Divorce and Remarriage:
A Position Paper
John Piper
July 21, l986
Background and Introduction
All of my adult life, until I was faced with the
necessity of dealing with divorce and remarriage in the pastoral
context, I held the prevailing Protestant view that remarriage after
divorce was Biblically sanctioned in cases where divorce had
resulted from desertion or persistent adultery. Only when I was
compelled, some years ago, in teaching through the gospel of Luke,
to deal with Jesus’ absolute statement in Luke 16:18 did I begin to
question that inherited position.
I felt an immense burden in having to teach our
congregation what the revealed will of God is in this matter of
divorce and remarriage. I was not unaware that among my people there
were those who had been divorced and remarried, and those who had
been divorced and remained unmarried, and those who were in the
process of divorce or contemplating it as a possibility. I knew that
this was not an academic exercise, but would immediately affect many
people very deeply.
I was also aware of the horrendous statistics in
our own country, as well as other Western countries, concerning the
number of marriages that were ending in divorce, and the numbers of
people who were forming second marriages and third marriages. In my
study of Ephesians 5, I had become increasingly persuaded that there
is a deep and profound significance to the union of husband and wife
in “one flesh” as a parable of the relationship between Christ and
his church.
All of these things conspired to create a sense
of solemnity and seriousness as I weighed the meaning and the
implication of the Biblical texts on divorce and remarriage. The
upshot of that crucial experience was the discovery of what I
believe is a New Testament prohibition of all remarriage except in
the case where a spouse has died. I do not claim to have seen or
said the last word on this issue, nor am I above correction, should
I prove to be wrong. I am aware that men more godly than I have
taken different views. Nevertheless, every person and church must
teach and live according to the dictates of its own conscience
informed by a serious study of Scripture.
Therefore this paper is an attempt to state my
own understanding of the issues and their foundation in Scripture.
It serves, then, as a Biblical rationale for why I feel constrained
to make the decisions I do with regard to whose marriages I will
perform and what sort of church discipline seems appropriate in
regard to divorce and remarriage.
If I were to give exhaustive expositions of each
relevant text the paper would become a very large book. Therefore,
what I plan to do is to give brief explanations of each of the
crucial texts with some key exegetical arguments. There will be, no
doubt, many questions that can be raised and I hope to be able to
learn from those questions, and do my best to answer them in the
discussion that will surround this paper.
It seems that the most efficient way to approach
the issue is to simply give a list of reasons, based on Biblical
texts, why I believe that the New Testament prohibits all remarriage
except where a spouse has died. So what follows is a list of such
arguments.
Eleven Reasons Why I Believe All Remarriage After Divorce Is
Prohibited While Both Spouses Are Alive
- Luke 16:18 calls all remarriage after divorce adultery.
Everyone who divorces his wife and marries
another commits adultery, and he who marries a woman divorced
from her husband commits adultery.
- This verse shows that Jesus does not recognize divorce
as terminating a marriage in God's sight. The reason a
second marriage is called adultery is because the first one
is considered to still be valid. So Jesus is taking a stand
against the Jewish culture in which all divorce was
considered to carry with it the right of remarriage.
- The second half of the verse shows that not merely the
divorcing man is guilty of adultery when he remarries, but
also any man who marries a divorced woman.
- Since there are no exceptions mentioned in the verse,
and since Jesus is clearly rejecting the common cultural
conception of divorce as including the right of remarriage,
the first readers of this gospel would have been hard-put to
argue for any exceptions on the basis that Jesus shared the
cultural assumption that divorce for unfaithfulness or
desertion freed a spouse for remarriage.
- Mark 10:11–12 call all remarriage after divorce adultery
whether it is the husband or the wife who does the divorcing.
And he said to them, ‘Whoever divorces his
wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if
she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits
adultery.’
- This text repeats the first half of Luke 16:18 but goes
farther and says that not only the man who divorces, but
also a woman who divorces, and then remarries is committing
adultery.
- As in Luke 16:18, there are no exceptions mentioned to
this rule.
- Mark 10:2-9 and Matthew 19:3-8 teach that Jesus rejected
the Pharisees’ justification of divorce from Deuteronomy 24:1
and reasserted the purpose of God in creation that no human
being separate what God has joined together.
Mark 10:2-9: 2) And some Pharisees came up
to Him, testing Him, and began to question Him whether it was
lawful for a man to divorce his wife. 3) And He answered and
said to them, "What did Moses command you?" 4) And they said,
"Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and
send her away." 5) But Jesus said to them, "Because of your
hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment. 6) But from the
beginning of creation, God made them male and female. 7) For
this cause a man shall leave his father and mother, 8) and the
two shall become one flesh; consequently they are no longer two,
but one flesh. 9) What therefore God has joined together, let no
man separate."
Matthew 19:3-9: 3) And some Pharisees came
to Him, testing Him, and saying, "Is it lawful for a man to
divorce his wife for any cause at all?" 4) And He answered and
said, "Have you not read, that He who created them from the
beginning made them male and female, 5) and said, 'For this
cause a man shall leave his father and mother, and shall cleave
to his wife; and the two shall become one flesh'? 6)
Consequently they are no more two, but one flesh. What therefore
God has joined together, let no man separate." 7) They said to
Him, "Why then did Moses command to give her a certificate and
divorce her?" 8) He said to them, "Because of your hardness of
heart, Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the
beginning it has not been this way. 9) And I say to you, whoever
divorces his wife, except for immorality, and marries another
commits adultery."
- In both Matthew and Mark the Pharisees come to Jesus and
test him by asking him whether it is lawful for a man to
divorce his wife. They evidently have in mind the passage in
Deuteronomy 24:1 which simply describes divorce as a fact
rather than giving any legislation in favor of it. They
wonder how Jesus will take a position with regard to this
passage.
- Jesus’ answer is, "For your hardness of heart Moses
allowed you to divorce your wives" (Mt. 19:8).
- But then Jesus criticizes the Pharisees' failure to
recognize in the books of Moses God's deepest and original
intention for marriage. So he quotes two passages from
Genesis. "God made them male and female. ...For this reason
a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his
wife, and the two shall become one flesh" (Genesis 1:27;
2:24).
- From these passages in Genesis Jesus concludes, "So they
are no longer two, but one." And then he makes his climaxing
statement, "What therefore God has joined together, let no
man put asunder."
- The implication is that Jesus rejects the Pharisees’ use
of Deuteronomy 24:1 and raises the standard of marriage for
his disciples to God's original intention in creation. He
says that none of us should try to undo the "one- flesh"
relationship which God has united.
- Before we jump to the conclusion that this absolute
statement should be qualified in view of the exception
clause ("except for unchastity") mentioned in Matthew 19:9,
we should seriously entertain the possibility that the
exception clause in Matthew 19:9 should be understood in the
light of the absolute statement of Matthew 19:6, ("let no
man put asunder") especially since the verses that follow
this conversation with the Pharisees in Mark 10 do not
contain any exception when they condemn remarriage. More on
this below.
- Matthew 5:32 does not teach that remarriage is lawful in
some cases. Rather it reaffirms that marriage after divorce is
adultery, even for those who have been divorced innocently, and
that a man who divorces his wife is guilty of the adultery of
her second marriage unless she had already become an adulteress
before the divorce.
But I say to you that everyone who divorces
his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, makes her an
adulteress; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits
adultery.
- Jesus assumes that in most situations in that culture a
wife who has been put away by a husband will be drawn into a
second marriage. Nevertheless, in spite of these pressures,
he calls this second marriage adultery.
- The remarkable thing about the first half of this verse
is that it plainly says that the remarriage of a wife who
has been innocently put away is nevertheless adultery:
"Everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of
unchastity, makes her (the innocent wife who has not been
unchaste) an adulteress." This is a clear statement, it
seems to me, that remarriage is wrong not merely when a
person is guilty in the process of divorce, but also when a
person is innocent. In other words, Jesus' opposition to
remarriage seems to be based on the unbreakableness of the
marriage bond by anything but death.
- I will save my explanation of the exception clause
("Except on the ground of unchastity") for later in the
paper, but for now, it may suffice to say that on the
traditional interpretation of the clause, it may simply mean
that a man makes his wife an adulteress except in the case
where she has made herself one.
- I would assume that since an innocent wife who is
divorced commits adultery when she remarries, therefore a
guilty wife who remarries after divorce is all the more
guilty. If one argues that this guilty woman is free to
remarry, while the innocent woman who has been put away is
not, just because the guilty woman's adultery has broken the
"one flesh" relationship, then one is put in the awkward
position of saying to an innocent divorced woman, "If you
now commit adultery it will be lawful for you to remarry."
This seems wrong for at least two reasons.
- It seems to elevate the physical act of sexual
intercourse to be the decisive element in marital union
and disunion.
- If sexual union with another breaks the marriage
bond and legitimizes remarriage, then to say that an
innocently divorced wife can't remarry (as Jesus does
say) assumes that her divorcing husband is not divorcing
to have sexual relations with another. This is a very
unlikely assumption. More likely is that Jesus does
assume some of these divorcing husbands will have sexual
relations with another woman, but still the wives they
have divorced may not remarry. Therefore, adultery does
not nullify the "one-flesh" relationship of marriage and
both the innocent and guilty spouses are prohibited from
remarriage in Matthew 5:32.
- l Corinthians 7:10-11 teaches that divorce is wrong but
that if it is inevitable the person who divorces should not
remarry.
10) To the married I give charge, not I but
the Lord, that the wife should not separate from her husband 11)
(but if she does, let her remain single or else be reconciled to
her husband)—and that the husband should not divorce his wife.
- When Paul says that this charge is not his but the
Lord's, I think he means that he is aware of a specific
saying from the historical Jesus which addressed this issue.
As a matter of fact, these verses look very much like Mark
10:11-12, because both the wife and the husband are
addressed. Also, remarriage seems to be excluded by verse ll
the same way it is excluded in Mark 10:11-12.
- Paul seems to be aware that separation will be
inevitable in certain cases. Perhaps he has in mind a
situation of unrepentant adultery, or desertion, or
brutality. But in such a case he says that the person who
feels constrained to separate should not seek remarriage but
remain single. And he reinforces the authority of this
statement by saying he has a word from the Lord. Thus Paul's
interpretation of Jesus' sayings is that remarriage should
not be pursued.
- As in Luke 16:18 and Mark 10:11-12 and Matthew 5:32,
this text does not explicitly entertain the possibility of
any exceptions to the prohibition of remarriage.
- l Corinthians 7:39 and Romans 7:1-3 teach that remarriage
is legitimate only after the death of a spouse.
1 Corinthians 7:39, A wife is bound to her
husband as long as he lives. If the husband dies, she is free to
be married to whom she wishes, only in the Lord.
Romans 7:1-3, Do you not know, brethren—for
I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law is binding
on a person only during his life? 2) Thus a married woman is
bound by law to her husband as long as he lives; but if her
husband dies she is discharged from the law concerning her
husband. 3) Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she
lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her
husband dies she is free from that law, if she marries another
man she is not an adulteress.
- Both of these passages (l Corinthians 7:39; Romans 7:2)
say explicitly that a woman is bound to her husband as long
as he lives. No exceptions are explicitly mentioned that
would suggest she could be free from her husband to remarry
on any other basis.
- Matthew 19:10-12 teaches that special Christian grace is
given by God to Christ's disciples to sustain them in singleness
when they renounce remarriage according to the law of Christ.
10) The disciples said to him, 'If such is
the case of a man with his wife, it is not expedient to marry.'
ll) But he said to them, 'Not all men can receive this precept,
but only those to whom it is given. 12) For there are eunuches
who have been so from birth, and there are eunuches who have
been made eunuches by men, and there are eunuches who have made
themselves eunuches for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. He
who is able to receive this, let him receive it.
- Just preceding this passage in Matthew 19:9 Jesus
prohibited all remarriage after divorce. (I will deal with
the meaning of "except for immorality" below.) This seemed
like an intolerable prohibition to Jesus' disciples: If you
close off every possibility of remarriage, then you make
marriage so risky that it would be better not to marry,
since you might be "trapped" to live as a single person to
the rest of your life or you may be "trapped" in a bad
marriage.
- Jesus does not deny the tremendous difficulty of his
command. Instead, he says in verse ll, that the enablement
to fulfill the command not to remarry is a divine gift to
his disciples. Verse 12 is an argument that such a life is
indeed possible because there are people who for the sake of
the kingdom, as well as lower reasons, have dedicated
themselves to live a life of singleness.
- Jesus is not saying that some of his disciples have the
ability to obey his command not to remarry and some don't.
He is saying that the mark of a disciple is that they
receive a gift of continence while non-disciples don't. The
evidence for this is l) the parallel between Matthew 19:11
and 13:11, 2) the parallel between Matthew 19:12 and
13:9,43; 11:15, and 3) the parallel between Matthew 19:11
and 19:26.
- Deuteronomy 24:1-4 does not legislate grounds for divorce
but teaches that the "one-flesh" relationship established by
marriage is not obliterated by divorce or even by remarriage.
1) When a man takes a wife and marries her,
and it happens that she finds no favor in his eyes because he
has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate
of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out from his
house, 2) and she leaves his house and goes and becomes another
man's wife, 3) and if the latter husband turns against her and
writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and
sends her out of his house, or if the latter husband dies who
took her to be his wife, 4) then her former husband who sent her
away is not allowed to take her again to be his wife, since she
has been defiled; for that is an abomination before the LORD,
and you shall not bring sin on the land which the LORD your God
gives you as an inheritance.
- The remarkable thing about these four verses is that,
while divorce is taken for granted, nevertheless the woman
who is divorced becomes "defiled" by her remarriage (verse
4). It may well be that when the Pharisees asked Jesus if
divorce was legitimate he based his negative answer not only
on God's intention expressed in Genesis 1:27 and 2:24, but
also on the implication of Deuteronomy 24:4 that remarriage
after divorce defiles a person. In other words, there were
ample clues in the Mosaic law that the divorce concession
was on the basis of the hardness of man's heart and really
did not make divorce and remarriage legitimate.
- The prohibition of a wife returning to her first husband
even after her second husband dies (because it is an
abomination) suggests very strongly that today no second
marriage should be broken up in order to restore a first one
(for Heth and Wenham's explanation of this see Jesus and
Divorce, page 110).
- l Corinthians 7:15 does not mean that when a Christian is
deserted by an unbelieving spouse he or she is free to remarry.
It means that the Christian is not bound to fight in order to
preserve togetherness. Separation is permissible if the
unbelieving partner insists on it.
If the unbelieving partner desires to
separate, let it be so; in such a case the brother or sister is
not bound. For God has called us to peace.
- There are several reasons why the phrase "is not bound"
should not be construed to mean "is free to remarry."
- Marriage is an ordinance of creation binding on all of
God's human creatures, irrespective of their faith or lack
of faith.
- The word used for "bound" (douloo) in verse 15 is not
the same word used in verse 39 where Paul says, "A wife is
bound (deo) to her husband as long as he lives." Paul
consistently uses deo when speaking of the legal aspect of
being bound to one marriage partner (Romans 7:2; l
Corinthians 7:39), or to one's betrothed (l Corinthians
7:27). But when he refers to a deserted spouse not being
bound in l Corinthians 7:15, he chooses a different word
(douloo) which we would expect him to do if he were not
giving a deserted spouse the same freedom to remarry that he
gives to a spouse whose partner has died (verse 39).
- The last phrase of verse 15 ("God has called us to
peace") supports verse 15 best if Paul is saying that a
deserted partner is not "bound to make war" on the deserting
unbeliever to get him or her to stay. It seems to me that
the peace God has called us to is the peace of marital
harmony. Therefore, if the unbelieving partner insists on
departing, then the believing partner is not bound to live
in perpetual conflict with the unbelieving spouse, but is
free and innocent in letting him or her go.
- This interpretation also preserves a closer harmony to
the intention of verses 10-11, where an inevitable
separation does not result in the right of remarriage.
- 1 Corinthians 7:27-28 does not teach the right of
divorced persons to remarry. It teaches that betrothed virgins
should seriously consider the life of singleness, but do not sin
if they marry.
27) Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to
be free. Are you free from a wife? Do not seek marriage. 28) But
if you marry, you do not sin, and if a virgin marries, she does
not sin.
- Recently some people have argued that this passage deals
with divorced people because in verse 27 Paul asks, "Are you
free (literally: loosed) from a wife?" Some have assumed
that he means, "Are you divorced?" Thus he would be saying
in verse 28 that it is not sin when divorced people remarry.
There are several reasons why this interpretation is most
unlikely.
- Verse 25 signals that Paul is beginning a new section
and dealing with a new issue. He says, "Now concerning the
virgins (ton parthenon) I have no command of the Lord, but I
give my opinion as one who by the Lord's mercy is
trustworthy." He has already dealt with the problem of
divorced people in verses 10-16. Now he takes up a new issue
about those who are not yet married, and he signals this by
saying, "Now concerning the virgins." Therefore, it is very
unlikely that the people referred to in verses 27 and 28 are
divorced.
- A flat statement that it is not sin for divorced people
to be remarried (verse 28) would contradict verse ll, where
he said that a woman who has separated from her husband
should remain single.
- Verse 36 is surely describing the same situation in view
in verses 27 and 28, but clearly refers to a couple that is
not yet married. "If anyone thinks that he is not behaving
properly toward his virgin, if his passions are strong, and
it has to be, let him do as he wishes: let them marry—it is
no sin." This is the same as verse 28 where Paul says, "But
if you marry, you do not sin."
- The reference in verse 27 to being bound to a "wife" may
be misleading because it may suggest that the man is already
married. But in Greek the word for wife is simply "woman"
and may refer to a man's betrothed as well as his spouse.
The context dictates that the reference is to a man's
betrothed virgin, not to his spouse. So "being bound" and
"being loosed" have reference to whether a person is
betrothed or not.
- It is significant that the verb Paul uses for "loosed"
(luo) or "free" is not a word that he uses for divorce.
Paul's words for divorce are chorizo (verses
10,11,15; cf. Matthew 19:6) and aphelia (verses
11,12,13).
- The exception clause of Matthew 19:9 need not imply that
divorce on account of adultery frees a person to be remarried.
All the weight of the New Testament evidence given in the
preceding ten points is against this view, and there are several
ways to make good sense out of this verse so that it does not
conflict with the broad teaching of the New Testament that
remarriage after divorce is prohibited.
And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife,
except for immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.
- Several years ago I taught our congregation in two
evening services concerning my understanding of this verse
and argued that "except for immorality" did not refer to
adultery but to premarital sexual fornication which a man or
a woman discovers in the betrothed partner. Since that time
I have discovered other people who hold this view and who
have given it a much more scholarly exposition than I did. I
have also discovered numerous other ways of understanding
this verse which also exclude the legitimacy of remarriage.
Several of these are summed up in William Heth and Gordon J.
Wenham, Jesus and Divorce (Nelson: 1984).
- Here I will simply give a brief summary of my own view
of Matthew 19:9 and how I came to it.
I began, first of all, by being troubled
that the absolute form of Jesus' denunciation of divorce and
remarriage in Mark 10:11,12 and Luke 16:18 is not preserved
by Matthew, if in fact his exception clause is a loophole
for divorce and remarriage. I was bothered by the simple
assumption that so many writers make that Matthew is simply
making explicit something that would have been implicitly
understood by the hearers of Jesus or the readers of Mark 10
and Luke 16.
Would they really have assumed that the
absolute statements included exceptions? I have very strong
doubts, and therefore my inclination is to inquire whether
or not in fact Matthew's exception clause conforms to the
absoluteness of Mark and Luke.
The second thing that began to disturb
me was the question, Why does Matthew use the word porneia
("except for immorality") instead of the word moicheia which
means adultery? Almost all commentators seem to make the
simple assumption again that porneia means adultery in this
context. The question nags at me why Matthew would not use
the word for adultery, if that is in fact what he meant.
Then I noticed something very
interesting. The only other place besides Matthew 5:32 and
19:9 where Matthew uses the word porneia is in 15:19 where
it is used alongside of moicheia. Therefore, the primary
contextual evidence for Matthew's usage is that he conceives
of porneia as something different than adultery. Could this
mean, then, that Matthew conceives of porneia in its normal
sense of fornication or incest (l Corinthians 5:1) rather
than adultery?
A. Isaksson agrees with this view of
porneia and sums up his research much like this on pages
134-5 of Marriage and Ministry:
Thus we cannot get away from the fact
that the distinction between what was to be regarded as
porneia and what was to be regarded as moicheia was very
strictly maintained in pre-Christian Jewish literature and
in the N.T. Porneia may, of course, denote different forms
of forbidden sexual relations, but we can find no
unequivocal examples of the use of this word to denote a
wife's adultery. Under these circumstances we can hardly
assume that this word means adultery in the clauses in
Matthew. The logia on divorce are worded as a paragraph of
the law, intended to be obeyed by the members of the Church.
Under these circumstances it is inconceivable that in a text
of this nature the writer would not have maintained a clear
distinction between what was unchastity and what was
adultery: moicheia and not porneia was used to describe the
wife's adultery. From the philological point of view there
are accordingly very strong arguments against this
interpretation of the clauses as permitting divorce in the
case in which the wife was guilty of adultery.
The next clue in my search for an
explanation came when I stumbled upon the use of porneia in
John 8:41 where Jewish leaders indirectly accuse Jesus of
being born of porneia. In other words, since they don't
accept the virgin birth, they assume that Mary had committed
fornication and Jesus was the result of this act. On the
basis of that clue I went back to study Matthew's record of
Jesus' birth in Matthew 1:18-20. This was extremely
enlightening.
In these verses Joseph and Mary are
referred to as husband (aner) and wife (gunaika). Yet they
are described as only being betrothed to each other. This is
probably owing to the fact that the words for husband and
wife are simply man and woman and to the fact that betrothal
was a much more significant commitment then than engagement
is today. In verse 19 Joseph resolves "to divorce" Mary. The
word for divorce is the same as the word in Matthew 5:32 and
19:9. But most important of all, Matthew says that Joseph
was "just" in making the decision to divorce Mary,
presumably on account of her porneia, fornication.
Therefore, as Matthew proceeded to
construct the narrative of his gospel, he finds himself in
chapter 5 and then later in chapter 19 needing to prohibit
all remarriage after divorce (as taught by Jesus) and yet to
allow for "divorces" like the one Joseph contemplated toward
his betrothed whom he thought guilty of fornication
(porneia). Therefore, Matthew includes the exception clause
in particular to exonerate Joseph, but also in general to
show that the kind of "divorce" that one might pursue during
a betrothal on account of fornication is not included in
Jesus' absolute prohibition.
A common objection to this
interpretation is that both in Matthew 19:3-8 and in Matthew
5:31-32 the issue Jesus is responding to is marriage not
betrothal. The point is pressed that "except for
fornication" is irrelevant to the context of marriage.
My answer is that this irrelevancy is
just the point Matthew wants to make. We may take it for
granted that the breakup of an engaged couple over
fornication is not an evil "divorce" and does not prohibit
remarriage. But we cannot assume that Matthew's readers
would take this for granted.
Even in Matthew 5:32, where it seems
pointless for us to exclude "the case of fornication" (since
we can't see how a betrothed virgin could be "made an
adulteress" in any case), it may not be pointless for
Matthew's readers. For that matter, it may not be pointless
for any readers: if Jesus had said, "Every man who divorces
his woman makes her an adulteress," a reader could
legitimately ask: "Then was Joseph about to make Mary an
adulteress?" We may say this question is not reasonable
since we think you can't make unmarried women adulteresses.
But it certainly is not meaningless or, perhaps for some
readers, pointless, for Matthew to make explicit the obvious
exclusion of the case of fornication during betrothal.
This interpretation of the exception
clause has several advantages: l) it does not force Matthew
to contradict the plain, absolute meaning of Mark and Luke
and the whole range of New Testament teaching set forth
above in sections 1-10, including Matthew's own absolute
teaching in 19:3-8; 2) it provides an explanation for why
the word porneia is used in Matthew's exception clause
instead of moicheia; 3) it squares with Matthew's own use of
porneia for fornication in Matthew 15:19; 4) it fits the
demands of Matthew's wider context concerning Joseph's
contemplated divorce.
Since I first wrote this exposition of
Matthew 19:9 I have discovered a chapter on this view in
Heth and Wenham, Jesus and Divorce and a scholarly defense
of it by A. Isaksson, Marriage and Ministry in the New
Temple (1965).
Conclusions and Applications
In the New Testament the question about remarriage after divorce
is not determined by:
- the guilt or innocence of either spouse,
- nor by whether either spouse is a believer or not,
- nor by whether the divorce happened before or after either
spouse's conversion,
- nor by the ease or difficulty of living as a single parent
for the rest of life on earth,
- nor by whether there is adultery or desertion involved,
- nor by the on-going reality of the hardness of the human
heart,
- nor by the cultural permissiveness of the surrounding
society.
Rather it is determined by the fact that:
- marriage is a "one-flesh" relationship of divine
establishment and extraordinary significance in the eyes of God
(Genesis 2:24; Matthew 19:5; Mark 10:8),
- only God, not man, can end this one-flesh relationship
(Matthew 19:6; Mark 10:9 — this is why remarriage is called
adultery by Jesus: he assumes that the first marriage is still
binding, Matthew 5:32; Luke 16:18; Mark 10:11),
- God ends the one-flesh relationship of marriage only through
the death of one of the spouses (Romans 7:1-3; 1 Corinthians
7:39),
- the grace and power of God are promised and sufficient to
enable a trusting, divorced Christian to be single all this
earthly life if necessary (Matthew 19:10-12,26; 1 Corinthians
10:13), and
- temporal frustrations and disadvantages are much to be
preferred over the disobedience of remarriage, and will yield
deep and lasting joy both in this life and the life to come
(Matthew 5:29-30).
Those who are already remarried:
- should acknowledge that the choice to remarry and the act of
entering a second marriage was sin, and confess it as such and
seek forgiveness;
- should not attempt to return to the first partner after
entering a second union (see 8.2 above);
- should not separate and live as single people thinking that
this would result in less sin because all their sexual relations
are acts of adultery. The Bible does not give prescriptions for
this particular case, but it does treat second marriages as
having significant standing in God's eyes. That is, there were
promises made and there has been a union formed. It should not
have been formed, but it was. It is not to be taken lightly.
Promises are to be kept, and the union is to be sanctified to
God. While not the ideal state, staying in a second marriage is
God's will for a couple and their ongoing relations should not
be looked on as adulterous.
© Richard Gelina
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