Marriage, Divorce, and Remarriage
The Lord knows how many tears I have shed, how many sorrows have buffeted me, and how heavy
my soul has become. The proverb must be fulfilled: for in much wisdom is much grief, and he who
increases knowledge increases sorrow. Concerning this issue I have many strong feelings such as
depression and anger. These feelings are the results of love. I wish things could be different but the
Lord does not change. (Malachi 3:6 and Hebrews 13:8)
One day, God will wipe away every tear from our eyes. (Revelation 21:4) The psalmist said, “Put
thou my tears into thy bottle.” (Psalm 56:8)
A question for preachers: will your bottle be empty?
I don’t believe that God is in heaven looking down upon the earth thinking that the sin problem has
become so large that in order to save some I’ll have to overlook it. Though, that is the attitude and
teaching of many today.
Jesus was and is the solution to the sin problem! If those, who by His Spirit, would but join Him in
union in death to self and enter into the fullness of what all that means, they too would cease from sin
and discover a love that never fails and surpasses human understanding, so that their marriage union
would glorify God as it should.
God’s mandate of holiness in the last days will be met with an enormous amount of grace. For,
“Unless those days were shortened no flesh would be saved.” (Matthew 24:22) There are many
renowned authors and preachers in the past who attempted to remarry while their spouse was still living
and were rejected by the church to do so. Today this practice is becoming.
The exceedingly great increase of lawlessness will not excuse people from their lack of holiness on
judgment day, even if every intent of the thoughts of man’s heart is only evil continually. His law,
nature, and country demands holiness from all of His people.
In these last days, if one be bold enough to dare permit the truth of God’s Word to reign in his life, so
as to make him holy as He is holy, he will be met with great opposition, but the opposition with a
greater grace.
It is true that the revelation Jesus brought to humanity was that God is love, but this is just a facet of
who He is. God is holy. God is light. God is a consuming fire. It is not that God is evil for separating
the wicked from His heavenly kingdom, but that He is just and loving.
Though the messengers of the Bible have changed, the message of the Bible has remained the same.
These are the LORD’s last words to His people under the Old Covenant concerning marriage and
divorce:
“Here is another thing you do. You cover the LORD’s altar with tears, weeping and groaning because
he pays no attention to your offerings and doesn’t accept them with pleasure.” You cry out, “Why
doesn’t the LORD accept my worship?” I’ll tell you why! Because the LORD witnessed the vows you
and your wife made when you were young. But you have been unfaithful to her, though she remained
your faithful partner, the wife of your marriage vows.”Didn’t the LORD make you one with your wife?
In body and spirit you are his. And what does he want? Godly children from your union. So guard your
heart; remain loyal to the wife of your youth. “For I hate divorce!” says the LORD, the God of Israel.
“To divorce your wife is to overwhelm her with cruelty,” says the LORD of Heaven’s Armies. “So
guard your heart; do not be unfaithful to your wife.” You have wearied the LORD with your words.
“How have we wearied him?” you ask. You have wearied him by saying that all who do evil are good
in the LORD’s sight, and he is pleased with them. You have wearied him by asking, “Where is the God
of justice (New Living Translation)?”
This message from the prophet Malachi was the prelude to the New Covenant teachings commanded
by Christ.
The LORD was saying that to break covenant with the wife of your youth is to break covenant with
God Himself.
The wife of your youth is your first wife. This is the union the LORD has made.
To separate from the wife of your youth is to separate yourself from God.
God will not hear your prayers and remember your offerings regardless of the tears or how sincere a
person may appear to be. The tears themselves are a witness that you are not sorry for doing the thing
which the LORD does hate, but that you cannot have another wife.
To be unfaithful to the wife of your youth is to be disloyal to God. Marital unfaithfulness is a direct
offense not only to your spouse but to the LORD Himself.
Divorce and remarriage threatens the understanding, morale, and course of our children. This is the
very leaven which causes the dough of rebellion to rise in them. These sins prove to their children that
Jesus’ love isn’t sufficient for them.
Parents are to raise godly offspring. Godly meaning God-fearing, but if the parents have taught their
children that there is nothing to fear and that God doesn’t really mean what He says in the Bible
through their divorce or unlawful union, how can they expect their children to not discredit the words
they are attempting to teach? When they read the words of Jesus from the Gospels to their children are
they to skip over certain passages?
John the Baptist said it was unlawful for King Herod to have his brother Philip’s wife.
Any sin we have committed and or practiced prior to meeting Christ must be repented of. An adulterer
must repent the same way a homosexual should. They leave the relationship and practice of the sin.
“For if you live according to the sinful nature you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the
deeds of the body you will live.” (Romans 8:13)
Concerning adulterous relationships most agree that it is sin, needing repentance of, if a man is sleeping
with a woman who is married. Yet they disagree that it is sinful, needing repentance of, if a person
divorces their spouse and marries another while the former still lives.
Multitudes have esteemed a man made certificate and license above the words of the Lord Jesus Christ,
who made the trees and ink used to make those opprobrious certificates and licenses.
Today, self idolatry is the most prevalent form of worship.
At what point is it okay to remain in sin? I have heard people say something like this: You’re telling
me that I must leave this woman I have loved for the past several years and my only options are to
remain alone or be reconciled to my original spouse? Yes! But consequently, they presume that God
will overlook their sin because they have been together so long.
If they really believe that then why aren’t they preaching that to the homosexual, and the person
fornicating? They are teaching others to commit sexual immorality and that Christ and His Kingdom
are not real but just another religion.
Any sin before we come to Christ must be forsaken as well as after.
An adulterous relationship is no less a sin because it is between a man and a woman, just as a man with
a man is no less homosexuality. Both must be repented of for those who practice such things will not
inherit the kingdom of heaven. (Galatians 5:21)
It is what it is before we come to Christ and unless we repent it remains the same. However, if we do
repent we can be washed clean by the blood of Jesus.
The good news isn’t that because we have confessed Jesus as our Lord, we will not be punished for
our sins, but that if we confess and forsake our sins we will have His mercy.
Two kinds of sinful relationships which are equally excruciating to separate from are homosexual and
adulterous relationships. Both parties cannot imagine living one without the other. Both share an equal
amount of pain. Both have an equal amount to sacrifice. Yet the church feels no compassion for the
homosexual because they are convinced it is sin. However, they see adultery as a lesser sin so their
hearts remain tender towards these. Or perhaps it is because homosexuals are few in number?
Jesus died for both of these sins, therefore, let every person who names the name of Christ depart from
iniquity. (2 Timothy 2:19)
Would God honor the vows made by adulterers, but not the homosexuals? Would He make either of
the two couples one? Certainly not! This covenant belongs to your first marriage. (Heterosexual)
“Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own
selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?” (2 Corinthians 13:5)
The Bible is the plumb line through which we measure the faith that has been handed down to us
throughout the centuries. God’s word is His written will. Does He not expect us to search out that will
and know it for ourselves?
Men become blinded by this worlds system so easily.
We are exhorted, and should be compelled as Christians by the Holy Spirit to come out from this
world, nor be conformed to this world, and to renew our minds. For there are human laws at work in
this worlds system and there are Divine laws at work in God’s kingdom.
Human law does not restrain or set at liberty them which are bound by Divine law.
The culture in which a person lives will cultivate their way of thinking and their discernment of good
and evil, right and wrong.
God’s laws are not nullified by a profession of faith or one’s conversion to Christianity. Neither do
they change with the times.
There is no sin in marriage, however there are laws we must follow. Whatever God’s law declares to
be a sin or ungodly practice before a person comes to Christ, remains in effect after they come to
Christ. The only difference between the two is the one is called lawlessness and the other sin.
Lawlessness is living without law, even because of ignorance of it. However John clearly states,
“Whoever commits sin also commits lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness.” (1 John 3:4)
Some early church fathers believed that a person may lawfully put away their spouse for the cause of
fornication on the grounds of Matthew 19:9; however the law of chastity remained. God still sees the
two as one, though a letter from the state government does not. This is why Jesus calls that man an
adulterer who marries her who is divorced from her husband. Though she is divorced, she is still that
man’s wife and he her husband.
Scripturally, the only way a person is permitted to remarry is on the occasion of the death of the other.
Are God’s laws subject to man’s laws or are man’s subject to God’s? As Christians we are under a
Higher Authority, whose thoughts and ways are much higher than our own.
The Bible clearly, without controversy, teaches that a divorced person having intimate relations with a
person other than their original spouse, even if they have married this person with whom they are
having these intimate relations, have contracted a forbidden relationship and are sinning against the
word of the Lord, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her. And
if a woman divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.” (Mark 10:11-12)
This new marriage is nothing more than a boyfriend and girlfriend having intimate relations and both
are considered by the Lord as adulterers; for the only legal way to remarry is upon the death of the
spouse. “Know ye not, brethren, (for I speak to them that know the law,) how that the law hath
dominion over a man as long as he liveth? For the woman which hath an husband is bound by the law
to her husband so long as he liveth; but if the husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her
husband. 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.” (Romans 7:1-3)