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Out-of-the-ordinary news from the folks at "Studio B"...
While You Were Sleeping
They're married with three kids. But one night they reportedly went to bed together just like they have during most other nights over the past 11 years. But something happened that night... under the covers. They apparently got a divorce.
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COMMENTARY
by: Steven J. Wallace
I could not help but listen with interest of this story when it was on Fox News, March 27, 2006 while doing gospel meeting work with Brother Joe Price in
One such fellow commanded in no uncertain terms regarding divorce:
"When a fornicating husband seeks to divorce his wife, she must engage herself in the divorce process with the full intention of putting him away for fornication. . . . She must not sit still and become the put away wife. If she allows herself to be put away, she is forbidden remarriage” (Email June 22nd)
That there is no shred of scripture to support any of these laws is obvious. There is in fact, as much scriptural authority for the above statement as there is for the foolish man-made law that the Islamic woman mentioned above must first get married to another man and then get divorced by him in order to have her first husband seek to remarry her! How men are good at making laws for God and how they excel in perverting heaven’s truth!
Focusing on the "timing" of the fornicator’s speed (as several preachers are doing today) rather than on the “cause” for divorce and the innocent’s permission given by Jesus has been a contentious issue of late. Many preachers would render this poor woman no say or right in dealing with her speedy and sneaky fornicating husband. Rather than a race to the courthouse, this would be a race of speech! Whoever talks the fastest determines the outcome as to whether this woman could remarry again? Brethren, I am embarrassed by some of the things we argue about! Meanwhile, false teachers continue to scour the land with their unscriptural views on divorce (kingdom-law, baptism washes away previous marriages, etc.).
The above email quote, demands that the woman rapidly engage herself in the divorce "process." (Does Jesus demand such?) If so, where? The above email quote demands her to not sit still! Would squirming in a chair be sufficient to satisfy this brother’s protocol? Would Jesus demand that this woman quickly hold her unfaithful husband's jaw and scream "I divorce you" three times in order for her to ever be able to exercise her right to divorce him and remarry another? To be consistent, the "method" mutilators in the church today would require just that if our civil law allowed divorce by pronouncing it three times!
Brethren need to grow up and stop defining Jesus' law on marriage by American Law. The King's Law is applicable to any country, to any society, to any culture regardless of what is acceptable or rejected by civil law. Jesus condemned the Pharisees of His day saying,
". . .You nicely set aside the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition. . . .you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or his mother; thus invalidating the word of God by your tradition which you have handed down; and you do many things such as that" (Mk. 7:9, 12, 13, NASB).
Think about it! As these men of old perfected ways of setting aside or dismissing God's word, so there are those among us today who commit the same blunder with their built up traditions and man-made definitions of Bible words. As the Pharisees of old would no longer permit one to do anything for his father and mother, so there are some today who will not allow the innocent, vow-abiding mate to put away/repudiate the ungodly, vow-breaking, fornicator because the fornicator was faster to dissolve the marriage than the innocent. They do not permit her to do anything if her timing was slower than her spouses! If she practices longsuffering, it may cost her dearly! But Jesus does permit her regardless of what human courts, judges, lawyers, papers, Islamic clerics and even false brethren say!
From the quote above, the Islamic clerics are also “method” mutilators,” opposing Christ’s law! They require this woman to adapt a method that puts her at odds with the truth. According to them, she must remarry again, and be put away by her second husband in order for her to be remarried to her first! But what if her second husband doesn’t want to divorce her? Man’s laws have this woman bound to a man that she is not to be bound to and have her trapped in a marriage that she doesn’t even want to be in. Again, the words of Christ seem apparent, “You nicely set aside the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition.”
In a similar way, false teachers in the
"And I say to you, whoever divorces [Gk. apoluo] his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery; and whoever marries her who is divorced [Gk. apoluo] commits adultery" (Matt. 19:9, NKJV)
If sexual immorality is the "cause" of the divorce, brethren need to simply accept that and not pursue some man-made protocol or investigation of a method and/or timing of the fornicator and of the guiltless! (I doubt seriously that any of these method mutilators ever investigate the methods and procedures of the divorces within the congregations where they worship. No, I suspect that this is just something that these folks love to argue over with their diseased pursuit of academia.) The speed of the innocent one is a matter of judgment and certain judgments may require a degree of delay as per the nature of the longsuffering on the innocent’s part.
"But I say to you that whoever divorces his wife for any reason except sexual immorality causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a woman who is divorced commits adultery" (Matt. 5:32).
These passages remain true throughout the whole world and regardless of what one country’s civil law requires.
There are several false teachers teaching error regarding the subject of remarriage that we need to be focusing our energies on (i.e., kingdom law, baptism washes away previous marriages, put away fornicator can remarry, etc.). My desire would be that these method binding mutilators would recognize that they are only helping false teachers by consuming our energies with useless wrangling. We need to recalibrate our cross-hairs. We need to teach people that baptism doesn’t wash away a previous marriage. That as a general rule, if you have been divorce and if you remarry you commit adultery (the exception being only for fornication):
“So He said to them, ‘Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her. And if a woman divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery’” (Mk. 10:11, 12; cf. Lk. 16:18; 1 Cor. 7:10).
They need to be questioned whether the cause of their divorce was over fornication and if so, were they innocent of that fornication or the cause of it? If you were not innocent then you are living in adultery if you remarried. They need to be taught that if there was no fornication at all involved, and if both of them remarried then four people are living in adultery because of their divorce. They need to repent and reconcile. We need to instruct that God’s law regarding marriage was restored by Christ as per the Genesis account and that it was given for all people, not just those in the kingdom. We need to insist on the three golden rules regarding marriage:
· Two people who have never been married can marry (1 Cor. 7:8, 9)
· A person whose spouse dies can remarry (
· A person who sends their spouse away for fornication can remarry (Matt. 19:9).
While defending the truth and punishing error, we need to guard against a danger of binding where God has not bound and avoid foolish disputes which distract us from the real war at hand.
These passages need desperately to be restored among us today! Do they mean anything to you dear reader?