Expert: Dr. Ronald E. Shultz - 3/5/2005

Question
Dear Dr. Shultz:

I am writing you because I need help. I have been seeing a married man, and we are very much in love with each other.  He was married over 30 years ago to someone whom he was in love with. They had a son, and a few years after that, his wife had an affair. He forgave and took her back. Then, they had another son. All through the marriage, she was confrontational and accused him of deliberately flirting with any woman who made eye contact with him. Then, after obtaining a college education at his expense and he gave his two homes to his children, she simply deserted him. He knows that after all these years that she never loved him, and I think he knew it quite a few years ago, but didn't want to admit it. We started seeing each other when his wife was gone for over 9 months. He says that the Bible prohibits him ending the marriage, and he's stuck in that marriage. Was this marriage spiritually valid if she never loved him? Is there anything that he can do? Please also give me what is said in the Bible. Thank you very much.

Answer
If you are the same Madonna, I gave you the Bible's position on divorce and remarriage in a previous question.

Adultery is not a blank check for divorce. We all commit spiritual adultery whenever we sin and yet we don't want Christ to divorce us. So, he was right to take her back.

Whether she ever loved him or not is not what validates a marriage. They both took vows. They also had sexual relations, which consummated the marriage.  They were joined spiritually at that time.  Genesis says that they become one flesh.  It is as if they both shared the same body. To divorce means to cut a body in half and neither half really survives. In a scriptural divorce God does bring about healing but there are always scars.

Why did you start seeing a married man? She was gone but he was still married. He should have been taboo for you from the start.  Now, you both have feelings for each that cannot be righteously satisfied.  You have brought a great opportunity for pain and sorrow into your lives.  

If he is convinced biblically that he cannot divorce his wife then he should not be having any kind of relationship with you or anyone else. That only sets you up for hurt or sin. If you sleep with him both of you become adulterers. If he divorces her against his belief then he sins for whatsoever is not of faith is sin. If the divorce is not scriptural and you get married you both live in adultery.

If she is a believer she is in great sin and needs counseling as well, but there is no divorce allowed for two believers. They can separate and remain celibate or reconcile but they can never righteously divorce.

IF she verbally renounced Christ and said she was never a Christian then he might have an open door to divorce and remarry according to 1 Cor 7 since she has left the house.  Otherwise, he needs to seek reconcilation.  I know some states grant a divorce based on desertion after a certain amount of time, but that is human law not God's and it is not what he says he believes so he needs to let you go. He cannot provide you with a spiritual realtionship.  If he truly loves you that is what he should want for you.  If you love yourself, you should want that for yourself.  

I truly believe you need to break off the relationship. He cannot reconcile his marriage while he is having a relationship with you. You both need to seek pastoral counseling with someone you can talk to face to face in your town.  Pick a pastor or Christian counselor but you need one on one help with this situation. In fact, you need to go separately for counseling not as a couple. I am very sorry that you are in the state that you are in, but God can heal your pain and give you a man you can righteously love and marry. He can do the impossible so He can reconcile this marriage as well if both of you allow Him to do it.  Remember, what God has put together let no man put asunder. His faith tells him that so that basically answers the question and tells you what you need to do.

May God grant you great wisdom and may you listen to what He says no matter what your heart may say.

In case, you are a different Madonna, here is what I told her.

Matt 5:32 But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery.  (KJV)

This verse is normally taken out of context.  This was spoken to Jews, not the Church.  There is a lot of cultural stuff that needs to be known before you can understand this verse.

A Jewish engagement was more like a marriage or at least marriage part 1. After a year of preparing a place for his new bride the groom would return and then they would complete the ceremony.  You might say a Jewish wedding took a year plus to complete.  We usually take 20 minutes.  When they were engaged she was saying that she was pure.  If on the wedding night it was found out that she was not a virgin it was the same as committing adultery and the man had the right to divorce her on the spot and in the days when the Jews were a kingdom she would have also been stoned so the divorce remarriage issue was kind of moot.  The virginity requirement was so stringent that the woman would have a piece of cloth strategically placed in order to collect her hymeneal blood.  This would be give to her parents to keep as a token or proof of her virginity on her wedding night to preclude her husband from saying later that she was not and use that as a means of divorce.

Now the man could forgive her and if he did he could never divorce her. If he divorced her for any other reason even if it were legal Jesus was saying that regardless of what man says the people involved become adulterers as far as God is concerned if they remarry.  Adultery  that
took place later in marriage would have been handled by the death penalty. There was no real divorce case as we think of it for adultery.

Adultery is not an automatic permit for divorce and remarriage.  Oddly, most people who use this concept believe in eternal security of the believer, as the believer is the Bride of Christ.  Every time we sin, we
commit spiritual adultery and yet we want Christ to forgive us and keep us as a Bride but we want to dump an earthly mate.  Doesn't fit well, does it?

Read through 1 Cor 7.  If a person is married to an unbeliever and the unbeliever files and leaves the believer is free to remarry, but the believer is not allowed to file.  (12-16)

If a person was married and divorced before they were saved, all things are under the blood and they are a new creature so they can be remarried. (20-28)

Believers are under stricter rules.  All two believers have for options are separation and reconciliation or if they choose divorce they are to not remarry but remain celibate.  (10,11) God has always hated divorce and
while there were exceptions given to Moses due to the hardness of the people's hearts we are now in the Church age.  We have the full revelation of the Gospel and God living in us so why should we ever divorce?  God is
love and if the love of God is in both of us how can we say we no longer love the one we are with?  If we must seek daily the forgiveness of our Spouse why can we not forgive our human one?  The most incompatible couple in the universe is Christ and us and if He reconciled us how can we have irreconcilable differences?

I would say that it is quite possible that your friends are living in adultery by remarrying depending on their circumstances.  If adultery was the only issue that caused them to divorce they were given bad counsel. The Bible doesn't say which party files because neither are supposed to file.  This is why we must seek the will of God and not our hormones when we marry.  The following stidy may help as well.

Woodworking and Marriage

1 Corinthians 6:16,17
16 What?  know ye not that he which is joined to an harlot is one body?
for two, saith he, shall be one flesh.
17 But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit.  KJV

Ephesians 5:31 For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.  KJV

NT: 2853
kollao (kol-lah'-o); from kolla ("glue"); to glue, i.e. (passively or reflexively) to stick (figuratively):
KJV-cleave, join (self), keep company.

Gen 2:23-24
23And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.
24Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.  KJV

OT: 1692 dabaq (daw-bak'); a primitive root; properly, to impinge, i.e. cling or adhere; figuratively, to catch by pursuit: KJV-abide fast, cleave (fast together), follow close (hard after), be joined (together), keep (fast), overtake, pursue hard, stick, take.

(Biblesoft's New Exhaustive Strong's Numbers and Concordance with Expanded Greek-Hebrew Dictionary.  Copyright (c) 1994, Biblesoft and International
Bible Translators, Inc.)

It is obvious that God takes marriage and sex quite seriously.  Through the centuries, no marriage was considered binding until it was consummated.  This was so important that in one culture the parents would
s it on either side of the bed to assure that it had happened and to assure that no questions about the virginity of the bride would arise.

Others were more discreet about it, but they still found a way to ensure that the wedding was consummated.  Virginity was not as important in some cultures, but consummation was important in all.  Even today, there is a debate over the estate of a very old man because the family states that
his marriage to a very young and voluptuous woman was never consummated.

Since God uses the phrase "one flesh" in both a marriage and one night stand reference it would appear that He views sex to be the act of consummating a marriage.  Many are hung up over certificates and rituals, which are not bad and indeed very beneficial.  Some think that it is the
only way to be married so they skip the certificate.  However, it would appear that if a single man and woman were stranded on an island, gave up hope for being rescued and decided to have sex if they fell in love or just to make the best of a bad situation God would consider them married once they had sex.  What they or society would think about it if they were rescued after a long period would not matter.  To God, they are man and wife.
  Some of us would think that is OK or logical because we recognize common law marriage.  Each state has various laws as to when that occurs.  Many people do not realize that they went to bed shacking up and woke up
married because they crossed over the timeframe that the state has set which can be as low as sixty days.  Nonetheless, they do become married in the eyes of the law and can lose property or custody of children should
one of the "spouses" find this out during the "divorce."
  Most of us would not see a one-night stand as a marriage, but it clearly appears that God does.  This is good news and bad news.  The bad news is that many folks are married to far more people than they think and are
polygamists in God's eyes though they have never had a ceremony or a certificate and He does not condone polygamy though He has tolerated it like all our other sins.

A married man has a one-night fling on a business trip.  That is adultery, but since he has now been joined to the harlot does it mean when he returns home and makes love to his wife that it is also adultery?  He is now cheating on his harlot wife.  A single man is engaged and since he is
engaged it is OK to start having sex with his fiancée or so we think. Then something goes awry and they do not marry.  He eventually marries. Is he committing adultery on his wedding night?   

Our society would say no and most of the Christians reading this are thinking that I have finally gone off the deep end.  Remember, God said that His thoughts are not ours
and His ways are not ours.  (Isaiah 55:8) It is easy to see one of the reasons that God's way is one man and one
woman for life.  It is far less complicated to be sure.  The good news is that verse does lend some argument to eternal security.  If a one-night stand equates to a marriage/one flesh relationship in God's eyes and we
who are joined to Him are one spirit when we are born again through our one act of faith then we are secure because God hates putting away or divorce.  Also, as my next illustration will show, His spirit cannot be broken or torn in pieces.

I had a friend that was into woodworking and he would always join the pieces together with Elmer's wood glue.  He would clamp them and let them dry so that when he put screws in the wood the pieces would not move.  One
time he realized that he had put the wrong pieces together and tried to pull them apart.  They came apart in pieces and sharp shards.  Both pieces would have to be reshaped by the saw and used elsewhere as they would not fit in that project anymore.

God joins together two people in marriage in a spiritual cleaving or one flesh relationship that is meant to act like that wood glue.  Even if Satan's screws or worldly nails enter the two pieces they will not move or
come apart.  In fact, surviving the screws and nails will only make them a stronger unit.

Unfortunately, some folks cleave to people God did not mean them to have like an unbeliever or a harlot.  Then if the marriage fails or when the tryst is over the people come apart, but they are torn and those sharp shards pierce themselves and all they meet until they let God reshape them
and use them somewhere else. Sometimes He rejoins them and sometimes like a plaque, He uses them alone. Either way there can be beauty after the damage.  The key is to let Him
shape you and whether you are joined to another or not, rejoice in what He has made in you and for you.  If you are joined, heed the warning of the glue and be sure that you understand the consequences of pulling yourself apart from your partner.  If you are not yet joined, take extreme care and be sure it is God that is joining you to someone.  Look for the eternal project and not a temporal one because the other wood looks or feels good.

Better, to be part of a shanty where love is than part of a cedar mansion full of strife whose end is to be torn down and rebuilt.

I hope this has been of some help to you. May God richly bless you as you seek His will!!!