Heavy is the responsibility of every teacher:

He who stands before dying men and women, confident that he is "a guide of the blind, a light of them that are in darkness, a corrector of the foolish, a teacher of babes (Romans 2:19-20), if his thrust is on a plurality of reasons for divorce and remarriage, is, in this writer’s judgment, subverted and sins, being self-condemned (Titus 3:11).

Before Eve was created she was a rib inside of Adam, bone of his bones, flesh of his flesh (Genesis 2:23). Because "she was taken out of man" every husband is to adhere to his wife above all other human beings. In a special sense, in the marriage-bed (cf. 1 Corinthians 6:16), she is restored as part of his flesh, reproducing her original state (Genesis 2:24). As a result "no more" are they "two, but one flesh," said Jesus, and "what God has joined together, let not man put asunder" (Matthew 19:6). Woe to the one who ruptures togetherness.

Moreover, Jesus repudiated Moses’ toleration of divorce, affirming that "from the beginning it was not so" (Matthew 19:8). The triangle cannot make the one flesh envisioned by the all-wise Creator. "Did he not make one" wife for Adam "although he had the residue [creative power] of the Spirit? And why one? He sought a godly seed," wrote Malachi, and quoted God as exclaiming, "I hate divorce" (2:14-16).

The thrust of Jesus therefore was against divorce, and he who claims to be preaching Jesus must convey that same emphasis. However, Jesus thought one thing is bad enough to break up a marriage and to start a new one, namely, when a spouse becomes one flesh with a third party (Matthew 19:9; 1 Corinthians 6:16).

But some make themselves wiser than Jesus and allow other exceptions. Three major attempts are made, even by some eminent gospel preachers: (1) a person is allowed to keep the spouse he had at the time of his baptism; (2) the guilty party, as well as the innocent, may remarry; and (3) a deserted believer may remarry.

(1) Live With The Spouse One Has At Baptism

No matter how many divorces and remarriages precede baptism, a person keeps the spouse he has at the time of his baptism, some say, because baptism washes away all sins.

True it is that scriptural baptism washes away all sins (Acts 22:16), but scriptural baptism is preceded by repentance (Acts 2:38). If a person is living in adultery when he is baptized, and he keeps on living in that sin, he has not repented.

Before baptizing some candidates, John demanded that they "produce fruit in keeping with repentance," "show proof" that they had repented (Matthew 3:8). If Herod Antipas and Herodias, living in adultery though legally married, had asked John to baptize them, they would have been turned down, for John had told the king, "It is not lawful for you to have her" (Matthew 14:4).

But it is said that Jesus’ teaching on divorce and remarriage applied only to his covenant people, not to those in the world. IF this were so, married people now in the world, when they are baptized, would have to get married again the day of their baptism so that God could recognize their marriage.

If Jesus has a marriage law only for Christians, then non-Christians living in fornication are sinless, for "where there is no law, there is no transgression" (Romans 4:15). Further, if the Lord has no marriage law for non-Christians, how could Paul say that "them that are without [fornicators of this world] God judges" (1 Corinthians 5:10, 13, ASV)?

It is said that no example in the early church is found of a family breakup. Similarly one could say that no example in the early church is found of a drunkard quitting his drinking. But if "such [adulterers, drunkards, etc.] were some of you" at Corinth who had been washed and sanctified, it is difficult to imagine that they continued in their old sins (1 Corinthians 6:9-11).

Since a man is to "abide in that calling wherein he was called" (1 Corinthians 7:20), did Paul mean that if a man is called in thievery or polygamy or a live-in arrangement, he is to abide in that calling? Is there such a thing as distorting the Scriptures? (Cf. 2 Peter 3:16).)

Some say that one exception for remarriage is not enough for those people who cannot live without sexual relations. Since no fornicator can go to heaven (1 Corinthians 6:9-10), a person who cannot live without sexual relations would have to blame his Creator for making him as he did. But Jesus taught that anyone can, if he wants to, live chastely, making himself a eunuch (Matthew 19:22). God does not require the impossible.

A shrewd manner of saying one may keep an unscriptural mate is to affirm a new definition for adultery in Matthew 19:9, saying that adultery there "has nothing to do with the sexual activity of the second marriage," but adultery is "the one time action of divorcing and marrying another" (John Edwards, MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE, p. 26).

John (my long time friend) does not claim he got his idea from his mother’s Bible, nor from any English translation, but in studying Greek grammar. It is no wonder that he writes, "We need to study the Greek text to fully understand the issue of marriage and divorce" 9p. 13). If so, most of the world’s billions of eternity-bond peoples have or will die ignorant of a heaven or hell issue. Did God of love plan his world that way? Greek scholars for over 1900 years have failed to comprehend what Jesus buried in the Greek language. Even now no commentator on the Greek text says with John that the word "adultery" in Matthew 19:9 is a no-sex word only referring to two legal actions.

(2) The Guilty May Remarry

If the guilty person, as well as the innocent, may remarry without committing adultery, then Jesus’ one exception has become two. Furthermore, if the exception phrase of Matthew 19:9 is put into the second clause (making it read, "and he that marries her when she is divorced, except for fornication, commits adultery") makes Jesus say that it is sinful to marry a woman divorced for being a poor housekeeper, but not sinful if she was divorced for being a fornicator.

Proponents of the guilty-may-remarry doctrine argue that the handcuffs between two are broken at divorce, and neither is married to anybody. If a person is not married, then (they argue) he is free to get married. But there actually are "three sets of handcuffs" (Roy Deaver). The set locking the spouses is broken at divorce, but the sets locking each spouse to his Lord remain intact. Each is under the obligation to hear his Lord say that, even though now you are unmarried, if you remarry without the one exception, you commit adultery.

The guilty-may-remarry doctrine invites fornication, secret or consensual or simultaneous, with two God-approved new marriages resulting. Adulterous Richard Burton was unmarried when he married the adulterous unmarried Elizabeth Taylor. If the guilty-may-remarry doctrine is biblical, their new marriage is scriptural. Now they have divorced and have married other partners, and such may go on scripturally (?) for 70 x 7 times. Why did Jesus say anything about marriage and divorce?

(3) A Deserted Believer May Remarry

A Christian in marriage gives his body to his mate in voluntary, loving submission (1 Corinthians 7:3-5, 15), whether the mate is or is not a Christian. But when a non-Christian mate deserts the Christian, automatically that marriage bondage is non-existent: "the brother or sister is not under bondage in such cases" (1 Corinthians 7:15), wrote the inspired Paul.

Thus there is a Pauline release, but to say there is also given a Pauline privilege to remarry is to add to Paul’s words, and is to make Paul contradict Jesus’ saying that there is only one exception for a divorce and remarriage. To say that Paul allowed a second exception is to say that he did not carry out the charge binding on all apostles: to teach all baptized people to "observe all things whatsoever I commanded you" (Matthew 28:19-20).

Furthermore, if one injects a remarriage privilege into 1 Corinthians 7:15, he makes God a respecter of persons, because two believers separating must remain unmarried (v. 11), but a deserted believer, according to this doctrine, does not have to remain unmarried.

If a deserted believer may remarry, and then the unbeliever becomes a Christian, may he remarry?

Furthermore, if a deserted believer exercises the so-called "Pauline Privilege," and the second unbelieving mate desert, may the believer take a third mate? or a fourth?

One ought to be afraid to add an addition to Paul’s words. Also the addition invites abuses. Leslie Leonard wrote, "I know a woman who is expecting to remarry if she can only get her unbelieving mate to leave her."