Originally posted by Contra_Mundum
Here are some points for clarification and some observations:
1) Marriage and Divorce as acts actually do something, they don't simply "represent" something. The first legally puts a man and woman together. The second legally splits them in two.
2) Marriage and Divorce as words are descriptors that purport describe the real, true state of affairs brought into existence by the acts.
3) Therefore, people who are divorced properly or improperly are not "still married" in some mystic sense. No, they are flat not-married, un-married, de-married, what-have-you.
4) This does not mean that their history is negated. They have not resumed a pre-marriage state. A guilty divorcee, even a repentant one, is actually prohibited from marrying again, unless he remarries his former spouse, and then only if she has not married another in the mean time; If she has, they two may never remarry regardless of the circumstances. That summarizes some of the biblical teaching from both Testaments on a few of the issues surrounding this problem. These are permanent consequence of this sin.
5) People can SIN further and remarry sinfully when they ought to be reconciled or resigned to obedience in enforced singleness. This does not mean they are not married! They may have entered into a new marriage sinfully, but marriage describes the state of affairs, not merly what they did. This is why people wrongfully married must not divorce again! That would be another SIN! They must repent, seek forgiveness from others wronged, make restitution/reconcilliation where possible, accept the consequences, and MOVE on in sanctification.
6) A divorcee remarried is not a bigamist. He or she is not actually married to two people. Bigamy = actually being married to two people at once. The two wives (or husbands) are not also married to each other. Bigamists were (NT) not ordered to divorce all but one wife. But they were barred from the ministry (at least as long as they had more than one wife).
7) No one can be married to someone in fact when God's Word prohibits even the application of the term. Hence two men are never married, no matter what an earthly court decides, no matter what "ceremony" they undergo, language game notwihtstanding. Marriage can't exist. It's not possible. Neither two women. Neither a "threesome" (or more-some). Neither so-called marriages conducted "within the laws of consanguinity prohibited by God's Word." Such persons are simply not married and never were, all protestations to the contrary. A man CANNOT have his father's wife. A brother CANNOT marry his sister.
8) Salvation marks a great divide. It marks the critical moment when a man passes from death unto life. When he is definitively forgiven. When he is Justified/Adopted/and even Sanctified in the definitive sense. There ought to be a major distinction between a former way of life and the new one: "Old things are passed away; behold all things are become new." The sins of the past having been radically dealt with, some consequences remain, but I don't think God expects all the ministers he shall call from the Redeemed mass will have had "moral" lives prior to their conversion. Hence, the major distinction between an adulterer prior to conversion, and one afterward. A Christian Valiant, who sinned at age 20 before he ever knew the Lord, who at age 50 stands before God's people like a Moses--should the people of God be denied a shepherd such as he? I think correct exegesis of the relevant texts stands against that interpretation.
9) Beware of self-promoters. I think very few truly repentant Christian adulterers ever see themselves as ministerial material. I think someone who truly mourns over his sin and the lingering consequences of it instinctively turns away from the post, feeling unworthy. Only a serious effort by the church to thrust him in would prompt him to offer himself up to a call.
10) Sin is complicated and chaotic. Our God is a God of Order. He brings sense and resolution when his ways are followed, better before sin enters in, but also afterward.
) it would make sense to discipline such a person under one's authority (after all discipline is the act of assisting repentance from sin) that such an action would be viewed unfavorably in the PCA.
