Do you believe a Christian can remarry after divorce?

Or tell that occasional lie, right?

 

As we all are daily. Only the work of Jesus makes it different for any of us. God hates sin, all sin, regardless of how we rank them.

 

Yes, and God hates divorce...

But my understanding of God and Scripture has not led me to condemn those who have remarried.

I'm thankful...

 

One reason why the divorce rate in churches is higher than in the world that has already been mentioned is that many in the world live together.

Another reason that is linked but different is that because we preach (rightfully so) that "relations" outside of marriage are a sin we have young people in churches getting married just because of their desires. Those marriages are bound to fail at an alarming rate.

 

Yes, I do believe that. There was a time where ostracism of divorced persons was the rule. Today it does not exist, at least not in the circles I move in. Divorce should have enormous consequences in church life but it makes no difference at all in my church. About 15 years ago we threw up our hands and opened ALL church offices, from pastor on down, to divorced men or to men whose wives have been divorced. This mainly came about through selection of deacons. Too many of our men were being disqualified, so the church said that no longer will we recognize the "one wife" requirement. As far as the emotional turmoil of divorce, I recognize it exists but it is rare. In my experience with divorcing couples, which is considerable, the most common emotion is eager anticipation of ending the process.

 

Yes, but when we ask forgiveness of sin shouldn't there be some implication that we're sorry and will try to refrain in the future? Divorced people who are remarried continue to sin every time they bed down together.

 

Ezra 10:1-3
(1) Now when Ezra had prayed, and when he had confessed, weeping and casting himself down before the house of God, there assembled unto him out of Israel a very great congregation of men and women and children: for the people wept very sore.
(2) And Shechaniah the son of Jehiel, [one] of the sons of Elam, answered and said unto Ezra, We have trespassed against our God, and have taken strange wives of the people of the land: yet now there is hope in Israel concerning this thing.
(3) Now therefore let us make a covenant with our God to put away all the wives, and such as are born of them, according to the counsel of my lord, and of those that tremble at the commandment of our God; and let it be done according to the law.

Ezra 10:18-19
(18) And among the sons of the priests there were found that had taken strange wives: [namely], of the sons of Jeshua the son of Jozadak, and his brethren; Maaseiah, and Eliezer, and Jarib, and Gedaliah.
(19) And they gave their hands that they would put away their wives; and [being] guilty, [they offered] a ram of the flock for their trespass.

 

First you have to prove to me that the second marriage was ever reconized by God. Just because we walk an isle and commit to each other does that constitute a marriage in Gods eyes, if its a sinful marriage. Just because we make laws that say you are divorced or married, do they line up with what the word of GOD says. He says that its adultry, not marriage.

Im not trying to hurt anyones feelings with this Im trying to tell you what the bible says, we can try and justify everything but we still must ask the hard questions. Does God view the adultry of the second as we call it marriage or does he view it as sin, and if he views it as sin, do we have to repent or can we continue in that sin and just believe that Jesus blood will cover it when we die.

Mat 5:31-32 It was also said, Whoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a bill of divorce. (32) But I say to you that whoever shall put away his wife, except for the cause of fornication, causes her to commit adultery. And whoever shall marry her who is put away commits adultery.


Mat 15:18-20 But the things which come out of the mouth come from the heart, and they defile the man. (19) For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies; (20) these are the things which defile a man, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile a man.

Verse 20 above says that adulteries among other things is what defile a man.

Mat 19:7-10 They said to Him, Why did Moses then command to give a bill of divorce and to put her away? (8) He said to them, Because of your hard-heartedness Moses allowed you to put away your wives; but from the beginning it was not so. (9) And I say to you, Whoever shall put away his wife, except for fornication, and shall marry another, commits adultery; and whoever marries her who is put away commits adultery. (10) His disciples said to Him, If this is the case of the man with his wife, it is not good to marry.

Jesus tells us that from the beginning divorce was not allowed but Moses allowed it because of there hard-heartedness.

Mat 19:17-20 And He said to him, Why do you call Me good? There is none good but one, that is, God. But if you want to enter into life, keep the commandments. (18) He said to Him, Which? Jesus said, You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness, (19) honor your father and mother, and, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. (20) The young man said to Him, I have kept all these things from my youth up; what do I lack yet?

Jesus again saying DO NOT COMMIT ADULTERY in verse 18

Now lets just put this into perspective shall we.
1Co 6:9-10 Do you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor abusers, nor homosexuals, (10) nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.

and again
Gal 5:19-21 Now the works of the flesh are clearly revealed, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lustfulness, (20) idolatry, sorcery, hatreds, fightings, jealousies, angers, rivalries, divisions, heresies, (21) envyings, murders, drunkennesses, revelings, and things like these; of which I tell you before, as I also said before, that they who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.

Heb 13:4 Marriage is honorable in all, and the bed undefiled, but fornicators and adulterers God will judge.

So now what does the bible say that you should do if you are an adulterer

Jas 4:4-10 Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever desires to be a friend of the world is the enemy of God. (5) Do you think that the Scripture says in vain, The spirit that dwells in us yearns to envy? (6) But He gives more grace. Therefore He says, God resists the proud, but He gives grace to the humble. (7) Therefore submit yourselves to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. (8) Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, sinners; and purify your hearts, double-minded ones. (9) Be afflicted, and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to heaviness. (10) Be humbled before the Lord, and He will lift you up.

 

True. I got that. I was just answering the question... Also have you looked at the article I linked a few pages back? VERY good article on the subject.

 

Jesus was talking to people who thought they had found a "loophole" in the law.

There attitude was...

"Great! All I have to do is become dissatisfied with my wife (whom he was just tired of, and wanted the more lovely neighbor girl), then just write her a certificate of divorce, and *bingo*...I can marry the new woman!"

Jesus was making plain that someone with that attitude is simply committing adultry, and using a loophole to try and make it "legal".

Thats completely different than a REAL, heartbreaking divorce. And if one partner divorces out, when the other one wanted to stay married and work the problems out, the one who wanted nothing to do with divorce is NOT going to be guilty of divorcing...when THEY didnt want it, the OTHER one did.

And if they marry again, they are NOT going to be guilty if committing adulterly, for a sinful act that THEY DID NOT COMMIT. The other one committed it.

In 1st Corinthians, the scriptures teach...

(two groups of formerly married, who no longer are)

:godisgood:

 

I agree

I agree with your take on this.

Also, I would add that the context of 1Co 7:26 pertains to a difficult situation the believers found themselves in......I suppose therefore that this is good for the present distress, I say, that it is good for a man so to be.

Distress is the same used in the following Scripture:

Lu 21:23 But woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck, in those days! for there shall be great distress <318> in the land, and wrath upon this people.

People often believe that Paul was advocating that no one should marry, but I disagree...he was warning that at that present time it was going to be very difficult be married during persecution.

Beth

 

When do you think your church will throw up it's hands again and decide that another piece of scripture is irrelevant? Even better, what part of the scripture do you think that might be? God has a reason for the rules and commandments he has given us and He always provides a way for them to be followed and observed. But if positions in the church are going to be filled to make people feel good, I would wonder who we are really worshiping.:godisgood:

 

You will get no argument from me on this and I was really surprised the association didn't raise some questions about it. Right now there are three or four churches in our association who permit deacons who have been divorced and remarried. I expect the next thing to go will be the prohibition against women serving as deacons.

 

You have my prayers.

 

Jer 3:14 Turn, O backsliding children, saith the LORD; for I am married unto you:


Isa 50:1 Thus saith the LORD, Where is the bill of your mother's divorcement, whom I have put away? or which of my creditors is it to whom I have sold you? Behold, for your iniquities have ye sold yourselves, and for your transgressions is your mother put away.


Jer 3:8 And I saw, when for all the causes whereby backsliding Israel committed adultery I had put her away, and given her a bill of divorce; yet her treacherous sister Judah feared not, but went and played the harlot also.



Mt 19:8 He saith unto them, Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so.


God hates divorce, either literally or spiritually, and both are bound together so that neither one can be broken without also breaking the other.


As God told Israel, I am married unto you, when a person become saved they are, in effect, vowing to become the "bride of Christ",


So whether the marriage "VOWS" are literal or spiritual, one transgression breaks both.


Scripture say it's better not to made a vow than made one and break it.


As making a vow to be the "bride of Christ", one should "count the cost" before making the vow for a literal marriage.


Lu 14:27 And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple.



28 For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it?


Lu 14:33 So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.


Like Israel, a married/divorced person prior to being saved, will have those sins remitted when they are saved, becoming a "NEW CREATURE", the old man (body of sin) being crucified, dead to the law, free to be married to another.


Ro 7:3 So then if, while her husband liveth, she be married to another man, she shall be called an adulteress: but if her husband be dead, she is free from that law; so that she is no adulteress, though she be married to another man.


4 Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God.


God gave Israel (and man) the right to divorce because of the hardness of their hearts toward God and his divorce from them, but only for the same reason, "UNFAITHFULNESS", but from the beginning, it was not so.


The message is plain and simple,


You can't commit a literal transgression without also committing a spiritual transgression.


And you can't serve mammon and God.

 

Wow.

You must live among people who have lost all sense of the meaning of marriage. You’ll be happy to know I haven’t run across that kind of attitude among believers or even unbelievers. Maybe Texas is a little different…

Don’t worry, there’s still an enormous amount of non-Christ-like ostracism of divorced people… regardless of the actual circumstances of their divorce. In my experience, people tend to assume the worst about divorced people based on their own ideas of what they would do in the same situation.

Divorce has enormous consequences whether or not others recognize it. And at the same time, the church needs to be a place where wounded people heal and grow healthy instead of museum for “righteous” people.

I believe in church discipline (that is, fair and structured intervention by church leaders who are mature in the faith and full of grace and wisdom), but not social ostracism based on conjecture, rumors and assumptions.

In 1986, when I was the new pastor of a church in Central Texas, I visited in the home of a man who was formerly a pillar of the congregation. He had been inactive for a number of years and I wanted to introduce myself and invite him to join us in Bible study and worship. He informed be that he hadn’t been to church in years because he was told he was a “moral corruptor” of the young people. He explained that his wife had become restless in their marriage during a time of economic hardship and decided to begin an affair while the children were at school and he was at work. This apparently went on for a few months behind his back until one day she ran off with another man, abandoning him and her own children. He was devastated and tried to get in touch with her for several days to figure out if he could save their marriage, but she was already undertaking divorce proceedings. The pastor was involved in all of this and has enormous sympathy for his situation. However, the next Sunday morning when he arrived for worship, desperately craving the support of his church family, several self-appointed deacons met him at the door and informed him he was a “moral corruptor” of the youth people because of his family situation, and they would prefer that he not attend the church until his marriage was restored. He explained that he didn’t have that much control over what his wife did and that she was the one who abandoned him and his children, had committed adultery, and was divorcing him – not the other way around. They said they understood that it was not his fault, and to show them the grace of God, he could still attend worship if he sat on the back row, did not speak to anyone there (especially the young people), and resign his membership. He told them they wouldn’t have to worry about him anymore and walked out, never to return. He informed me he had not attended any church since that time (his wife divorced him and he eventually remarried – his second wife helped him raise the children his first wife abandoned) since church folks seemed to enjoy telling him he was living “in adultery.”

I apologized profusely for the church and for the way that Christians had treated him. He seemed to get a measure of relief from that, but it was clear he was too hurt by church people to feel comfortable putting himself in that position again. As far as I know, he did not join another church. If he is still alive today, he would be well into his 80s, possibly older.

While I don’t think he should have given up on the church, I completely understand why he did it. And when I hear about “the good ole days” when the church ostracized divorced people, I get very frustrated. I know too well, not just from stories like his (I’ve heard similar stories from a surprising number of people), but from personal experience when my new bride, a little over 18 months into our marriage, decided that being married didn’t solve all of her deep-seated problems and decided to cheat and eventually abandon me. I struggled for 16 months to restore our relationship after I could her in the act of adultery with one of her coworkers. She eventually gave up on that guy and took up with at least one other, sometimes disappearing for days at a time when I didn’t know if she was dead or alive. She refused all attempts at counseling or discussing the issues and ran up enormous quantities of debt, so much so I could barely pay minimum payments on the credit cards (in Texas, your spouse’s debts are also your debts), much less pay them off. I ended up taking a second job to pay the bills and she complained that I worked too much (which was simply an excuse because she was the one who was rarely ever home, especially at night when I was home). After extensive counseling with my pastor and other wise Christians, I finally filed for divorce. Strangely enough, the primary reason I filed for divorce was for the protection of our creditors. If she were allowed to continue to run up debt in my name, I wouldn’t be able to pay them back. Not only would that put me in the position of stealing from them when I filed bankruptcy, it would also strongly inhibit my ability to continue my life as a disciple of Jesus.

She was furious with me for filing for divorce and I gave her almost every asset we owned because I felt so guilty about having had to break my part of the “till death do us part” vows.

However, the church that I thought would support me, pretty much turned their back on me. Not only that, I had seminary friends and coworkers who were seminarians who seemed to take great pleasure in dissecting my situation, telling me how I must have somehow sinned in the whole process, and that I must have a girlfriend waiting in the wings. And that was to my face. Beyond that, I had to deal with people who avoided me and married male friends who somehow decided I must be after their wives or had some sort of ‘divorce disease’ and would not socialize with me anymore.

On top of all that, I had people tell me I didn’t have enough respect for marriage since I divorced my wife. I started telling them they didn’t have enough respect for marriage if they think that marriage is a spiritual arrangement designed to entrap people in abusive and demeaning relationships that don’t reflect the character of Christ. For some strange reason, the very people who think that Christ calls them to be a bold confrontational prophet of righteousness seem to also believe that Christ demands that those in abusive marriages are called to be doormats and not confront the evil in their relationships.

I could go on, but I’ll end it there…

I’m sorry, but let me say this as nicely as possible… I think you’re clueless about this point and/or your church does a terrible job of preparing people for marriage. I have yet to know a person who didn’t go through enormous trauma, with the exception of those who were only married for a few months.

You may be mistaking the anticipation of ending divorce proceedings (which are excruciating) with eagerness to divorce. Last year, I was eager to get out of the hospital after my appendix had burst (nearly killing me), but no one should mistake that for eagerness to go through enormous pain, nearly die, have emergency surgery and go through recovery in ICU on massive doses of antibiotics and painkillers. I just wanted to move on with my life.