Featured Remarriage: A Healing Gift of God?

Yes. You may have been justified in separating from your wife in an attempt to mend the relationship while living up to your responsibilities in the marriage. BUT this is not what you are saying here. In Piper's article YOU are the guilty party because your sin exceeds the bonds of marriage. If you read the article, the ONLY biblical grounds Piper provides is abandonment, adultery, and dangerous abuse. Your situation does not meet those qualifications, so divorce (as appealing as it may have been) goes beyond what Piper suggests is a biblical response to your wife's actions. You are the adulterer, your wife the victim, because your actions exceeded biblical authority. You, not your wife, actually broke the covenant the two of you entered into before God.

(You have already told us of the "abuse", and it does not meet the qualifications of the article. I'm only responding to what you have posted and John Piper's article. You are wrong per the article.)

 

You have already told us that this abuse was not physical (you said it was psychological). I am talking about the article (about what Piper has written) not about whether or not you were justified in divorcing your wife.

For the record, the only reason I agree with Piper that physical abuse is a biblical reason for divorce is that he defines "divorce" as leaving with the potential of reconciliation (rather than the secular definition that the marriage has truly ended).

There is no passage of Scripture that justifies a man abandoning his wife for any reason except perhaps adultery and (if that spouse is an unbeliever) abandonment. Period. That's it. No more. Anything else is nothing but subjective liberalism (and it ignores the nature of marriage itself - just ask Hosea).

You were wrong and you sinned when you divorced your wife. You really need to come to terms with this so that you can move on. I'm not saying you have to get back with your wife (judging from threads here, I seriously don't see this as an option). But you do have to love her (because right now she is really your wife....you just got some lawyers and a judge to "trump" Scripture). So where do you go from here? Nowhere if you don't deal with the sin. The way I see it, you have to decide who you will follow and you cannot follow God until you come to terms with your sin.

This is true for all of us. God simply does not bless disobedience.

 

I'll close the thread because you requested it be closed and it has strayed off topic. Before I do I will note that NOTHING has been discussed here that you have not posted in the discussion forum - to include the nature of this "abuse".

You should not have married, I think we both know this. But you did. You can't change the fact that you entered into a marriage (that you and your wife are one, united within a covenant relationship). You should not have divorced your wife (you should not have stopped loving her even if you had to live separately) and you should have loved her regardless of her mental issues (yes, you shared far to much about your wife on this board). You should not pretend that a secular judge dissolved what was united under God. But most of all you have to deal with this and move on.

My suggestion is that you NEVER enter a discussion on marriage, divorce, Lordship Salvation, or discipleship until your past is truly past. I guarantee it will end the same way (we can't talk the talk if we don't walk the walk).

Thread is closed at the request of its author.

 

No you weren't.