Originally posted by PreachtheWord:
Interesting story Baptist Believer. However, situational ethics is something for the New Agers to ponder and not believers.
Nice rhetoric...
It seems people throw around accusations of "situational ethics" when someone decides to apply biblical principles and grace to help someone rebuild a life ravaged by sin. (NOTE: All "ethics" occur in "situations") People were not made to serve the Law, but to serve God.
I posted eleven reasons why Scripture does not justify remarriage after divorce. If your friend remarries, he will have committed adultery. No ifs, ands, or buts about it.
Actually, you posted eleven reasons why YOUR INTERPRETATION OF scripture does no justify remarriage after divorce. I take scripture very seriously, so I took a couple of hours to work through your eleven passages and think about your argument and what scripture actually says... I found my previous understand of the issue renewed and enhanced. I don't have the time to write a long treatise on the subject, but here is my take on what scripture says about divorce using your eleven points as a foundation:
ARGUMENT BASED ON THE LETTER OF THE LAW
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
My basic interpretive assumptions:
1.) Jesus does not contradict Himself in His teaching.
2.) The scripture writers do not contradict themselves in their teaching.
3.) The culture of the Old and New Testaments and the culture of the United States in the 21st century are very different, but the Lord's principles are valid for any age.
4.) We should not say more than the scriptural passage actually says and we should not say less than the scriptural passage actually says.
5.) Context is essential to properly understand the meaning of a passage.
ESSENTIAL OLD TESTAMENT TEACHING:
The Seventh Commandment -- Exodus 20:14 "You shall not commit adultery"
The Penalty for Adultery -- Leviticus 20:10 "If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death."
If your spouse committed adultery in the Old Testament, according to Old Testament law, you would not get a divorce, you would be widowed instead. The guilty partner would lose their life and you would be free to emotionally and spiritually heal and remarry if you desired. I'm sure that in practice, not all adulterers were executed, but the principle holds.
Adultery is not just playing around and it's not just about sex. It is just about the worst betrayal that a spouse can inflict. It destroys relationships, damages families, hurts children, shames the institution of marriage and is destructive to the community at large. And most importantly, it is an affront to God.
ESSENTIAL NEW TESTAMENT TEACHING:
Jesus said about divorce, "But I say to you that anyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery." (Matthew 5:32) and "And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for unchastity, and marries another commits adultery."
In the days of Jesus, people were probably rarely stoned for adultery. This is likely to the Roman occupation and possibly due to the realization that the laws against adultery were not uniformly enforced. (We have the incident where the woman was caught in the "very act" of adultery in John 8, but her adulterous partner was apparently ignored by the mob -- or possibly even part of the mob!) Therefore, the innocent spouse had a problem. If the marriage was too damaged to reconcile, or the spouse was unwilling to reconcile, Jesus allowed divorce as the next best option. IMPORTANT: I am convinced that divorce is never a "good" option, but sometimes it is the best option in the midst of the terrible choices that sometimes have to be made. I have yet to meet a divorced person who is happy that they had a marriage fail -- the emotional cost is just too high for anyone who has ever taken their marriage seriously.
PreachTheWord says (points not in order given):
11. The exception clause of Matthew 19:9 need not imply that divorce on account of adultery frees a person to be remarried.
If Jesus is giving this option as a viable alternative to those innocently caught in the wreckage of adultery based on the previous death penalty for marriage (I think He is), then the divorced person should be considered just like someone who has been widowed... no longer bound by a marriage commitment. There is much more that could be said here, but time is short...
Based on that clear statement of Jesus (and my assumption that Jesus does not contradict Himself, let's look at the rest of His statements on the subject:
1. Luke 16:18 calls all remarriage after divorce adultery.
Jesus is addressing this to Pharisees who were scoffing at Him with self-righteousness (see v.14-15) He is demonstrating to them their unrighteousness. Jesus does not deny that adultery is a valid reason for divorce. In Old Testament days, a man could divorce his wife for any reason, leaving the woman without any means of support. Moses made sure that the women were given a bill of divorce, demonstrating that their marriage was over, so they could remarry legally. Of course Jesus explains that Moses did this because of the hardness of men's hearts (Matthew 19:8). One has to wonder if the hearts of people are not harder today...
2. Mark 10:11-12 call all remarriage after divorce adultery whether it is the husband or the wife who does the divorcing.
Again, Jesus does not contradict himself, so the adultery must be committed by those who have not lawfully divorced. The implication here is that the parties involved have divorced unrighteously.
v3. Mark 10:2-9 and Matthew 19:3-8 teach that Jesus rejected the Pharisees' justification of divorce from Deuteronomy 24:1 and reasserted the purpose of God in creation that no human being separate what God has joined together.
Yes, but the very fact that Jesus commands that human beings not separate those God joined together seems to indicate that it is indeed possible to end a marriage. Another question raised by this statement is whether there are marriages that are not joined together by God but by men. And again, I'm sure Jesus does not contradict Himself, so it is still lawful to divorce on the basis of unfaithfulness.
v4. Matthew 5:32 does not teach that remarriage is lawful in some cases. Rather it reaffirms that marriage after divorce is adultery, even for those who have been divorced innocently, and that a man who divorces his wife is guilty of the adultery of her second marriage unless she had already become an adulteress before the divorce.
Actually, you are saying something more than scripture here. The exception for "unchastity" is unrelated to those who are unrighteously divorced -- Jesus calls remarriage after being unrighteously divorced "adultery". If Jesus does give an exception for a righteous divorce in God's eyes (similar to those who are widowed), then obviously this charge of adultery does not apply to them!
5. l Corinthians 7:10-11 teaches that divorce is wrong but that if it is inevitable the person who divorces should not remarry.
In the context of this passage (as in much of 1 Corinthians), Paul is responding to specific questions the Corinthians have asked him in a previous letter (7:1) that we do not possess. I believe that Paul does not contradict Jesus, so this does not speak against the adultery exception. The emphasis here seems to be that Paul tells his readers that is God's command for the Corinthian believers to preserve their marriages. This seems to be the guiding principle in this passage where Paul gives his opinions regarding family relationships, and a guiding principle for today.
6. l Corinthians 7:39 and Romans 7:1-3 teach that remarriage is legitimate only after the death of a spouse.
Neither of these passages specifically mention divorce, only the commitment of marriage They also confirm that remarriage is acceptable when the bonds of marriage are broken righteously.
QUOTE]
9. l Corinthians 7:15 does not mean that when a Christian is deserted by an unbelieving spouse he or she is free to remarry. It means that the Christian is not bound to fight in order to preserve togetherness. Separation is permissible if the unbelieving partner insists on it.[/QUOTE]
This is Paul's opinion, not a command of the Lord (v.12) and actually says that the believer is NOT BOUND (that is, not bound by the bonds of marriage anymore) because we are called to live in peace. This is a very interesting passage because it seems to indicate that, in practice, the early church practiced a more liberal (and frankly, more realistic) understanding of the complexities of marriage and divorce than many interpreters in this forum. They held the ideal high, but knew that because of the greater damage that is done to family and children by parents who can't get along, that divorce is sometimes a better answer.
10. 1 Corinthians 7:27-28 does not teach the right of divorced persons to remarry. It teaches that betrothed virgins should seriously consider the life of singleness, but do not sin if they marry.
Again, this is Paul's opinion, not a command of the Lord (v.12), but it actually may indicate that those "free from a wife" (v.27) do not sin if they do remarry.
8. Deuteronomy 24:1-4 does not legislate grounds for divorce but teaches that the "one-flesh" relationship established by marriage is not obliterated by divorce or even by remarriage.
Actually, I think you've greatly misunderstood this passage. It is talking about a man who divorces his wife and his wife married another man - then the second man divorces her. Verse 4 explicitly teaches that, in this situation, the first husband must not remarry the woman. This prevents a legalized "wife-swapping" arrangement where people try to bend the law to their own purposes.
11. The exception clause of Matthew 19:9 need not imply that divorce on account of adultery frees a person to be remarried. All the weight of the New Testament evidence given in the preceding ten points is against this view, and there are several ways to make good sense out of this verse so that it does not conflict with the broad teaching of the New Testament that remarriage after divorce is prohibited.
You don't have to reinterpret what Jesus said in Matthew 19:9 because it fits with the spirit of the Old Testament so well. At the very least, adultery is an acceptable reason for divorce that relieves the innocent person of their marital vows, giving them the opportunity to remarry (just as if their spouse had been executed according to Old Testament law).
ARGUMENT BASED ON THE SPIRIT OF THE LAW
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Just as the "Sabbath is made for man and not man for the sabbath", marriage is made for the benefit of the man and the woman, as well as their children and community. If a marriage is characterized by major problems such as abuse, infidelity, desertion, or drug abuse that is destroying the innocent spouse and their family, the marriage relationship is binding innocent people to persons who will cause great damage. In addition, Paul describes how we are called to live in peace (1 Corinthians 7:15). Constant fighting and destructive relationships do not live up to that calling. If a lengthy and consistent good-faith effort has been made to save the relationship and all results have been negative, then divorce may be the best solution.
I have known of couples where one a spouse felt comfortable abusing his mate because "the Bible teaches against divorce." The wife is expected to be a punching bag and the children are continuously exposed to an example of abuse (which statistically speaking, is often repeated in their own lives). I've have a friend that I had to advise to leave her husband and get herself and her son out of the relationship because her husband 1) was dealing drugs from the home 2) was consistently giving her venereal diseases because of his unfaithfulness 3) (the final straw) brought home a female stripper friend of his to live with his family to be a sexual addition to their husband-wife relationship! Her best solution was to leave the household (I told her if not for her sake, for the sake of her elementary-aged son!) and file for divorce so she could gain child support for her son and get what was financially hers out of the relationship so she could pick up the pieces of her life.
God is a God of new beginnings. Reading some of the posts in this forum, I wonder where grace enters into some people's theology. There seem to be some who would demand that the prodigal son be a slave in his father's house, the sheep that wandered off remain lost, and brothers and sisters that commit sin not be restored.
God hates divorce, and most people do also (except for maybe some sleazy divorce lawyers). But we need to be careful who and what we condemn from the comfort of our armchair. We need to remember that the example of Christ is grace for those who struggle in good conscience.
[ July 12, 2002, 02:04 AM: Message edited by: Baptist Believer ]
