Is Remarriage after Divorce, Adultery?
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Helen
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As I said in my posts on here....”unless you’ve walked in their shoes...and know all the circumstances...”
“ Let him who is without sin...”
People today get divorced because they are disillusioned. They only see the mask the other is wearing for those first few months. If you really want to know someone, it takes TIME.
I want to agree, but a man following that advice would likely end up with a frigid woman who makes a miserable wife. How is a man to know his girlfriend is going along with celibacy out of virtue rather than dysfunction? (It's much less likely a woman would have this problem with a boyfriend.)
Can you state this another way. I haven't a clue what "initial" is, and what you are saying.
If you read some of the posts in this thread, and I cannot be bothered to wade through them all, you will see that some have the opinion that anyone who actually does the divorcing is in the wrong. That ' vowes ' taken mean for life - so ending the marriage was one thing, divorcing quite another, to some here.
The trust issue, I do not mistrust everyone - that is not what I said. I said I could not trust anyone enough to be in another relationship with anyone. This is where many do not understand the impact on a person when someone has been unfaithful, I trusted in my intuition with my husband- 2years after the divorce I found out that he had been unfaithful for over 16years of my 27year marriage - I didn't have a clue. His deception was very good and I did not se through it. Many people Christians and non Christians , have trust issues with others because of their experiences, and of course it is not how it should be- but it's how it is.
Rita
IOW If the adultery was only the first act of marriage...and at some point no longer adultery. As opposed to an ongoing act of adultery as long as the marriage persisted.
Your divorce isn't worth the paper it's written on. You are still married but separated. If your husband was cruel or abusive, getting away from him was a good thing. Christians always fled violence in Acts but always forgave while separating.
I forgave my husband a long time ago, but to this day he has never been accountable - as to your views that I am still married, well I am not too sure I actually want to be still married to him -but as it really makes no difference to my life I will just accept that this is your view. It's not something I have considered before x
Marriage is for life. I cannot think of anything worse than what you are up against. But if you can forgive, and pray for God's mercy on your enemies, you are more Christ like than most of us.
Helen
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Where does it say that we even need " the paper" certificate, in the first place. Adam and Eve didn't have one...Isaac didn't have one...
I certainly do not judge you for divorcing your unfaithful husband. Divorce is not a sin. The question I posed, is remarriage a sin after divorce, which you have not done.
But even if you had remarried, God is really the only one who can judge this, especially in our lukewarm age of Laodecia, where just about anything goes and is winked at by Christians. In your case your unChristian husband left the marriage when he had sex with another woman, so even Paul says you are not bound to him. It is only if he had been faithful, that you were bound.
It is easy to judge harshly and by the letter of the law when you have never been betrayed and are still in a one and only marriage. That is human nature and pride. But is God only holy, and not merciful? I don't have the answer, which is why I posted this question. I CHOOSE to live on the side of His holiness, rather than His mercy, thus do not look at another man. But for others, even though Jesus was living under the Old Covenant and was obedient to it, His WORDS still are what matters to us as we see in Matthew 5 as he was presenting the laws of the New Covenant, a new and higher standard of the same laws that were presently then just the "bottom line" like kindergarten. Therefore, "except for sexual infidelity" frees you. We just cannot use divorce and remarriage as a swinging door to "legally" have sex with multiple partners like the weakness of the world, any more than abortion is birth-control.
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Yes marriage is for life, and you would be right, IF he was just cruel or abusive, then separation is necessary. But he was sexually unfaithful (from her first post), the one and only clause Jesus exempted. Yes, we can forgive that, but are not commanded to. He left her when he was unfaithful, thus Paul says (and Jesus) she is not bound.
Helen
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So then...in my book the offended one is then free to marry again.
The unfaithful one broke the covenant , broke the contract...so the one who remained faithful is free to marry a Christian.
BTW I have seen all this chapter turned totally on it's head ...by moving all of the commas and periods. Which as we know, are not in the original at all.
Therefore...I am not a hard and fast legalist on this issue. :)
Let's say 2 Christians see their marriage falling apart....knowing that it is for one or the other to first break the marriage.
So then imagine 2 runners at a starting line...the first one to commit adultery then allows the other to marry another without penalty??? It's like a Mexican stand-off.
If we see that both parties (husband and wife) have exactly the same role...and are interchangeable...then the divorce/remarry issue is a non-starter...and marriage is a technicality.
So the the more patient one waits for the more impulsive one to sin first....then it is legal to sin yourself by waiting the other one out.
But Jesus was very specific. A woman can't wait her husband out. She is bound to her husband. So then marriage IS for life.
I respect both DaveL and Episkopos a great deal, and we usually agree. They are both honoring "the letter" as I do, but God is Spirit, and must be worshiped in Spirit and in truth. There are questions the Bible does not address, but on many we already know the answer because we know God's laws.
Say, for instance, homosexual marriage and heterosexual fornication. Is a homosexual marriage "under God" just because the land sees them as married, and does God also see them as married and bound to one another? What about losing your virginity to fornication, whether male or female as a teenager? Does God see you then as married, and if later you actually legally marry someone else even for the first time, does God see that marriage as adultery? It seems so in the Old Testament, as only virgin girls were eligible for marriage. The scenarios are endless, which is why we let God do the judging. It is also why I choose to err on the side of His holiness and stay away from men altogether. For all I know, I could be married to Bob from New York, my "first," and not my first husband, Dave who was an entertainer and had a different girl at each gig, let alone my second husband, Steve who left me for the wife of his best friend.
:During the divorce I made a decision to handle things Gods way, so I didn't give in to revenge or hate, I chose to build bridges with my ex and have continued to do so over the past 11 years. I did want to throw bricks at him at times, only in my thoughts - he use to make me sooooo angry, but I never acted on those emotions. It was hard going, but not anymore.
As to the forgiveness, well the Lord challenged me to forgive him for everything, my first reaction was ' you want me to do what !!!!!!!! ' Gradually I was able to comply, but only with the Lords help, and I had to deal with a whole heap of emotional responses in between.
Rita
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