One of the most crucial questions a husband and wife ask after the discovery of pornography or an affair is, “How can trust be rebuilt?” Put simply, trust is built with consistent, selfless love over time.
However, this simple answer is not always easy to live out. For a spouse who has lived deceitfully for years, living in unwavering truth will be new territory. For a spouse who’s been betrayed and deceived, deciding if their spouse is being consistent in words and actions can be confusing.
The consistency + time formula is a helpful guide for couples who are committed to daily, proactive engagement to rebuild trust. Consistently checking-in, with both truth and tenderness, can help create and cultivate an intimate connection, which is necessary in the trust-building process. Check-ins are a purposeful, set-aside time for a couple to connect on a consistent basis about the things that are important to each person. They offer a husband and wife the opportunity to know and be known. When done well, check-ins can be used to help a couple truly walking in the light foster the spiritual and emotional connection that enables trust to be established once again.
Consistent Steps Taken over Time through Selfless Love
You might ask, “What can I do consistently? And for how long? What if I don’t feel loving?” One husband may decide to bring his wife coffee first thing every morning. Another may consistently answer the phone each time his wife calls. Still another may reliably go to bed at the same time as his wife. Each of these examples may help a wife begin to see her husband growing in dependability. But these consistent actions, while loving and significant, don’t accomplish everything needed to rebuild broken trust—God’s plan for marriage is far greater than a list of tasks for a husband and wife to do predictably.
In addition to a couple demonstrating reliability, God’s design for marriage includes a husband and wife faithfully loving one another with authenticity, intimacy, and integrity. The language God uses to describe the union of Adam and Eve’s marriage conveys unity. “Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh” (Gen. 2:24).
However, sexual betrayal attacks that union. Every part of a marriage is deeply impacted by betrayal. The deceit that accompanies pornography use and affairs ravages a couple’s ability to be truly connected as God intended. One tool that can be fruitful for a couple working through the effects of betrayal is to engage in regular check-ins with each other to build both reliability and unity in marriage.
What Check-Ins Can Offer
The development or re-establishing of an intimate connection necessary for trust within a marriage. Trust-building will include heart change—allowing a husband who has been hiding to step out into the light. Honesty and transparency can lay the groundwork for a wife who has been devastated to begin to consider moving toward her husband emotionally.
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We have been commissioned by the Word of God himself, Jesus Christ, to go into all the world with his truth. It will not be our ingenuity or our volume that gives the word of God its strength. Its power is inherent. It is truth, and it will stand forever. It will be a light to our feet and a lamp unto our path (Psalm 119:105). If we abide in his word, we are truly his disciples, and we will know the truth, and the truth will set us free (John 8:31-32).

We are a people clamoring to be heard, but when the flood of voices drowns their own, many people will raise their pitch and resort to all kinds of hyperbole to gain an audience. Even journalists have degraded their profession by using misleading headlines to coax us into clicking their links. From politicians to personal trainers, it seems few are immune.
Contrary to Thoreau, many people are no longer living lives of quiet desperation. Instead, they broadcast their distress like a distorted siren. I suppose the world has always been this way; after all, there is nothing new under the sun (Ecclesiastes 1:9). Still, with the introduction of the internet and social media, it all seems amplified these days.
As the world continues shouting for attention, truth has fallen in the streets (Isaiah 59:14). Our culture has replaced reason with emotions. Instead of talking about issues, we voice our feelings, trumpet our offense, and label those who disagree with us as evil. Personal attacks rule the day. We judge people for their judging, unaware of our hypocrisy. In a world that believes truth is relative and autonomy is the highest value, anything and nothing can be stated as truth, and those who disagree will be labeled as bigots.
He who shouts the loudest is the winner. We shout on television, online, and with our pocketbooks, and increasingly we see people starting to shout with violent protests. Since we can no longer reason, anyone who believes in truth and threatens the dogma of relativism will be bullied. Might makes right is the only logical outcome in a culture that denies truth.
It should not surprise us that many people use the word “hate” like a bully uses his fists: to dominate and intimidate.
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It is not merely according to covenantal promise, forgiveness and imputed righteousness that we receive our inheritance in Christ but as justified sinners who by grace have been adopted in union with the Son. Believers are fitted for heaven because of all the entailments of union with the last and faithful Adam who as Son is very God of very God. Accordingly, it is in Christ we are justified and sons of the Most High.

Let’s consider afresh the relationship of pactum merit with respect to Adam in the covenant of works and how that relates to strict merit in redemption. With respect to Adam the reward of living forever would have been disproportionate to the finite work performed.
In other words, the justice of life-eternal would not have been according to strict justice but rather according to a sovereignly imposed covenantal compact to over reward Adam for obedience; a pact of sorts was at play. That is to say, the value of Adam’s obedience would not have been of intrinsic worth as it relates to the meritorious reward of unending life.
I do find, however, that in the economy of redemption our reward, though received by grace alone, is according to principles of strict justice. Where we might locate the appropriateness (or congruity) of the forever-reward is the question.
Framing the issue:
Let me try frame the dilemma and then try to offer a solution by drawing from the ordo salutis. In so doing, I’ll try to address the easier part first, having to do with strict justice as it relates to Christ’s passive obedience and our demerit.
The one time sacrifice of Christ was sufficient to satisfy God’s strict justice, render God propitious, and reconcile God to the elect in Christ. Although Christ is the kinsman redeemer, Christ’s divine nature was necessary for redemption accomplished and for there to be intrinsic worth as it relates to Christ’s mediatory work. Our demerit needed the incarnate Son of God to pay for our sins, for one thing to keep the human nature from sinking under the wrath of God. Christ could render God propitious and provide full satisfaction for the sins of many because Christ is both God and man. That’s the more obvious part. No issues there I trust.
The passive obedience part of redemption, which for our purposes narrowly deals with sinners’ demerit and payment for sins, is more obvious perhaps. Yet when it comes to what positively fits redeemed sinners for heaven, I find that to narrowly focus on Christ’s active obedience as a human being is to overlook the broader ground upon which the reward of everlasting life and inheritance can be found.
The dilemma:
The eternal Son eternally assumed the terms of the covenant of works that offered disproportionate reward of life for work done as a human being. So, regarding the active obedience part, pactum merit cannot be avoided and strict justice obtained if what fits us for glory is predicated solely on Christ fulfilling the original terms of the covenant and we grant that those original terms were according to pactum merit. That would appear to be the implication of a position that limits our standing before God to that which we receive only by the active and passive obedience of Christ. If the Son took on the terms of the original covenant of works and if those terms offered disproportionate reward via pactum, then it stands to reason that what fits us for glory is not according to what is strictly congruous but only according to pactum unless something beyond the merit gained through the last Adam’s obedience is included.
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