Divorce

From Neoredemptive

The rending of a marriage.

While God hates divorce, He does, under some very particular circumstances, allow it on the basis of our "hard hearts".

• Unfaithfulness or adultery (Greek/porneia)
• Abandonment by an unbeliever

Martin Luther once said that sexual intercourse is "never without sin"; we believe, rather, that it is divorce that is never without sin. When one spouse seeks to divorce the other, there are only three possibilities: it is either a response to being sinned against, a sin of itself, or (most often) a combination of the two.

Remarriage

The New Testament speaks about remarriage. These passages are perhaps the only ones less popular to teach than the gender roles passages. Maybe it's because they are so at odds with how most churches approach the issue in practice. We have been trained (coddled?) to not even consider whether many of our church-sanctioned second/third/fourth marriages may have been expressly forbidden by our Master, and therefore have been entered into as an act of sin, and not simply that, but one endorsed or even encouraged by church elders who will some day have to give an accounting for that endorsement to that same Master.

We do not believe (as some do) that remarriage is always sinful, nor do we believe (as others do) that it is never sinful.

Do not be hasty to remarry, even when it is scripturally permissible; odds are that your sin had at least some part to play in the failure of your last marriage, and it would often be more fruitful for you and your ex-spouse to work through your sin and seek reconciliation.

Do not be too keen to find your "rights" in the Bible and to seek to fulfill them through your remarriage; Scripture will tell you, instead, that you are a slave, a bondservant of Jesus Christ, and that you have no rights except a freedom to love God and to love your neighbor (including your ex-spouse!) in the same way that Jesus has loved you.

Relevant Passages

• Gospels .../todo/...
• Matthew 19
• 1 Corinthians .../todo/...
• 1 Timothy 3 (Elders: "one-woman man", sim. for Deacons)