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SEVEN MINUTE SEMINARY

Remarriage and Divorce in Biblical Perspective

What says the Bible on divorce and remarriage?  Are there ever exceptions? Dr. Craig Keener leads us in a sensible discussion on a very sensitive and pressing subject. Watch this for information on remarriage and divorce in biblical perspective.

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Comments

2 Responses

  1. Dr. Keener, thanks for your views on this. As a Christian blogger for whom it is important to adhere to Biblical instruction in all things—whether that be divorce, homosexuality, or gender roles (thank you for your article on women in ministry, it was the best and most comprehensive I’d ever read!)—the implications of Jesus’s teachings on divorce seem difficult to accept.

    What about the person who is stuck in a loveless marriage, who has tried repeatedly to renew it but doesn’t see any hope of that happening, because the other party has no interest in that happening? Are they supposed to stay in a miserable marriage? And what of the fact that, if they do so and their spouse eventually ends up being the one to end it, divorce law tends to favor the one who filed for divorce? Depending on the quality of each party’s lawyers, that could result in the one who tried to do what they thought was the right thing being out in the cold with nothing (just like the divorced women in Jesus’s time that you mentioned)—or worse, unable to see their kids.

    And what about the person who dissolves their marriage for reasons that don’t fit the narrow exception-type? Say, someone who initiates the divorce simply because he or she has “fallen out of love” with their spouse? What happens when they remarry? Are they causing their new spouse to commit adultery? More importantly (perhaps most importantly of all my questions), for those who have done this in the past, does continuing in this relationship mean that they are continually, repeatedly, constantly committing adultery against their first spouse, over and over again? Are they expected to divorce their second spouse so as to not continue living in sin?

    Thanks!

  2. I hear your heart and mind on this most difficult of issues as Christian’s. My wife & I have been married for 35 years. When we sat down for our first premarital counseling session, our pastor said”if you remember nothing else from these sessions, remember this. Love is not an emotion, it is an act of the will. We choose to love someone. Just as we choose not to love. It’s helped me as a man to keep my focus on my marriage and my wife. I also pray for God to give me a single eye toward my wife and marriage. I know that doesn’t begin to answer the many questions we have on this subject. It’s what has sustained us in our marriage. JZ

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