Shifting Ground on Marriage, Divorce and Remarriage - Part 1

Mark Dunagan
12/06/15 - Sunday Evening

Shifting Ground On Marriage, Divorce and Remarriage - Part 1

Since I first started preaching I have heard various erroneous views concerning Jesus’ teaching on the subject of marriage, divorce and remarriage in Matthew 5:31-32; 19:1-11 and other passages.  In this lesson I wanted to overview and answer some of those views.

The only sin the non-Christian is guilty of is the sin of unbelief – therefore they are not accountable to God’s law, including His marriage law.  They do not sin when they violate Matthew 19:9.

This is one of the first erroneous views that I heard when I started preaching full-time in the Northwest.  Yet there are a number of Scriptural problems with the above view:

• Unbelievers in the Old Testament were guilty of specific sins.  The Canaanites are removed from the land of Canaan (Genesis 15:16), not due to a generic sin of unbelief, but rather because of specific sins, including the sin of adultery (Leviticus 18:20, 24).  To be guilty of a specific sin, one must be accountable to a specific law (Romans 5:13).
• The cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were guilty of specific sins (Jude 7).
• Non-Christians in the New Testament are said to have been guilty of specific sins as well, including adultery, fornication, homosexuality, and drunkenness (1 Corinthians 6:9-11; Colossians 3:5).
• Professed Christians who argue the above point fail to be consistent.  On the one hand they contend that non-Christians are not accountable to God’s marriage law, yet on the other hand they complain that the world is ignoring God’s teaching on marriage, especially in light of the recent movement toward Homosexual Marriage.

Matthew 19 is not addressed to non-Christians, therefore it does not apply to them.

• Yet Jesus was extremely clear.  What He was teaching in Matthew 19 had been true from the beginning (19:8).  This means that He is teaching a moral standard that all have been under from Genesis.  In like manner God’s teaching against murder had been true from the beginning of time (Genesis 9:6) and applies to all men everywhere.
• Why would God’s law on marriage not apply to all men, seeing that the gift of marriage was given to all men?  To put it another way, if they are not under God’s marriage law, then what right do they have to the relationship? 
• Again, those who make the above argument are not consistent.  They will say that the non-Christian is not accountable to it, but they will appeal to it if a non-Christian was the innocent party in a previous marriage prior to baptism. 
• It would be impossible for a non-Christian to be guilty of the sin (s) of fornication or adultery, seeing that such sins only exist where there is a Divine marriage law in place and to which they are accountable (Hebrews 13:4). 
• If they are not accountable to Matthew 19, then neither do they have the right to use the exception clause.  That exception clause is found nowhere else outside the Gospels.
• In Mark 10:12 which is a parallel passage with Matthew 19, Jesus mentions a woman divorcing her husband.  This was rare among the Jews, but common among the Gentiles.  This also infers that His teaching applies to all men, and not just covenant people.

Matthew 19 is not part of the Gospel, it is Old Testament teaching and ended at the cross of Christ.  Therefore such teaching applies to no one today.

• Then no one has the right to put away a mate guilty of sexual immorality.  Again, the exception clause is not found outside the Gospels.
• The Holy Spirit appears to have anticipated this false idea.  Right before Jesus gives the Sermon on the Mount which includes teaching on marriage, divorce and remarriage (Matthew 5:31-32), the text specifically says that Jesus was preaching the gospel (Matthew 4:23).  Therefore, Matthew chapters 5-7 are “gospel”.
• In Luke 16:16 Jesus is very specific.  He says that the Law of Moses was taught until John the Baptist and since that time the gospel of the kingdom has been preached, then He cites His teaching on marriage, divorce and remarriage (Luke 16:18). 

The adultery mentioned in Matthew 19:9 is a one-time, non-sexual act of divorcing to remarry.  Therefore, to enter the marriage was a sin, but to remain in it is not sinful.

• Yet Jesus is very precise in Matthew 19:9.  The adultery in the verse is in the present tense, and tenses do matter to God.  Jesus built very important doctrinal arguments on the tense of a word in a verse (Matthew 22:32).
• The adultery in the context is obviously sexual in nature, compare Matthew 5:32 with Matthew 5:27-28.
• Repentance always demands that one forsake sin to be forgiven.
• John the Baptist actually faced a situation in which a man had married another man’s wife (Mark 6:17-18).  Yet the Holy Spirit never gives Herod the option of “repenting” and “keeping” the new wife.  The Holy Spirit specifically says through John, “It is not lawful to have her”.  There is no way that this marriage could be made right.
• Romans 7:3 makes it clear that in such “marriages” the adultery lasts as long as the marriage lasts. Clearly Romans 7:3 is not teaching that it was “adultery” the first time they came together but is never adultery after that.  Or that it was a sin to enter into the new marriage but is not a sin to remain in it.
• In the Old Testament, Jewish men who violated God’s law (Deuteronomy 7:1-4) and formed marriages in opposition to that Law were not allowed to remain in such marriages when they repented (Ezra 9:1-2; 10:2-3).  Respect for God and His Law demanded that such marriages be ended.

One loosed, both loosed.  If one party is free to remarry the other must be free as well.

Often the illustration that is given is of two people hand-cuffed together and the logic used is that if one of them is free, then both are free.  Yet this is one of the downfalls of using a purely human illustration to support a Divine teaching.

• If such is true then why didn’t Jesus just say that much in Matthew 19?
• If the above theory is true then it is teaching that my own sexual unfaithfulness, which brought about such grief, pain and the end of my marriage, is at the same time what gives me the right to remarry. Does that make sense?
• Such a view is also based on the false premise that I can, by my power, by my sin – actually separate what God has joined together.  What God joined together is a “covenant” (Malachi 2:15).  Jewish men who left their Jewish wives for pagan women were reminded by Malachi that God still held them accountable to that “covenant” with the wife of their youth. 
• Jesus specifically gave the one not guilty of adultery the freedom to remarry and no such right is given to the one guilty of adultery.
• People forget that there is actually a third party in the marriage, God, the one who joined them together (Matthew 19:6).  What binds me to my mate is not civil law, or even my decision to stay in the marriage, but rather Divine law (Romans 7:2).  So the person who is innocent of adultery has the right to remarry if they so choose (Matthew 19:9), yet the other party is bound to another aspect of God’s law, that is, God’s law nowhere gives them the right to remarry.
• Remember God designed marriage, and therefore God has the right to regulate it (it is for men and women, Matthew 19:4).  Has the right to set the terms (Ephesians 5:22ff), and has the right to declare who can and who cannot remarry (Matthew 19:9).

Mark Dunagan | mdunagan@frontier.net
Beaverton Church of Christ | 503-644-9017
www.beavertonchurchofchrist.net