One out of five Americans in a romantic relationship admits to cheating on a partner. Over half of cheating men claim to be happy in their marriage. Only a third of cheating women do. Happy or not, marriages rarely survive the discovery of infidelity. 85 percent of marriages end when a spouse learns their partner has cheated.

Sexual infidelity is not the only problem. Nearly half of American couples argue about money, according to Fidelity’s “2024 Couples and Money” study, and one out of four couples identify money as their greatest relationship challenge. When couples love money more than each other, their relationship cannot flourish.

Sex and money represent two of the biggest challenges to marriage in America. But America is not alone in this. Sexual and financial infidelity have devastated marriages around the world across the ages. The author of the Book of Hebrews, writing in the first century, understood this and warned against both in the context of talking about marriage.

“Marriage should be honored by all,” the author wrote, although “honored” is a secondary meaning of the word he used. It’s primary meaning is “valued.” It has the sense of putting a price on a thing. If someone organized a sale and put prices on each item, this is the Greek word that would describe what they were doing. A high price would value (or “honor”) an item more than a lower price.

To honor marriage, it is essential to set a high price on it. One must invest thought, time, and money into it. When a couple does this, other people – friends, family, co-workers, even bosses – are likely to honor their marriage too. But if they don’t honor their marriage, other people won’t honor it either. They may even expect them to dishonor their marriage, and that leads to the what follows: “…and the marriage bed kept pure for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral.” Affairs don’t start with a flirtation but with a failure to highly value one’s marriage.

But affairs are not the only evil that results from a failure to honor marriage. The author goes on to say, “Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have.” “Keep your lives free from the love of money,” translated literally, is “not a money-loving way of life.”

All of us have a way of life. A friend of mine was turned down for a position with the CIA because he was about to turn 34, and (at the time) that was their cut-off for hiring. They assumed that a 34-year-old had already been formed and his way of life set.

A successful marriage requires a person to be more supple than that. They must be able to make changes, regardless of their age, changes that reflect the high value they set on their marriage. The author of Hebrews understood that people who do not value their marriage leave room for a wedge – whether sexual immorality or money or something else – to be driven between them.

Though Hebrews was written for first century folk, the warnings against sexual immorality and a money-loving way of life speak to our day, when many people choose money over their spouse. They arrange their calendars, their work life, their family responsibilities, and their involvement in a church community so that they can keep company with money. They value money more highly than spouse and family.

The author of Hebrews spurns such a life and urges people to be content with what they have. The word translated “content” means more than “satisfied.” It carries the idea of self-sufficiency. Contented people believe that God has given them all that they need to be all they can be.

The phrase, be content with what you have, is literally, “in the present.” Many couples encounter marriage-ending obstacles because they cannot stop living in the past (which they cannot change) or in the future (which they cannot know). People who are trapped in the past or tyrannized by the future can never be content.

Faith makes contentment possible, faith in the God who said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5).