by Standerinfamilycourt
Adam and Eve…Ahab and Jezebel….Joseph and Asenath…Moses and Zipporah….Herod and the daughter of the King of Petra….Herodias and Philip….Timothy’s mother, Lois and his pagan father…Potiphar and Mrs. P….Pontius Pilate and Mrs. Pilate…Felix and Drusilla
What do all of these biblical married couples have in common? Obviously, they stand as the scriptural rebuke to contemporary evangelical fantasies (usually arrived at in retrospect) that, “God didn’t join my first marriage.”
It isn’t usually that the evangelical church leadership pushes this nonsense. No, Protestant leadership seems to prefer the equally immoral falsehood that some human act (X) “breaks” the covenant, and “marrying” another person constitutes a new covenant as binding as the first. The only church that officially promotes the myth that God “doesn’t join” some original marriages, where there is a believer and an unbeliever making vows, seems to be the Roman Catholic Church, which presumes to issue “annulment” papers in that instance, but only upon the request of one of the spouses.
When the Pharisees (presumably all unbelievers, with possibly one or two exceptions) challenged Jesus’ first declaration from the sermon on the mount that God-joined holy matrimony was dissoluble only by physical death, He took these leaders on a history tour back to the Garden of Eden and recreated for them the first-ever wedding performed by the hand of God. He described how Eve was taken out of Adam, who declared his wife to be “bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh”. The Apostle Paul later echoes this in Ephesians 5:
“So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself; for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church, because we are members of His body. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and shall be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”
But, I digress….forthwith, back to that wedding scene in Genesis 2. Moses tells us of the Father’s presence as officiant. He tells us that the generations coming from Adam and Eve will be never-married, leaving their father and mother to be made one-flesh (sarx mia, in the Greek) with the spouse of their youth. We see consent, and we see two witnesses, Jesus and the serpent. What we do not see is any religious test applied by God or anyone else. History tells us that religious tests which retroactively “nullify” a marriage didn’t arrive until the 13th century.
Jesus had every opportunity to tell the religious-but-apostate philandering Pharisees that God couldn’t possibly have joined their original marriages, but instead He told them this:
“So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no [hu]man separate [put distance between]….Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way.”
“Whoever divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her; and if she herself divorces her husband and marries another man, she is committing adultery.”
The only fact that can reasonably be supported by scripture is that God joins all marriages between a never-married or widowed man and a never-married or widowed woman, of every tribe, tongue and nation where there is consent and intent to form a home together. No exceptions. The direct corollary is that God does not join civil-only legalized unions where there is an estranged prior spouse still living, regardless of the individual circumstances. For a deeper understanding of this, please read “GOD’S CHARACTER AND HIS COVENANTS”.
God actually didn’t join your first marriage if you tried to wed someone who was legally estranged from a living spouse. Otherwise, nothing they did, or you feel changes the fact that He was there and was the real officiant.
Marriage is to be held in honor among all, and the marriage bed is to be undefiled; for fornicators and adulterers God will judge.
– Hebrews 13:4
www.standerinfamilycourt.com
7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal “No-Fault” Divorce!
well said
My covenant wife left two years ago almost to the day…August 2018. My pastor told me to wait a year after the divorce before even having coffee with anyone….and that was my plan. Until the Holy Spirit ambushed me over about a two month period and taught me about covenant marriage thru Scripture, signs and wonders. Now I am convinced I am to remain single and pray for my covenant wife…regardless of what she does. My struggle is with church..my pastor continues to give this advice to friends going thru crushing and painful divorces..wait a year before dating. If I go to another church, they teach the same…matter of fact I sought counsel from the boldest pastor in my area and he was pretty much okay with my pastor’s counsel. So what do you do about church?
Thanks for sharing your experiences with us. Those pastors may give great humanistic advice, but we both know that Jesus would never say such a thing! Jesus repeatedly said that even the innocent third party who “marries” a divorced person enters into an ongoing state of adultery that will take them to hell. James tells us that those pastors will one day face a harsher judgment (James 3:1) for their cowardice and greed in the body of Christ. There are fortunately a small but growing handful of true shepherds who refuse to dilute the unpopular truth on this topic, but the thing is, you’ve never heard of them because they will naturally never run a mega church or be featured on TBN. One of them, Pastor Raymond McMahon of Connecticut goes live on Facebook every Sunday morning to share his radio recording sessions with the community of covenant marriage standers, and then puts his church services, in full, on YouTube. I recommend you check him out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEiiOSmYzKg
Most covenant marriage standers live at odds with their local church. Some have been put out of the church for “causing strife and divisions”. Others are flatly ignored and rendered irrelevant. From time to time, our Facebook posts have featured marriage permanence churches and denominations for the benefit of others. God bless you and help you to stay strong in the Lord.
If a single ( never married ) brother enters an ‘adultery marriage’ to an already married sister – and has children – then repents of it and legally divorces her – he entered not a marriage but a life of fornication on his part and adultery on her part and an adultery marriage for both?
Is he then free to marry correctly again? ie to a single or widowed sister? in man’s eyes this would be his second marriage after divorce – in God’s eyes it would be his first one flesh marriage – would it not?
He repents of his life of fornication – and despite having children in that ‘adultery marriage’ – she is free to return to her real marriage and he should be free to marry correctly ?
or – does a life of fornication – in an adultery marriage – subsequently repented of – prevent a brother from marriage in the Lord ?
According to the most faithful understanding rightly-divided scripture, you are correct in your understanding, Bevan.
Someone who was in sin and left that life, who has no living covenant spouse from whom he is estranged, may indeed marry a widow or never-married woman and enjoy a God-joined one flesh covenant union for the first time, in the Lord.
That said, many who forsake an adulterous legal union are in no hurry to remarry. Many want to even avoid the appearance of sin in front of others in a Christian world that doesn’t understand and is likely to stumble – even though God does not require this as a blanket rule. What Paul says in 1 Cor. 7 about being free from a wife and not seeking a wife is certainly worth praying over. God bless!
I have skimmed over your references to Math 19:9 – on this website – and not come across another possibility that exists – that takes out the word ‘except’ and replaces it with “not for” which we may well use “Not even for” in todays language. This changes the meaning radically and in my opinion – gels the references in Mark and Luke into a jigsaw.
The 2 letter word for ‘not’ in the Greek is ‘me’ but changes to ‘except’ when the word ‘if’ (Greek ‘ei’ or ‘ean’ ) is put in front of it (‘ei’ me” or ‘ean me’ ) It is a tiny addition with big results, changing an exclusion into an exception. This change had been made in the Greek NT used by all Protestant Reformers and their successors, who accepted the alteration without question and incorporated it into their translations of the Bible.
The vast majority of early Greek manuscripts of the NT do not contain the word ‘except’ in Math 19:9 and read simply ‘not for fornication’
Interesting but the man who was responsible for this was Erasmus ( a Dutch R.C. humanist ) – 1516 – who prepared and published this text just in time for the Reformation, and beating the Roman church’s official Greek text in 1522.
He also applied ‘not bound’ in 1 Cor 7:15 – to the bond of marriage rather than the bondage of slavery and to the future rather than the past. This or these are known as ‘the Erasmian exception’
Trust that helps.
Very sorry, John, for the delay in responding. Widespread pastoral cowardice and heresy on this issue routinely makes sustaining healthy relationships in churches very difficult for most true Christ-followers who are justifiably concerned for the souls of others, no question about it. Even if things rock along reasonably well for a season, some change can come along overnight in many churches that suddenly make life there very difficult for the true disciple. (Been there.) Here’s what we have seen happen on the ground, over the years:
(1) some join one of 3 or 4 excellent online ministries, such as Spirit of Hosea, where the leaders are 100% faithful to scripture in upholding lifelong, indissoluble covenant marriage, no exceptions, no excuses. On our companion FB page, “Unilateral Divorce is Unconstitutional”, we post these from time to time as we find and assess them. Some have annual or semi annual retreats for covenant marriage standers to attend for teaching and fellowship. Again, we try to post notice of these events on the FB page as we hear of them.
(2) some decide to form a house church ministry or an actual church that practices undiluted biblical family morality.
(3) some find one of the dwindling number of denominations that have not sold out in this area.
http://www.danielrjennings.org/denominationspermanencyofmarriage.html
(4) some find an otherwise fairly conservative church and hope to be a quiet witness to the pastor there, scheduling an appointment, offering one of the excellent books on the subject to the pastor. Most who take that approach find themselves politely ignored, but a few have tales of actually being engaged on the matter. This is obviously not for people who care more about what humans think of them than what God thinks of them – and it tends to be a very lonely, isolated existence where people must decline to attend certain weddings and anniversary celebrations, refuse to be under adulterous small group leadership, etc.
It is not for nothing that we were warned by the apostle, Paul:
“For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths.” 2 Timothy 4:3-4
In the interest of fair disclosure, “standerinfamilycourt” would like to advise that a rebuttal has been received from another blogger by the name of Yvonne Dalton. Her exact comments will not be shared here at this time because she links to her own blog in her comments, and also because her arguments very closely parallel those of the false shepherd David Servant, whom this blog has extensively rebutted in several installments a few years ago:
https://www.standerinfamilycourt.com/2017/12/the-gospel-according-to-david-servant/
https://www.standerinfamilycourt.com/2017/12/he-gospel-according-to-david-servant-versus-we-of-the-divine-divorce-doctrine-part-2/
https://www.standerinfamilycourt.com/2018/01/the-gospel-according-to-david-servant-versus-we-of-the-divine-divorce-doctrine-part-3/
https://www.standerinfamilycourt.com/2018/01/the-gospel-according-to-david-servant-versus-we-of-the-divine-divorce-doctrine-part-3b/
All well-reasoned, reverent, truthful and God-honoring writings on this topic are careful to apply ALL FIVE principles of disciplined hermeneutics in their attempts to rightly-divide holy scripture on any topic:
Content, Context, Culture, Comparison, and Consultation.
Her blog site attacks (by name) many modern-day saints and faithful shepherds, true citizens of the kingdom of God, whose writings have all faithfully passed this hermeneutics test. Very much like Servant, her arguments appeal to only couple of those principles, which is not at all uncommon for heresies. And just like Servant, her arguments can’t stand up to the ones she chooses to omit.
In the future, a blog will be undertaken to rebut her position point by point, address the heresy in some of her other blog posts and bring her to the attention of the Kingdom saints she is attempting to discredit. At this point, it is not clear how much of a following her blog actually has, so SIFC will attempt to find out. Since she is an ear-tickler, it would not be at all surprising to find that her following is a few times larger, compared to this ministry. Her blog site appears to go back to early 2011, which means she has been at it about 4 years longer than SIFC.
Let not many of you become teachers, my brethren, knowing that as such we will incur a stricter judgment. – James 3:1
“Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it.”
– Matthew 7: 13-14
Hello.
How does one reconcile themselves to the Lord if they have remarried?
What are the acceptable steps that can be taken to repent?
If a person is disabled, isolated and has no income nor the ability to obtain income and is in a remarried instance, has become chaste, separate in the house (own bedroom) and lives with co/sinner only as a brother/sister, can one be forgiven? If one cannot obtain a legal dissolvent of record of marriage “due to said former notations”, how does one reconcile with God?
Thank You!
You raise good questions, even if they sound a bit rhetorical to the discerning disciple, “Anonymous”
Did you see Jesus saying anywhere that “extenuating circumstances” cancel the penalty for mortal sin? Did He ever say the starving thief can keep the coin bag he stole so that he can purchase bread? Or that the liar is excused, if telling the truth will land him in jail or worse? My bible says that ALL (unrepented) liars will be thrown into the lake of fire (Rev. 21:9).
How did Jesus say to repent and be reconciled to God? “If you love Me, you will obey My commandments.” Intentionally living on in an estranged state from one’s true God-joined spouse (or thereby preventing an illicit-but-civilly-legal partner from returning to a legally-estranged true spouse) is also a mortal sin-see Matt. 18:23-35.
This has been an ongoing topic in my life. I ‘m already convinced by the Word of the Lord regarding the truth. Please be direct with your answer if anyone can help with this serious set of questions. I ‘m seeking help to solve this serious issue. I have many questions but this one will help many if one is willing to be honest. Thank you.
Hi Anonymous
I trust these words may help – not hinder – I have lost ‘godly’ friends and will continue to lose more – on this issue.
You may have ‘remarried’ in man’s ( or your ) eyes – however in God’s eyes – you entered an adulterous relationship – not a marriage – despite what man thinks. Your marriage never ended – it still exists – till death of either spouse ‘part’ you.
When man chooses to break God’s institution – to man its a piece of paper – to God its violence to his laws. Today – society has become desensitized to this ‘violence’ that breaks up a marriage and ‘one flesh’s’ you to another body. ( also violence to unborn children, homosexuality, trans etc )
When you repent – which means turning from your sin – God is faithful and just to forgive and cleanse from all unrighteousness – but that is conditional upon repentance – the turning away – the intentional 180. Repentance means you wish to be reconciled to your wife – its a heart decision as well as a ‘walk’ decision.
We are here as witnesses to the unsaved and the world watches us – we are told in 1 Thess 5:22 to ‘abstain from all appearances of evil’ – Why would a sister be living with another sister’s husband? the ‘appearance’ still exists.
Would you ask a sister – to live with another woman’s husband? Is that seen to the world as ‘chaste and separate’?
God who designed marriage – also provides all the tools needed for reconciliation – ‘disabled, isolated and no income or the ability to obtain income’ – are no obstacles to God – providing you have a genuine heart to reconcile – he can and will do what you can’t – if you do what you can.
Meantime 1 Cor 7:11 applies – remain single and be seen to be remaining single – which sends a loud message to your wife where you want to be – it also sends a loud message to your neighbours where you don’t want to be.
There are many reconciliation videos on youtube that will inspire you to keep pressing on to the goal on high – if anything happenned to you ( or me ) today – how do you wish to face our creator? with or without the appearance of evil? We are told to live blameless lives Phil 1:9+
If you heart has genuine reconciliation to your wife – God can and will make that happen – in his timing – meantime remain as single as you can and have faith that God can overcome what – to you – may seem insurmountable.
Blessings
Bevan, this is a great response overall, but SIFC would like to make one minor point of clarification on part of what you offered:
RE: “When man chooses to break God’s institution – to man its a piece of paper – to God its violence to his laws. Today – society has become desensitized to this ‘violence’ that breaks up a marriage and ‘one flesh’s’ you to another body. ( also violence to unborn children, homosexuality, trans etc )…”
As graphically discussed in the blog post itself, an adulterous civil “remarriage” never creates a one-flesh state. We can never be one-flesh with more than one living spouse at a time, because the Greek “sarx mia” is a supernatural bond that only God can create – and He does so only upon biblically-valid vows. Rather, what your comment more accurately refers to is described by Paul in 1 Cor. 6:16, where the Greek text instead reads, “hen soma”, or one-body – which is a sinful, natural and transitory state bereft of God, even if civil or church paper attempts to purport otherwise.
As a follow-on, “Anonymous” came back again this morning, attempting to post another comment which (for various reasons) will be moderated out, in lieu of an upcoming general blog post discussing situations people feel they have no way out of. If the moderator feels there is “TMI” (too much information), or seeks counseling (as opposed to simple, biblically-faithful teaching), which almost no one here is qualified to deliver, or is seeking assurance of something that can only come by the indwelling Holy Spirit, it will not be deemed appropriate for the public discussion chain here.
A couple more quick points.
(1) Though some high-integrity marriage permanence pastors I know insist that a civil divorce is a “necessary” step in true repentance – as a heaven or hell matter, SIFC will retain the view that where permanent, repentant change in residence has occurred, coupled with a heart-openness (which only God can discern) to reconciliation with the covenant spouse, a civil action to correct that which God never recognized in the first place amounts only to an untidy legal life, not apostasy.
(2) Comments to any and all blog posts on 7 Times Around the Jericho Wall are system-set to automatically cut off at 360 days after publication to avoid “counseling” situations and undue argumentiveness – and it just so happened that Anonymous’ comment literally came in on the 360th day. SIFC had to temporarily change the setting, out of compassion for Anonymous, in order to have our response post here. The setting is being restored back today. The follow-up blog post will be open to comment for 360 days after publication, subject to reasonable moderation rules.
Let’s never forget that nothing is impossible with God. Matthew 19:26