The other day, one of my grandkids was in the car and we were talking about the Ten Commandments. He said he knew at least most of them and attempted to name them.

When he got to the one on adultery, he said, “you shall not be altriduted.” After we stopped laughing, he said, “Well, it’s when a husband and wife doesn’t want to be together anymore and they want to be with someone else.”

He pretty well hit the nail on the head, because marriage has everything to do with commitment and adultery violates that commitment. Adultery is saying a person wants something different and they are not satisfied with what they’ve got. Part of the problem is that many go into marriages with an option B already in their thinking. They would say, “If it doesn’t work out, then I will end it and try someone else.” If a person is so committed to a relationship, they go into it with no plan of exit. This doesn’t mean that there will be no possibility of an exit, but that it would be a last resort, and there definitely would be no plan at the beginning for it.

To have a strong marriage is not easy, but rather, it takes a lot of work. When I counsel young couples, I always give them a guarantee against divorce — that is, if both individuals are totally committed to the lordship of Christ, I don’t see how divorce ever will happen. It’s when that commitment to Christ begins to grow cold that adultery or other issues can affect the commitment to each other.

So if you want to have a strong marriage, first commit your lives fully to the Lord, and then establish a no-back-door commitment to each other.