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How have you lamented the consequences of your sin and what it has cost you but not truly come to hate it, fight it, war against it, and put it to death?

• Repentance is not mere confession.

How many times have you said you were sorry with no real, deep, heartfelt commitment to change, and what confusion has this caused your spouse?

True repentance is a combination of three things.

• Repentance includes confession.

In confession, you agree with God that you have sinned. Confession includes both your mind and mouth.

• Repentance includes contrition.

In contrition, you feel what God feels about your sin. Confession includes both your emotions and expressions. Your heart is affected, not just your words.

• Repentance includes change.

In change, you stop sinning and start worshipping. Change includes your will and works.

Every married couple has to continually practice repentance of sin if they hope to have any loving, lasting life together. As one writer wisely said, “Couples don’t fall out of love so much as they fall out of repentance.”3

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Forgiveness

Fortunately, the wife who had racked up secret debt confessed the whole truth to her husband and—as an act of repentance—cut up the credit card, never to repeat that sin again. And he forgave her. He communicated his appreciation that she had finally told him the truth and admitted that her keeping a secret from him hurt him more than spending the money. Together, they devised a plan to pay off the debt and did so. He never speaks of the matter, as he does not want to shame her for something he has forgiven. And the only reason we know the story is that she tells it freely. Because once she repented and he forgave her, a burden was lifted, thereby enabling her to be honest without feeling condemned or ashamed.

When we sin against our spouses, we cause them to suffer. When we sin, we are supposed to apologize, ask forgiveness, and try to make things right.

When we are sinned against, we need to forgive quickly. Jesus’ words on this are haunting: “Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who is indebted to us.”a We cannot simply ask God to forgive our sins; we must also extend that same forgiveness to others.

Forgiveness is a gospel issue. In our hurt and woundedness, we can lose sight of the truth that no one has been sinned against more than God. No one has been more wounded, grieved, hurt, betrayed, and mistreated than God. Furthermore, we each have contributed to the pain that God experiences, as all sin is ultimately against God.b This means that God could be the most embittered person.

Instead, He came as Jesus and took our place to suffer for our sins, pronouncing forgiveness from the cross.

Therefore, our forgiveness of our spouses has very little, if anything, to do with them. Instead, it has everything to do with God. As an act of worship, we must respond to our sinful spouses as God has responded to our sin—with forgiveness—because it is a gospel issue. We cannot accept forgiveness from God without extending it to our spouses.

The Bible commands spouses to be in the ongoing habit of “forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you.”a How did God forgive believers in Christ? We caused Him to suffer unjustly, and He received it without bitterness, forgave us, pursued us, and wants good for us. This means that if I accept God’s forgiveness of my sins but refuse to forgive my spouse of his or her sins, I am in effect saying by my actions that my spouse’s sin against me is worse than my sin against God.

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It is important to note, however, what forgiveness is not:

• Forgiveness is not denying, approving, or diminishing sin that is committed against us.

We cannot say we are fine, that it was no big deal, or that, since it was in the past, we’ve just moved on. We must be honest about the reality of the sin if we want the forgiveness to be equally earnest. In forgiving, we are, in fact, saying our spouses are wrong, we do not approve of their sin, and that it really is a big deal and not a trivial matter to us.

• Forgiveness