MARRIAGE, DIVORCE, AND REMARRIAGE MADE SIMPLE
Bible students can argue for hours about marriage, divorce, and remarriage. They gather in circles, compare word studies, dissect Greek verbs, try to dot every “i” and cross every “t,” and still walk away unable to agree on the “exact” rules. The reason is simple: the Bible was never written as a legal handbook filled with endless technicalities. If God had wanted to reveal His will in a detailed, legal code—He certainly knows how. Read Leviticus sometime. Every garment of the priest, every offering, every ceremony is spelled out with precision. Nothing is left to guesswork.
But the New Testament is different. It is a book of principles, not a book of legal codes. It does not attempt to anticipate every exception, every unusual circumstance, every situation that arises in life. If it were a book of laws, it would have to answer thousands of questions—questions no young person, no parent, no elder, no preacher could possibly memorize.
Jesus and the Pharisees
In Matthew 19 and Mark 10, Jesus is confronted with a legal question from the Pharisees: “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason?” They were not seeking God’s heart; they were trying to trap Him. They wanted technical rules so they could win arguments.
But Jesus did not give them a list of exceptions or a long legal code.
He took them back to one simple truth: “From the beginning it was not so.”
Marriage was meant to be faithful, permanent, rooted in God’s creation design.
Yes, Jesus acknowledged the Pharisees’ background—the practice of Deuteronomy 24, where men were divorcing their wives for shallow reasons and handing out certificates as if they were swapping property. But His point was not to address every possible situation. His point was to call people back to God’s heart: marriage was not meant to be thrown away.
When we try to slice and dice Jesus’ words into technical categories—when we try to turn His answer into a law code—we miss His intention entirely. The Lord did not write a Leviticus-style chapter on marriage. He answered the question in front of Him and pointed His listeners back to covenant faithfulness.
Why the New Testament Doesn’t Read Like Leviticus
Because the New Testament was written for people growing in Christ—not for a courtroom.
God could have given specific, binding regulations:
what to do if this happens,
what to do if that happens,
how many exceptions are allowed,
what counts as “legal,”
what counts as “invalid,”
—but He didn’t. Not because He forgot. Not because it slipped His mind.
But because He wants hearts shaped by love, repentance, humility, and faithfulness.
Think of how a priest lived under the old covenant. God told them exactly what to wear, when to wash, how to walk into the temple, how to handle every object they touched. The New Testament gives no such ceremonial instructions. Not for preachers, not for elders, not for married couples. Why? Because the new covenant is spiritual, internal, principle-driven, and heart-centered.
The Simple Principle: Be Faithful
When you set aside all the complicated debates—when you stop trying to read the New Testament as if it were a legal dictionary—the principle becomes remarkably simple:
Be faithful.
That is the heart of every passage on marriage.
Faithful to your spouse.
Faithful to your promises.
Faithful to Christ.
Faithful to purity, humility, and repentance.
That is why Jesus begins with creation. That is why Paul in Ephesians 5 points to Christ and the church. That is why the New Testament spends more time on how to love your spouse than on when you can leave them.
But What About Those Who Have Already Messed Up?
This is where the Bible stays beautifully consistent:
If you have sinned, repent. If you are broken, seek mercy. If you have failed, walk forward in faithfulness.
There is no such thing as a second-class Christian in the kingdom of God.
The gospel does not have a category called “unforgivable marriage mistakes.”
The pattern is always the same in Scripture:
When you sin—confess it.
When you repent—God forgives.
When you have made a mess—walk in newness of life.
When you have a marriage—be faithful in the one you are in.
The New Testament never commands a person to break their current marriage to fix a past one. It does not ask people to untangle years of human mistakes with legal precision. It simply calls us to live faithfully from this point forward—repentance, grace, and obedience walking hand in hand.
A Teenager Could Understand This
You could explain it like this:
God wants marriage to be faithful.
People sometimes break that faithfulness.
When they do, God wants repentance, honesty, and change.
After repentance, live faithfully from now on.
Don’t play legal games with God’s words—follow the principles of Jesus.
That’s it. Not a library of legal codes. Not a chart on the wall. Not a list of fifty exceptions.
Just the heart of God.
The Bottom Line
Marriage, divorce, and remarriage are real-life issues involving real people who carry real wounds. The New Testament gives principles—not exhaustive laws—because God is shaping hearts, not filling out legal forms.
So here is the simple truth the Bible gives us:
Be faithful. And if you have failed, repent, receive mercy, and be faithful from here on.
God meets us where we are, not where we should have been.
BDD
