Marriage, Divorce and remarriage
This was written by a friend of mine. To be clear, I do NOT support what happens way to often in the church. I do NOT support multiple divorces because of selfish, childish behavior. God looks on the heart. I do however see that the Bible allows for a man or woman to serve even if they, due to uncontrollable circumstances, have experienced divorce, and have been remarried.
First of all, let’s be honest with I Timothy 3:2 - it says “a bishop (that’s a pastor, not a preacher, evangelist, or anyone else) then must BE…” (emphasis mine). The word ‘be’ is present tense and has no reference to the past or future. So this verse has nothing to say about whether a pastor has been married before, only how many wives he has now. And it has no application to anyone except a “bishop”, or pastor.
The argument would then be, “If a man has been married before and is now divorced, that woman is still his wife”, which apparently comes from a misinterpretation of Romans 7:2-3. This passage says “the woman WHICH HATH AN HUSBAND is bound by the law to her husband so long as he liveth” (emphasis mine). If a woman is married, she has a husband, and she is bound to her husband so long as he liveth. If a woman is righteously divorced, she no longer hath a husband, so she is not under bondage. [This passage is not even giving instructions on marriage – it is about a New Testament Christian’s freedom from bondage to the law. In spite of that fact, some people use this very passage – which is about our liberty - to bring people under bondage to some fabricated New Testament Law of their own making. The new covenant was not God replacing the bondage to O.T. law with a bondage to some N.T. law, but rather, his word being written in our hearts, that we should serve Christ in newness of spirit and not in the oldness of the letter.]
Jesus told the woman at the well, “Thou hast well said, I have no husband: For thou hast HAD five husbands” (emphasis mine). Jesus said she had had five husbands – past tense. If what some people believe was true, Jesus would have said “You HAVE five husbands” in the present tense. But he said she HAD five husbands in the past. Also, Jesus said “What God hath joined together, LET not man put asunder” (emphasis mine). He could have said “What therefore God hath joined together man CANNOT put asunder”, but he didn’t; the fact is not that a marriage cannot be ended, but that IN A SINLESS WORLD (“from the beginning”:Eden) the ideal is that it shouldn’t be ended. That was Jesus point when he said that “For the hardness of men’s hearts was this commandment given, but from the beginning it was not so.” Jesus wasn’t saying, “Oops! I made a mistake by permitting divorce in the O.T., so let me correct myself.” He did not change his word – he explained to them that it is only because we live in a sinful world and man’s heart is hard that divorce is permitted, but it’s not good most of the time (the LORD hates putting away) and he pointed out to them that if they were replacing their wives for no good reason, it was a sinful act of their hard hearts.
The rule is that marriage is a man and a woman till death do them part. But, as with most rules, there are exceptions to the rule. “Thou shalt not kill” is the rule – war, capital punishment, and self-defense are exceptions to that rule. The LORD hates putting away (Malachi 2:16), but Ezra said it was God’s pleasure for the Israelites to separate themselves from and then to put away (divorce) the wives and children of interracial marriages in Ezra chapter 10. This shows CLEARLY that it is not always God’s will for a marriage to stay together. And in Isaiah 50:1, God said HE was divorced!
As we spoke of after the thanksgiving fellowship supper, Jesus cuts through the externals and gets to the heart of the matter. Divorce is permitted in certain circumstances, but don’t use that to try to excuse a wrong heart; don’t use your liberty as an occasion for the flesh. Take my circumstance, for instance: God knows I have done right by my wife (generally, not perfectly) and done nearly everything I could to help her to walk with God, to be happy, and to have a good home: but the whole time she has fought against me like a dog pulling against a leash. I kept on trying and would still be trying if she had not left; but now that she has left, according to I Corinthians 7:15 (“But if the unbelieving depart, let him depart. A brother or a sister is not under bondage in such cases: but God hath called us to peace.”), I’m not under bondage. What bondage am I not under? Look at the context – v. 27 & 39 tell us the bondage he means. I am no longer bound to my wife till death and am free to be married to whom I will; only in the Lord. God sees I did all I could and she just left cause she didn’t want to live right, so he is not going to withhold from me the God-given means of abstaining from fornication (I Cor 7:2) because she excercised her free will against the will of God – neither is God going to deprive my children of a mother-figure because of my wife’s wickedness. Now she is in jail for DUI, drug possession, etcetera – does anyone really think it is God’s will for a man trying to serve the Lord and three small children to be constantly subjected to the instability of living with an unrepentant drug addict and alcohol user who constantly lies and steals? I was wrong for marrying her in the first place, just as the Israelites were wrong for marrying the foreign women; it was God’s pleasure that they divorce those women so they could get back to serving him – is it not possible that it could be God’s will for me to let this woman go and give her the freedom she desires so I can go on serving God? According to I Corinthians 7:15, I am to let her go.
Some people say that Paul is excepting some of I Cor 7 from inspiration, but that would contradict the “all” in II Tim 3:16. Is it possible that he is saying that he is covering things that the Lord did not cover while on earth? Whatever he is saying, v. 40 says “and I think also that I have the Spirit of God”, which reminds me that it IS inspired, for Paul “spake as he was moved by the Holy Ghost”. To take what Jesus said about marriage in Matthew 5:31 & 19:3-9, Mark 10:2-12, and Luke 16:18 without taking what the rest of scripture says about the same subject, is like a hyper-calvinist taking “gave his life a ransom for MANY” (emphasis mine) without taking the rest of the scriptures that tell us Jesus died for ALL.
If a preacher cannot be “double-married” (a wholly man-made, unscriptural term), why is another name for the Book of Ecclesiastes, written by a man who had 700 wives and 300 concubines, “The Preacher”.
Since David – a man with more than one wife AND a man who had committed adultery – was used of God to WRITE scripture AFTER his polygamy and adultery, isn’t it then reasonable to think that the Holy Spirit will use another man who has been divorced and remarried to PREACH the scriptures he used David to WRITE? God forgave David of adultery UNDER THE LAW and used him for the holiest of all tasks: writing scripture. Why should we think that, UNDER GRACE, God will not also forgive a man the same sin and use a forgiven adulterer to preach what a forgiven adulterer wrote? There is not a single scripture that would make a man think that a forgiven adulterer could not preach – that thought comes from “wresting the scriptures” to mean something they don’t actually say, and from ignoring other scriptures.
Brother Paul said by the Holy Ghost, “The one preach Christ of contention, not sincerely, supposing to add affliction to my bonds…notwithstanding, every way, whether in pretence, or in truth, Christ is preached; and I therein do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice.” Now, if the Spirit of Christ is to rejoice when Christ is preached, even by men who were not sincere (surely they were not saved, if their intent was to make Paul’s life harder), how then do some men today actively oppose and insult men who are SINCERELY preaching Christ, just because of something that happened in their past? There is no doubt Paul would rejoice at the preaching of Brother Bobby Utley, but it makes some brothers mad!
I don’t know if you are aware of Brother Utley’s situation or not, but his first wife left him BECAUSE HE GOT SAVED AND STARTING LIVING FOR THE LORD, he stayed completely abstinent (no dates, girlfriends, or fornication) for 12 years, then he met Memory (a 40 year old virgin) and they got married. Some Pharisees told Brother Utley that he couldn’t preach because he didn’t have a wife (before he married Memory) and then told him he couldn’t preach when he got remarried because he now had two wives! Since when does 0+1=2? One of these modern day Pharisees called him “a double married whoremonger” on the radio; how can you call a man a whoremonger who stayed alone for 12 years and then married a virgin? Where’s the whore? This whole ‘double-married’ issue has less to do with what the scripture says than it does with men who “trust in themselves that they are righteous, and despise others”, and who want to condemn other brothers in Christ to make themselves look and feel better than somebody else – and that is the same spirit that caused Satan to fall. I praise God I don’t see that spirit in you. As a matter of fact, I think you see it in others and it disgusts you because you know it’s not the Spirit of God. I believe you see the self-righteousness in some of these brothers and you know it’s wrong. I believe it stems from their misunderstanding of the scripture. I heard a brother preach a sermon, and the entire sermon revealed his belief that adultery is an unpardonable sin, then at the end he said it wasn’t. But that is the way they preach and feel. I guess they have some sort of religious loophole they use to get out of Matthew 5:28! My Bible says, under the New Covenant, “the blood of Jesus Christ his son cleanseth us from ALL sin”.
Luke 9:49-50 “And John answered and said, Master, we saw one casting out devils in thy name; and we forbad him, because he followeth not with us. And Jesus said unto him, Forbid him not: for he that is not against us is for us.”
Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest: for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things. For whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. Thou that sayest a man should not commit adultery, dost thou commit adultery? But we are sure that the judgment of God is according to truth against them which commit such things. And thinkest thou this, O man, that judgest them which do such things, and doest the same, that thou shalt escape the judgment of God? For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers. And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted.
I am persuaded that the blood of Jesus is sufficient and that it does indeed cleanse us from ALL sin, including adultery and fornication. I believe that to go to an Old Testament scripture to try to negate a New Testament truth is very wrong – especially when the truth has to do with the blood of Jesus and its’ sufficiency. I am saved, justified, kept, and I bear the righteousness of Jesus Christ God’s Son for one reason and one reason alone: he shed his blood for me and that is what I’m trusting in. My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and his righteousness, for all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags.
Satan is the one who wants to destroy men of God who are preaching the truth, and it is Satan who would influence us to do the same. I believe he has deceived many sincere men who love God into taking this position, just as he has deceived many sincere men of God into believing in limited atonement. But we are not here to please man or to fit into some little click
Well, Brother Munson, there it is. I’ve done my best to help you to understand what I believe and why I believe it. If what I believe is true, I hope and pray you will receive it readily, regardless of what some of the brethren will say. If I am wrong, I pray God will send me the truth and give me the grace and humility to receive it, regardless of what some of the brethren say.
First of all, let’s be honest with I Timothy 3:2 - it says “a bishop (that’s a pastor, not a preacher, evangelist, or anyone else) then must BE…” (emphasis mine). The word ‘be’ is present tense and has no reference to the past or future. So this verse has nothing to say about whether a pastor has been married before, only how many wives he has now. And it has no application to anyone except a “bishop”, or pastor.
The argument would then be, “If a man has been married before and is now divorced, that woman is still his wife”, which apparently comes from a misinterpretation of Romans 7:2-3. This passage says “the woman WHICH HATH AN HUSBAND is bound by the law to her husband so long as he liveth” (emphasis mine). If a woman is married, she has a husband, and she is bound to her husband so long as he liveth. If a woman is righteously divorced, she no longer hath a husband, so she is not under bondage. [This passage is not even giving instructions on marriage – it is about a New Testament Christian’s freedom from bondage to the law. In spite of that fact, some people use this very passage – which is about our liberty - to bring people under bondage to some fabricated New Testament Law of their own making. The new covenant was not God replacing the bondage to O.T. law with a bondage to some N.T. law, but rather, his word being written in our hearts, that we should serve Christ in newness of spirit and not in the oldness of the letter.]
Jesus told the woman at the well, “Thou hast well said, I have no husband: For thou hast HAD five husbands” (emphasis mine). Jesus said she had had five husbands – past tense. If what some people believe was true, Jesus would have said “You HAVE five husbands” in the present tense. But he said she HAD five husbands in the past. Also, Jesus said “What God hath joined together, LET not man put asunder” (emphasis mine). He could have said “What therefore God hath joined together man CANNOT put asunder”, but he didn’t; the fact is not that a marriage cannot be ended, but that IN A SINLESS WORLD (“from the beginning”:Eden) the ideal is that it shouldn’t be ended. That was Jesus point when he said that “For the hardness of men’s hearts was this commandment given, but from the beginning it was not so.” Jesus wasn’t saying, “Oops! I made a mistake by permitting divorce in the O.T., so let me correct myself.” He did not change his word – he explained to them that it is only because we live in a sinful world and man’s heart is hard that divorce is permitted, but it’s not good most of the time (the LORD hates putting away) and he pointed out to them that if they were replacing their wives for no good reason, it was a sinful act of their hard hearts.
The rule is that marriage is a man and a woman till death do them part. But, as with most rules, there are exceptions to the rule. “Thou shalt not kill” is the rule – war, capital punishment, and self-defense are exceptions to that rule. The LORD hates putting away (Malachi 2:16), but Ezra said it was God’s pleasure for the Israelites to separate themselves from and then to put away (divorce) the wives and children of interracial marriages in Ezra chapter 10. This shows CLEARLY that it is not always God’s will for a marriage to stay together. And in Isaiah 50:1, God said HE was divorced!
As we spoke of after the thanksgiving fellowship supper, Jesus cuts through the externals and gets to the heart of the matter. Divorce is permitted in certain circumstances, but don’t use that to try to excuse a wrong heart; don’t use your liberty as an occasion for the flesh. Take my circumstance, for instance: God knows I have done right by my wife (generally, not perfectly) and done nearly everything I could to help her to walk with God, to be happy, and to have a good home: but the whole time she has fought against me like a dog pulling against a leash. I kept on trying and would still be trying if she had not left; but now that she has left, according to I Corinthians 7:15 (“But if the unbelieving depart, let him depart. A brother or a sister is not under bondage in such cases: but God hath called us to peace.”), I’m not under bondage. What bondage am I not under? Look at the context – v. 27 & 39 tell us the bondage he means. I am no longer bound to my wife till death and am free to be married to whom I will; only in the Lord. God sees I did all I could and she just left cause she didn’t want to live right, so he is not going to withhold from me the God-given means of abstaining from fornication (I Cor 7:2) because she excercised her free will against the will of God – neither is God going to deprive my children of a mother-figure because of my wife’s wickedness. Now she is in jail for DUI, drug possession, etcetera – does anyone really think it is God’s will for a man trying to serve the Lord and three small children to be constantly subjected to the instability of living with an unrepentant drug addict and alcohol user who constantly lies and steals? I was wrong for marrying her in the first place, just as the Israelites were wrong for marrying the foreign women; it was God’s pleasure that they divorce those women so they could get back to serving him – is it not possible that it could be God’s will for me to let this woman go and give her the freedom she desires so I can go on serving God? According to I Corinthians 7:15, I am to let her go.
Some people say that Paul is excepting some of I Cor 7 from inspiration, but that would contradict the “all” in II Tim 3:16. Is it possible that he is saying that he is covering things that the Lord did not cover while on earth? Whatever he is saying, v. 40 says “and I think also that I have the Spirit of God”, which reminds me that it IS inspired, for Paul “spake as he was moved by the Holy Ghost”. To take what Jesus said about marriage in Matthew 5:31 & 19:3-9, Mark 10:2-12, and Luke 16:18 without taking what the rest of scripture says about the same subject, is like a hyper-calvinist taking “gave his life a ransom for MANY” (emphasis mine) without taking the rest of the scriptures that tell us Jesus died for ALL.
If a preacher cannot be “double-married” (a wholly man-made, unscriptural term), why is another name for the Book of Ecclesiastes, written by a man who had 700 wives and 300 concubines, “The Preacher”.
Since David – a man with more than one wife AND a man who had committed adultery – was used of God to WRITE scripture AFTER his polygamy and adultery, isn’t it then reasonable to think that the Holy Spirit will use another man who has been divorced and remarried to PREACH the scriptures he used David to WRITE? God forgave David of adultery UNDER THE LAW and used him for the holiest of all tasks: writing scripture. Why should we think that, UNDER GRACE, God will not also forgive a man the same sin and use a forgiven adulterer to preach what a forgiven adulterer wrote? There is not a single scripture that would make a man think that a forgiven adulterer could not preach – that thought comes from “wresting the scriptures” to mean something they don’t actually say, and from ignoring other scriptures.
Brother Paul said by the Holy Ghost, “The one preach Christ of contention, not sincerely, supposing to add affliction to my bonds…notwithstanding, every way, whether in pretence, or in truth, Christ is preached; and I therein do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice.” Now, if the Spirit of Christ is to rejoice when Christ is preached, even by men who were not sincere (surely they were not saved, if their intent was to make Paul’s life harder), how then do some men today actively oppose and insult men who are SINCERELY preaching Christ, just because of something that happened in their past? There is no doubt Paul would rejoice at the preaching of Brother Bobby Utley, but it makes some brothers mad!
I don’t know if you are aware of Brother Utley’s situation or not, but his first wife left him BECAUSE HE GOT SAVED AND STARTING LIVING FOR THE LORD, he stayed completely abstinent (no dates, girlfriends, or fornication) for 12 years, then he met Memory (a 40 year old virgin) and they got married. Some Pharisees told Brother Utley that he couldn’t preach because he didn’t have a wife (before he married Memory) and then told him he couldn’t preach when he got remarried because he now had two wives! Since when does 0+1=2? One of these modern day Pharisees called him “a double married whoremonger” on the radio; how can you call a man a whoremonger who stayed alone for 12 years and then married a virgin? Where’s the whore? This whole ‘double-married’ issue has less to do with what the scripture says than it does with men who “trust in themselves that they are righteous, and despise others”, and who want to condemn other brothers in Christ to make themselves look and feel better than somebody else – and that is the same spirit that caused Satan to fall. I praise God I don’t see that spirit in you. As a matter of fact, I think you see it in others and it disgusts you because you know it’s not the Spirit of God. I believe you see the self-righteousness in some of these brothers and you know it’s wrong. I believe it stems from their misunderstanding of the scripture. I heard a brother preach a sermon, and the entire sermon revealed his belief that adultery is an unpardonable sin, then at the end he said it wasn’t. But that is the way they preach and feel. I guess they have some sort of religious loophole they use to get out of Matthew 5:28! My Bible says, under the New Covenant, “the blood of Jesus Christ his son cleanseth us from ALL sin”.
Luke 9:49-50 “And John answered and said, Master, we saw one casting out devils in thy name; and we forbad him, because he followeth not with us. And Jesus said unto him, Forbid him not: for he that is not against us is for us.”
Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest: for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things. For whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. Thou that sayest a man should not commit adultery, dost thou commit adultery? But we are sure that the judgment of God is according to truth against them which commit such things. And thinkest thou this, O man, that judgest them which do such things, and doest the same, that thou shalt escape the judgment of God? For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers. And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted.
I am persuaded that the blood of Jesus is sufficient and that it does indeed cleanse us from ALL sin, including adultery and fornication. I believe that to go to an Old Testament scripture to try to negate a New Testament truth is very wrong – especially when the truth has to do with the blood of Jesus and its’ sufficiency. I am saved, justified, kept, and I bear the righteousness of Jesus Christ God’s Son for one reason and one reason alone: he shed his blood for me and that is what I’m trusting in. My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and his righteousness, for all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags.
Satan is the one who wants to destroy men of God who are preaching the truth, and it is Satan who would influence us to do the same. I believe he has deceived many sincere men who love God into taking this position, just as he has deceived many sincere men of God into believing in limited atonement. But we are not here to please man or to fit into some little click
Well, Brother Munson, there it is. I’ve done my best to help you to understand what I believe and why I believe it. If what I believe is true, I hope and pray you will receive it readily, regardless of what some of the brethren will say. If I am wrong, I pray God will send me the truth and give me the grace and humility to receive it, regardless of what some of the brethren say.