.“
If you believe in that blessing, join your voice with me and say, „Amen.“ Let’s pray:
Dear God, do nothing out of selfish ambition. You say that to people who are in difficult marriages, and you say that to all of us. Sometimes it costs us our self and our plans, our agendas, and our calendars to be able to be there for someone who needs us. But Father, we know at the end of the day, that’s really what it’s аbout: loving people well and having people in our lives who are ready and encouraged to love us well when we need them to. I pray that you would use this series, these messages to save people from the difficulty of adultery. I pray that you would scare them straight away so they would stand on the straight and narrow path. People who are here, God, who can’t go back and can’t change it—would you just use something, some word, some verse, some promise that you’ve made to heal them and help them to move forward? We’re so grateful, God, that you never forsake us. You invite us to your table, where we get to feast with you for all eternity. One day, we won’t be triggered, and we won’t be bothered by the trauma. So until that day, help us, guide us, walk with us, and bless us. Help us to be the church that you’ve called us to be—one that can be so full of truth and yet so defined by grace and love. We pray these things because we need you, God, so we’ve heard them all in Jesus’ name. Amen.