MARRIAGE, DIVORCE AND REMARRIAGE (1) — LAYING THE GROUNDWORK

God does not deal in guilt. The devil does. And yet, when it comes to considerations concerning marriage, and, particularly, divorce and remarriage, many believers are bound by guilt and overcome with despair. And what many religious  leaders teach does not help or bring any light on the matter. It just causes more guilt and confusion.

In this series of articles about marriage, divorce, and remarriage (MDR), we will seek to provide some biblical clarity on these issues. Believers need to be focused on Jesus, and when you are distracted by worry over certain doctrines because of things that misguided people have taught, then we need to deal with that and get that out of your head so that you can return to a Christ-centered focus on His grace and His love as you move forward with your life.

One of the most common errors in some circles on this matter is the teaching that if a person gets remarried after a divorce then it is possible for them to “live in sin” with their new spouse. Some even refer to this as an on-going state of “living in adultery.” Did Jesus or the apostles teach any such thing? No, they did not.

Listen to some preachers and teachers talk, to some of the self-assigned “defenders of the faith,” and you will find a doctrine that goes like this: If a Christian woman, who is faithful to her husband, starts being abused by him verbally and even physically, and she divorces him for those reasons, she can never get remarried as long as she lives. She may be twenty-five years old when she has to leave the marriage because of the abuse. Doesn’t matter. To legalistic “Bible teachers,” she can never, with God’s approval, get married again. That is what these brethren believe.

They also believe this: A young man and woman get married right out of high school, and it doesn’t work out. Neither of them committed adultery; they were just too immature when they married, and so they divorce and go their separate ways.

The young woman later finds a good man, they get married and have five children. Years later, she and her husband come to Jesus Christ for salvation and decide to live the Christian life. According to these teachers, this couple would have to get divorced to even become Christians because they are “living in an adulterous marriage.”

You have to repent of your sins, after all, to be saved, and since—according to these teachers—this whole marriage is a sin (because you can only get divorced if your spouse “cheats on you” sexually), then in order to repent of their sins, they must divorce. They are “not married in the eyes of God” but are only “living in adultery.”

But they have five kids! Doesn’t matter. It would not matter if the couple had been married for sixty-five years and had twenty grandchildren. Legalism doesn’t care what it does to people’s lives. It’s all about obeying “the rules.” The man-made rules.

People with good sense hear this and think, “Who could possibly believe this foolishness?” But believe me, they claim to believe it and they do believe it. And they preach it and they break up families over it.

They also believe this: If a man divorces his wife because he doesn’t like her anymore, he can never get married again. But if, instead of divorcing her, he murders her, then he CAN get married again, because he “has no living wife.”

Very few of them are honest enough to admit that this is what they believe, unless you press them hard on it, but it is. They cannot avoid this position, because it is the only logical conclusion to the positions they have taken.

According to them, the fact is, his wife is dead (even though he is the one who killed her), and death is, according to their doctrine, one of the only two reasons God gave for a marriage to end (adultery being the other one). So regardless of how she died, she is dead. And if he repents of his sin of murder, he can marry again and be perfectly fine in the sight of God in his new marriage. And even if he does not repent of the murder, his new marriage is still an acceptable marriage in “the eyes of God” even if he is not saved.

Maybe through a “pen pal program” in the prison, he meets the right woman and marries her. That is acceptable to God. So the man who murdered his wife can get married again, but the woman who divorced her husband because he was abusive can never get married again.

So this horrible view, ultimately, says it is better to murder your spouse than to just divorce them. I am telling you, these kinds of MDR doctrines are nuts.

That is the fruit of the belief that “God gave only two reasons for a marriage to end: adultery or death.” If your marriage did not end for one of those two reasons, then you can never get married again. If your marriage did end for one of those two reasons, then you are good to go. Provided, that is, that you are not the one who committed adultery.

You see, the “guilty party” who committed the adultery can be divorced by his or her mate, and that mate is free to go and find a new husband or wife. But the “guilty party” (another man-made term) cannot repent of their adultery and decide to do better in a future marriage. They can never get married again. Why? Because to do so would put them in a position where they would be living in an “adulterous marriage.”

Now, even people who don’t study the Bible know what adultery is and that it has to be committed against a mate. If two “unmarried” people have sex, no one would say that they are committing adultery. You have to have a mate to commit adultery. You have to be married to commit adultery. Two single people cannot commit adultery. They commit fornication. But only someone with a spouse can commit adultery. If a person has no spouse, then they cannot commit adultery against the spouse that they do not have.

It is difficult to keep a moderate attitude when dealing with something so foolish, and I hate to lay it out in such plain terms because it shows the utter stupidity to which these views lead. But it must be done. Anything that leads to an illogical conclusion is not a logical position. Any teaching that leads to error is erroneous teaching. We will consider this matter further.

    Bryan Dewayne Dunaway