Adultery is poisoning, destroying and killing marriages in PNG. Families are being broken. Men lust for sex, leave their wives and children at home, and chase after girls and women with money. Young girls and even married women lust after money and sell their bodies for a living. Men and women alike dress and act provocatively to lure others into fornication and adultery.

Our courthouses are filled with cases of adultery, from the national courts right down to the local village courts. Our music industry is promoting adultery through many of the latest-releases and popular songs. How sad that these songs are favourites to many in PNG, especially the younger generation!

Adultery is on the rise in PNG and in the world as a whole. Adultery is everywhere – in our thoughts, in our words and in our actions. My beloved Papua New Guinea, adultery is destroying our beautiful, so-called Christian country!

And the man behind all this adultery is Satan himself. Adultery is one of his favourite ways to destroy marriages. We can see this in the lives of Mark and Mary:

Mark and Mary were a very happy couple for seventeen years. They had five beautiful children, the eldest 16 and the youngest 3. Mary was a house wife while Mark earned a very good fortnight as a top government official.

Mark rented a big house in Port Moresby, owned a car, and his children were doing very well in school. They lived a very decent life until Mark met Judy, a 19-year-old high school dropout, and fell in love with her. Mark told lies to her that he was a single man and lured her with money and gifts for sex.

Life changed for Mark and Mary’s family, and things went from bad to worse, as Mark’s adultery began affecting them all. Mark began spending more of his time and money on Judy and neglected Mary and the children. Soon, there was not enough money for food, school fees, power, water bills and other daily expenses. One day, Mary found out what was happening with Mark and an argument broke out between the two. To cover up his guilt, Mark chased her out of the house and told her never to come back again.

Then Mark took Judy in and they lived a luxurious life in his house, Mary and the children went to live in a settlement in Mary’s uncle’s house. For an unemployed mother, to care for 5 children was unbearable. There was no food. The children had to stop schooling because they could not pay the school fees.

The little money they made by collecting empty cans and bottles was not enough to sustain them, and so, without her children knowing, Mary decided to sell her body for sex to support the family.

Marriages broken by adultery are hideous. Marriage itself is something beautiful that God created good from the beginning at creation (Genesis 2:21-24). God blessed it (Genesis 1:28) and said that it was very good (Genesis 1:31). In fact, marriage is more than beautiful. It is holy. It is a special gift from God.

Within marriage, God has given sex as a gift to husband and wife to be enjoyed exclusively by husband and wife. This exclusive intimacy is a picture of the deep intimacy between God and His people, between Christ and His church (Ephesians 5:22-32).

But Satan hates the beautiful and holy things of God, and so his plan is to destroy marriage. He takes sex, a beautiful and holy gift, and turns it into something ugly. Satan uses illicit sex to destroy marriages. He lures many people to lust for sex and use sex in unholy ways: not only adultery, but also fornication, polygamy, pornography, incest, rape, paedophilia, and beastiality.

These sexual sins are like poison destroying and killing many hearts and minds and bringing them to hell. The Bible is clear: the sexually immoral will not inherit the kingdom of God (Ephesians 5:5). Satan’s plan is to corrupt sex and destroy marriages, and sadly many marriages in PNG are on this path.

But, dear reader, there is hope.

We have hope to restore our marriages to God’s plan through the cross of Jesus Christ. There on the cross of Calvary, Jesus died for our adultery. Yes, He died to take the punishment of God’s anger against all our sexual sins and to make us pure in God’s eyes. He also rose from the grave so that we could live a new, holy life (Romans 6:6). Through Christ, God has redeemed marriage and given hope to every marriage that has been destroyed by adultery.

Mary hit rock bottom when her uncle told her that she couldn’t live with him any more and that she would have to move out. Move out? Where? How? Mary was overcome by sadness and despair. Who would help her? Desperate, she turned to God in prayer. The Lord answered her prayers.

Mary found a church in which the gospel of Jesus Christ was faithfully preached. She repented of her sins. She stopped selling her body for sex. She learned to entrust her life to Jesus Christ. The gospel changed her heart more and more. She became a new person, a new Mary.