5. Adultery or fornication, committed after a contract, being detected before marriage, giveth just occasion to the innocent party to dissolve that contract.a In the case of adultery after marriage, it is lawful for the innocent party to sue out a divorce,b and after the divorce to marry another, as if the offending party were dead.c
a. Mat 1:18-20. • b. Mat 5:31-32. • c. Mat 19:9; Rom 7:2-3.
6. Although the corruption of man be such as is apt to study arguments, unduly to put asunder those whom God hath joined together in marriage; yet nothing but adultery, or such wilful desertion as can no way be remedied by the Church or civil magistrate, is cause sufficient of dissolving the bond of marriage;a wherein a public and orderly course of proceeding is to be observed; and the persons concerned in it, not left to their own wills and discretion in their own case.b
a. Mat 19:6, 8-9; 1 Cor 7:15. • b. Deut 24:1-4.
I understand brother and have friends in the "real" world who adhere to this sincerely to this teaching. I also believe that they are sincerely wrong to do so.
I confess with Engelsma:
In harmony with the truth of marriage, the Scriptures forbid divorce. Divorce is sin: a man or woman's faithlessness, i.e., hatred, towards his or her mate and revolt against the God who joined them in marriage. This is Christ's radical doctrine in Matthew 19. When the Pharisees asked whether a man might put away his wife for every cause, His answer was: No divorce! "Let not man put asunder!" The toleration of divorce by Moses was due to the Israelites' hard hearts, and divorce is not to be suffered any longer. The sin that a man commits, when he divorces his wife, is that he makes his wife commit adultery (Matt. 5:32). He exposes her to an adulterous relationship with a third party.
Even separation is forbidden. A wife may not leave her husband (I Cor. 7:10), or the husband, his wife — not even if the mate is an unbeliever (I Cor. 7:12ff.). Marriage is communion: the two must live together. Not only must they live together under one roof, but they must live together sexually: "Let the husband render unto the wife due benevolence (literally, 'the debt'): and likewise also the wife unto the husband. The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband: and likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife. Defraud ye not one the other..." (ICor. 7:3-5).
There is one exception in Scripture to the prohibition of divorce, namely, "fornication." According to Matthew5:31, 32, a man does not sin if he puts his wife away because she lives in adultery with another man. This indicates the gravity of adultery. It is taken lightly today. It is joked about. It is toyed with when men enjoy the movies, magazines, and novels that present adultery as an accepted, attractive way of life. One thing is so destructive of the union of marriage, striking as it does at the heart of that institution, that it tears the two apart to the extent that the ability and calling to live together are gone: adultery. Besides this, there is no ground for divorce, not mental cruelty, not incompatibility, not a bad wife or a miserable husband — nothing. In marriage we take each other — as the old forms also stated — "for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health."
In keeping with its doctrine of marriage, as well as its prohibition of divorce, the Word also prohibits remarriage, while one's (original) mate still lives. This is the implication of the institution of marriage: one man and one woman joined as one flesh by God for life. Only God dissolves the union, and He does so by death. As long as the two are living, their union leaves no place for a third party. When churches today bring up examples of the permission of remarriage in the history of the church, we ask, in all seriousness, "What was the rule in the beginning?"
Three other passages speak directly of remarriage: Mark10:11, 12; Luke 16:18; and I Corinthians 7:10, 11. The two former passages are absolute, unqualified condemnations of remarriage as adultery. "Whosoever putteth away his wife, and marrieth another, committeth adultery: and whosoever marrieth her that is put away from her husband committeth adultery" (Luke16:18). In ICorinthians 7:10, 11, after Paul tells the wife not to leave her husband, he conceives of the possibility that she may have to leave nevertheless; in such a case "let her remain unmarried, or be reconciled to her husband."
But what about the remarriage of the one divorced on the biblical ground of adultery? One passage in all Scripture seems, at first glance, to permit the remarriage of one divorced on the ground of fornication, namely, Matthew19:9: "Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery." If this were the correct interpretation of the text, there would be one, and only one, ground for remarriage: the adultery of one's mate. The "innocent party" would be free to marry another. However, there is powerful biblical evidence to the contrary. There is the testimony of the Scriptures that only death dissolves the bond of marriage. There is the unqualified prohibition of remarriage elsewhere in the Bible. And there is the last part of Matthew19:9 itself. The last part of the text calls the new union of the woman divorced un-biblically, whose husband has since remarried, an adulterous union. The Lord expressly states that the "innocent party" may not remarry. The exceptive clause in Matthew19:9 ("except it be for fornication") is intended to qualify only the prohibition of divorce, in perfect harmony with the fact that the Lord is answering the Pharisee's question concerning the legitimacy of divorce (cf. v. 3).
The Scriptures draw the lines plainly. Marriage is a lifelong bond; divorce is forbidden, except on the ground of the sexual unfaithfulness of one's mate; remarriage is forbidden until death separates the two. These lines make a narrow way into the Kingdom for men and women, as regards marriage; and it is not surprising that there are only few who find it. But this is the way into the Kingdom; no adulterer shall enter. This is what the church is called to preach, publicly and privately, and when we do, we are defending marriage in the face of the all-out assault on marriage today.
"A wife may not leave her husband (I Cor. 7:10), or the husband, his wife — not even if the mate is an unbeliever (I Cor. 7:12ff.). Marriage is communion: the two must live together. Not only must they live together under one roof, but they must live together sexually: "Let the husband render unto the wife due benevolence (literally, 'the debt'): and likewise also the wife unto the husband. The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband: and likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife. Defraud ye not one the other..." (I Cor. 7:3-5)." - Prof Engelsma
