by Standerinfamilycourt
…so that they are no more two, but one flesh; what therefore God did join together, let no man put asunder.
Matt. 19:6
Because the Lord has been a witness between you and the wife of your youth, against whom you have dealt treacherously, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant. But not one has done so who has a remnant of the Spirit. And what did that one do while he was seeking a godly offspring? Take heed then to your spirit, and let no one deal treacherously against the wife of your youth.
Malachi 2:14-15
Even now, most marriage-permanence disciples and ministries don’t fully understand the foundational concepts that make non-widowed remarriage constitute the ongoing state of adultery, in every case. As a consequence, the best of these are constantly battling rationalized pleas for worldly exceptions that can seem impervious to scriptural correction, and suffering endless accusations of “legalism” evoked by the very idea that those who do not repent of marrying someone else’s covenant spouse will not inherit the kingdom of God. Virtually NO Protestant pastor today preaches on the foundational facts underlying the thrice-repeated words of Jesus concerning this:
“everyone who marries a divorced [person] enters a state of ongoing adultery”. [Matt. 5:32b; Matt. 19:9b-KJV; Luke 16:18]
The most enlightened pastors who correctly and faithfully quote Jesus in the “what” of marriage permanence do so without giving any deep voice to the “why it is so.” Jesus said, “…from the beginning it was not so”, referring to false, man-made declarations of marriage dissolution, and He bluntly stated this was not possible by the hand of men. The last such sermon or writing we’re aware of that came close to Christ’s explicitness of this foundational truth in God’s marriage law went like this:
Isaac Williams (1802-1865) Church of England
” ‘What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.’ Here our Lord sets aside the letter of Holy Scripture, in one case, in the passage in Deuteronomy, (which He speaks of as the command of Moses,) on account of the higher law of Christian holiness and perfection…And therefore this passage in the book of Genesis not only is spoken, as St. Paul says it is, of the Sacramental union betwixt Christ and His Church, but does also signify that marriage is of itself of Divine sanction, and the union formed of God, and necessarily indissoluble as such…for if God hath joined, man cannot put asunder.”
But precisely why is it not possible for marriage to be dissolved by an act of men?
We really don’t need to look any further than Matthew 19:6 and its parallel verse, Mark 10:8-9 to see where Jesus tells us concisely why:
(*the Greek word in the manuscripts is anthropos, meaning “mankind”, not “andra” / “aner” or “man”.)
GOD creates the one-flesh entity, and from that point on, no longer sees two individuals. From that point on, only death can make one-flesh two again, which immediately eliminates every single one of the myriad rationalizations for remarriage while the spouse of our youth remains alive. [This is directly echoed in Romans 7:2-3 and 1 Cor. 7:39.]
Yet GOD does something even further upon the making of vows before Him of holy matrimony, after He has created the irrevocable, inseparable one-flesh entity: He unconditionally enters covenant with that new entity. (Malachi 2:14) This foundational fact means that holy matrimony is never replicated in a non-widowed remarriage, for God does not abandon covenant, nor join into a competing one. That’s why Jesus was so unrelenting and exceptionless in insisting that to marry another while having a living spouse, or to marry someone’s discarded spouse, is always to enter a state of ongoing adultery until repented and terminated. To do so, brazenly mocks the God of the marriage covenant!
(See also Genesis 2:21-24, and Ephesians 5:31 , noting that in every one of these stated cases, a man leaves his father and mother, not the spouse of his youth)
It’s literally that simple. However, to fully grasp the implications of all this, one must know the attributes of God’s character and how He deals with His own covenants, to which He is always the dominant party — for the most part, unconditionally.
What are those attributes?
Holiness – He will not abide nor inhabit that which is immoral and undertaken in treachery. (Not to be confused with the outward appearance of blessing, for He causes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust. )
Omnipotence – If not for His mercy and forbearance, we would be instantly consumed. Yet He brings the foreign invader and the internal blight, against which He withdraws His mighty hand of protection from a nation in order to chastise toward repentance, for the purpose to restore relationship with Him.
Integrity – Ancient covenants were always unconditionally binding on the stronger, more powerful party, i.e. Himself. He does not break covenant even when men do. Biblical scholars J. K. Tarwater and D.W. Jones exhaustively studied a total of 267 Old Testament, and 34 New Testament covenants of the Lord, and found that He broke not a single one of them in all of biblical history.
Justice – Unrepentant covenant-breaking and self-worship will have its day of retribution and recompense, even if it doesn’t occur in this life. Undertaken in this life, the cost of repentance is finite. Undertaken in the next life, the cost is unending.
Jealousy for His Symbols – From the severe discipline Moses received as a consequence of disobeying God in striking the rock (a symbol for the crucified Christ – Numbers 20:8-12) to the instant death that was meted to the priest Uzza for touching the Ark of the Covenant (1 Chronicles 13:9-10), the Most High allows no violation of His sacred symbols, of which holy matrimony was the very first and most sacred of symbols (Ephesians 5:31-32).
As though it wasn’t symbolic enough for Jesus, the Bridegroom, to rehearse virtually the entire script at the last supper of the traditional Hebrew betrothal ceremony (John 14:1-4; Luke 22:14-20) as He instituted holy communion, the actual elements of bread and wine represent a bit more than His flesh and his blood, they also represent one-flesh and the biblical marriage covenant itself: “I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until I drink it anew with you in My Father’s house.”
(For a deeper study on God’s Character and His Covenants, follow this link.)
Before we take on the entrenched culture of “sanctified adultery”, calcified by 500 years of Reformation-sourced twin heresies: that men can dissolve the marriage covenant contrary to what Jesus asserted, and that born-again believers are not accountable for their post-conversion apostasies (behind which are the all the demons of hell), we first must establish an immovable foundation whose pilings are the unambiguous teachings of Christ contained in scripture, whose bricks of covenant are the unchangeable attributes of God’s character, and whose mortar is the supernatural binding of one-flesh that only God can unbind. It is the unshakable knowledge that this foundation is not replicated, (nor can it ever be replicated) in unions that Jesus repeatedly characterized as in the ongoing state of God-mocking adultery.
This enhanced understanding of one-flesh and of holy covenant allows us to get out of the weeds of endlessly arguing about word usage and etymologies, of suffering charges of harshness under humanistic standards of perceived justice, and misguided concerns about “repeat sin” in undertaking the necessary acts of repentance. It’s the stuff of the book of Ezra, a contemporary of Malachi, where more than a hundred of the priests could have made all the same arguments, and thereby permanently forfeited the sovereignty of their nation, but instead they heeded the “thus saith the Lord” of their covenant to put away their foreign wives, for whom most had likely put away their one-flesh covenant wives previously, or were living in polygamy–as a good 60% of the contemporary Western church is today. Imagine how rapidly God’s kingdom would be rebuilt if only a modern-day Ezra would be raised up by the Lord, and His shepherds would repent and become as faithful!
Thus says the Lord, ‘If My covenant for day and night stand not, and the fixed patterns of heaven and earth I have not established, then I would reject the descendants of Jacob and David My servant, not taking from his descendants rulers over the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. But I will restore their fortunes and will have mercy on them.’
Jeremiah 33:25-26
7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal No-Fault Divorce!
www.standerinfamilycourt.com
The official position statement on Marriage, Divorce and Remarriage of the Assemblies of God (UNSCRIPTURALLY) states:
“Remarriage establishes a new marriage covenant. While Scripture makes it clear that errant spouses who sinfully break their marriage covenant do commit adultery, Scripture
never places such guilt on the innocent partner. Those who argue that an innocent believer continuously commits sin by living in a new marriage have not a single shred of
biblical evidence. Jesus clearly assumed that those who were divorced by sinful spouses, or those who divorced sinful spouses for “marital uncleanness” or abandonment, were
free to remarry without any tinge of adultery. However, believers are to remarry one who “belong[s] to the Lord” (1 Corinthians 7:39) and the new marriage covenant is to be
permanent. ”
Not a single shred of evidence?? Apparently the 3X warning of Jesus (that EVERYONE who marries a divorced person commits ongoing adultery) wasn’t evidence enough during the 1973 vote of the pastors that reversed some 60 years of biblically-faithful doctrine for the denomination after unilateral (no-fault) divorce was enacted in all of the U.S. states.
The denomination now makes it mandatory for their pastors to do what they used to actually remove pastors for – performing adulterous weddings that send people (and themselves) to hell by the millions. That position paper actually claims a false covenant, and insists that what Jesus said will cost the kingdom of God must remain permanent.
This is very serious, because remarriage adultery takes people to hell in groups, not individually. No wonder the Lord is doing so much to try to get the attention of His bride!