Expert: John Fields - 3/5/2011

Question
dear sir my wife and i were both divorced about 30 yrs ago. we were baptized into christ in the church of christ about 1.5 years ago were are wondering some say that we must divorce and go back to our exs or live separate. i feel that would go against what were to do after we were baptized. i think all was forgiven and we have studied and not looked back and if we divorced after all we have done i feel we would be wrong i think now we cant divorce because we are now in christ and intend to stay that way so thanks for your time bye

Answer
This is an emotionally charged issue for a lot of people. Many want to believe that it is harder for people to overcome and be saved from this sin then even those who lived under the Old Testament.

When Jesus was making His statements concerning marriage and divorce He was engaging those who knew the law and were using it as a means of attempting to entrap Jesus and alienate one of two main groups of followers. There were two main ideas of the way the law was to be applied. One was that it was allowed for a man to divorce his wife for any reason at all and the other was that it could only happen as a result of unchastity. They intended that Jesus answer and alienate one of the two groups. Yet, Jesus' answer satisfied both sides. Whatever Jesus was saying in His statement it is a FACT that He did not anger either side by his answer. So while His answer has been endlessly debated by those who believe one cannot be saved unless they get all the "rules" and "laws" of God correct, there is one thing which cannot be debated. The application that legalists come up with from Jesus' answer to them CANNOT be what they have claimed from it.

Here is the exchange and what Jesus said. Matthew 19:3-9 (3) Some Pharisees came to Jesus, testing Him and asking, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason at all?" 4 And He answered and said, "Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning MADE THEM MALE AND FEMALE, 5 and said, 'FOR THIS REASON A MAN SHALL LEAVE HIS FATHER AND MOTHER AND BE JOINED TO HIS WIFE, AND THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH'? 6 "So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate." 7 They said to Him, "Why then did Moses command to GIVE HER A CERTIFICATE OF DIVORCE AND SEND her AWAY?" 8 He said to them, "Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way. 9 "And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery."

This exchange did not happen in a vacuum, it had a context. The scripture they and Jesus were referring to was in Deuteronomy 24:1-4 (1) "When a man takes a wife and marries her, and it happens that she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out from his house, 2 and she leaves his house and goes and becomes another man's wife, 3 and if the latter husband turns against her and writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, or if the latter husband dies who took her to be his wife, 4 then her former husband who sent her away is not allowed to take her again to be his wife, since she has been defiled; for that is an abomination before the LORD, and you shall not bring sin on the land which the LORD your God gives you as an inheritance.

The legalist ignores the Old Testament context and takes from Jesus' statement that a person who divorces and remarries enters into a perpetual state or condition of adultery. They will say that they were never really married to the second person in God's eyes and that they are still married to the first spouse. They will often do to people what they did to you, question the legality of a person's marriage and tell them that to stop committing adultery that they must get out of the "adulterous" marriage and go back to the first. They CANNOT be getting this from Jesus though. Why?

When Jesus answered the two groups of men, His answer was satisfactory to both interpretations of the law. But what did that law actually say? If that man found some indecency in his wife and divorced her and sent her away, she was required to be given a certificate of divorce which proved that she no longer belonged to the man who had divorced her. If another man had married her and he did not have that proof, she and the one marrying her could be accused of adultery and thereby stoned to death. The certificate gave the woman the right to marry again without fear of reprisal. Notice that she became another man's wife though she had not been found guilty of adultery or fornication. The penalty for adultery was death. Would God say the penalty for adultery was death and then encourage the people to commit it? God was not advocating adultery was He? No, certainly He was not.

Here is another VERY important point. The man who had divorced his wife and given her a certificate of divorcement was FORBIDDEN to take her back as his wife if the second husband died or divorced her himself. They COULD NOT reconcile! If Jesus had been telling the people they must divorce their current spouses and go back to their first ones it would have been a DIRECT violation of the Law of Moses and CERTAINLY would have been noticed and condemned with this group of people. They were LOOKING for ways to accuse and condemn Him. The source for your accuser's solution is NOT from Jesus in Matthew 19 but from their own imagination.

At one point Jesus said for us "What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate." Would Jesus warn us not to do something that could not be done? No He would not. It is evident that men are able through their hardness of heart and sin to separate what God has joined together when they have no right to do so. Jesus said that they shouldn't and mustn't not that they could not and don't. Yet, when they enter into the new marriage it IS a new marriage. It is impossible to be in a state of continuing adultery when the one you were married to before is re-married and you are married. Adultery only can occur when you are doing the things that occur at adultery while you are STILL married to the first and NOT married to the next. I hope this helps. To have your situation fixed make certain that you take Jesus advice and stay in your marriage and always work out your difficulties through love and forgiveness. It is also VERY possible that the group of which you are apart won't accept your point of view and agree to disagree. People who have this view are often not content unless they are attempting to bind their point of view on others. God is your judge, not them. If they will not relent it may very well become necessary to find a more grace oriented group to be a part of.