Reading 1 Corinthians 7, and in light of other New Testament Scriptures, such as Romans, Mark and Luke, is there any room for accepting remarriage after divorce before the death of the spouse?

This text is from a transcript of a talk by David Gooding, entitled ‘The Christian Philosophy of Man’ (1994).

On this particular issue Paul quotes what the Lord said: 'To the married I give this charge (not I, but the Lord): the wife should not separate from her husband . . . and the husband should not divorce his wife' (1 Corinthians 7:10–11). What he means by saying 'not I, but the Lord' is that here he is actually quoting a command of the Lord.

When you read 1 Corinthians 7 the words might well seem to mean that divorce is not allowed whatsoever to Christian people, let alone remarriage. Divorce is not allowed; and that view has been taken all down the centuries by large sections of Christendom, the Catholic and Orthodox Churches in particular.

When you go to the Gospels to see what the Lord actually said, Mark and Luke will use the same phraseology as Corinthians does. There is no mention of any exception to this. But it is notorious that when you come to Matthew our Lord appears to insert one exception to that blanket prohibition: 'And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery' (Matthew 19:9). This verse appears to allow an exception in the case of adultery.

The age-long dispute all down the centuries, and still today, is what that exception means. Some good folks will say, 'No, Mark, Luke and Corinthians allow of no exception. They prohibit divorce and certainly, therefore, remarriage. Whatever this exception means, it can't contradict what Mark, Luke and Corinthians say.'

Those who hold that view are, of course, godly brothers and sisters. Exceedingly so. There is an equal number, perhaps more, also not worldly, lax believers, but exceedingly godly men and women, who hold the opposite view, that Matthew 19 does permit divorce under certain circumstances.

How shall it be reconciled? Now this is a very big problem and I am not going to answer. I am going to disappoint you, and I'll tell you now why I shall not answer it. It is because the question becomes exceedingly intricate. Here I have two papers that came into my possession on this very topic, written as far as I know by a couple of Irishmen. One takes the view that our Lord does not permit divorce to believers, and certainly not remarriage. The other takes the view that, yes, there is an exception. Here each one is proving his case to you as he feels it ought to be proved in the minimum numbers of pages he could write. One has five full pages in single spacing, and the other has seven A4 pages of detailed argument.

So I am not going to try and settle the question for you. It's not that I want to dodge it, but if I were to give you what I think, I would not want to be dogmatic, in the sense that I would take a view and say 'that is that', without discussing with you the views of godly men and women who take a contrary position.

We must believe what we must believe before the Lord; but when godly people who are not permissively inclined take a different view, then it is part of our task to consider their opinions and, where we cannot agree, to give reasons.

I quote just one example of what I am saying here, in the terms of that exceptive clause. 'I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality [fornication kjv], and marries another, commits adultery.'

Some have helped by saying that the way to solve the apparent difference between Matthew on the one hand (with the exception), and Corinthians, Luke and Mark on the other (that don't mention any exception), is to say that the word here translated in English as fornication is being used very, very carefully and precisely to mean pre-marital unchastity. So our Lord does allow an exception, and the exception is this. That if, after marriage, it is found that one or other has not been a virgin at the time of marriage, but has been guilty of pre-marital unchastity and hidden it from the partner, when the partner discovers it he or she has a right in this case to divorce, because the marriage was entered into under false pretences. Therefore, the party that has been lied against is not to be kept to the marriage bond because the other party told a lie.

Now that would be a very neat way of resolving it, wouldn't it? Indeed it convinces many godly people, and is a view that one should consider. However, I must trouble you for a moment with a technicality. The word in question in Greek does not mean pre-marital unchastity. In English, 'fornication' can sometimes mean pre-marital unchastity, and after you're married sexual sin is 'adultery'. But that isn't how the words were used in the ancient world.

The word that is here translated fornication actually means 'harlotry', using the services of a prostitute. It is possible for a married believer to go astray and use a prostitute; but that is a sin that he can commit before he marries as well as afterwards. The word can also mean incest, and it can mean promiscuity—not just one act, but a constant behaviour in this ungodly fashion. In fact, if you look at the experts, you will find a list of other possible meanings as well.

I mention that simply to show why I do not come down dogmatically here. To tell you what I mean I should need perhaps twenty pages.

You ask if I would be prepared to discuss what I believe privately. Yes, certainly I would. And with elders in particular. I'm not an elder, you should remember that. But as far as any technical meaning of Greek is concerned and as a teacher of the word, if elders would want to hear what I have to say, then I would be perfectly glad and willing to come and put my little contribution into the pool of your thinking. But to do it now without being unduly dogmatic would be impossible.

I would, however, want to say one or two things, if you will allow me. In dealing with this in Matthew 19:3–9, the Lord took his hearers back to the ideal. They said to him, 'Is it all right for a man to divorce his wife for this, or that, or any other cause?' When he said, 'No,' they said, 'Why did Moses allow a man to write a bill of divorcement and divorce his wife, and marry another?' And our Lord replied, 'Moses did that for your hardness of heart, but it wasn't so from the beginning'.

So here we have three stages:

1. The ideal that was in the beginning.

2. What was permitted under the Mosaic Law, but was not ideal.

3. What is positively sinful.

Three degrees, not just two. What our Lord did was to insist that they do not be content with mere permission; they go back to the ideal.

What I want to say about that is this. In these times in which we live, the general attitude in society has become so lax and the pressures upon young people so great, that the spirit of the world so easily permeates a believer's thinking. Allow me to plead with you elders. When things go wrong you have to try and deal with them, but isn't it better to 'bolt the door before the horse gets out'? I urge elders to start training the young people. And not only the men elders, but the senior women.

In any society it's very often the women who hold the key to morality. In my youth, no respectable unconverted man would tell a rude joke in the presence of a woman. Now, if you listen to the woman's programme on Radio 4, it is from time to time positively pornographic, and shamelessly so.

What I appeal for, therefore, is for elders to run courses on what true Christian marriage is, and what the ideal is. And, as Titus says, for the senior women to train the younger women as to what Christian marriage is, urge upon them the ideal, and not to wait until the damage is done. 'Older women likewise are to be reverent in behaviour, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled' (Titus 2:3–5).

And the ideal for marriage is this, says our Lord: 'Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, "Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh"? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate' (Matthew 19:4–6). What our Lord is talking about is the very institution of marriage.

What is marriage? It is not just a contract, like two businessmen agreeing to go into business together, and that's all it is, and when the contract has served its purpose, they ditch the contract and that's it over. That's business. Alas, so many marriages in the modern world follow that, don't they? 'You live together for the next six years,' says the world. 'If it works, it works; if it doesn't work, ditch it and go on for another one.'

That could easily come to be the attitude of Christian young people, couldn't it? That's not marriage in God's view. Marriage isn't a contract like that; it is the joining of two people into a lifetime union. That needs to be taught.

Secondly, allow me to point out that when things go wrong we shall need the compassion of Christ, shan't we? When he was confronted with a woman taken in adultery and they cited him the law that such a woman should be stoned, did he say 'the law of God must be kept, therefore you must stone her'? (see John 8:3–11).

You say, 'Was he going easy on adultery then?'

No. But, having the authority to do so, our Lord did not insist on the law's penalty. He said, 'I don't condemn you'. In other words, 'I'm not going to say you must now be stoned. Go, and from now on sin no more.' We shall err in our decisions when things go wrong if we don't learn that same compassion that the Lord Jesus showed.

If I may use an Old Testament example for the moment. We all cite King David as the man who taught us much about God's forgiveness. He wrote the lovely psalm on forgiveness when God forgave him not only for adultery, but for murder (Psalm 51). If he had been content with adultery, that would have been a very difficult thing, because if he married the woman when her husband was still alive that would obviously be very, very wrong. When he got rid of the problem by shooting the woman's husband, he wasn't living in adultery any longer, was he? That's not a recommended solution! Ghastly, fearful, wasn't it? Dark with sin. Yet God forgave David and we sing his hymns still.

In dealing with these things that go wrong, and in our interpretation of what Christ is saying, we must remember compassion. However, I recur to the point that we must do nothing to trivialize marriage. Even in Deuteronomy 24, when a man was permitted to put away his wife and write a bill of divorcement, and they were both free to marry others, the law of Moses says that if the second man dies and the first husband wants to take her back again he can't do that. Why not? Because, if that kind of thing was possible, it would have induced a lot of wife swapping and trivialized the whole thing.

There are two stories that I want to tell you, that will confirm to you that I'm an old bachelor.

I was approached once at a Christian conference by a gentleman, in his thirties perhaps, who had recently been converted from a life of the most lurid kind of crime, and his wife had been a partner in it. They had long since been divorced or separated, but they couldn't have cared less about that. He came to ask me about divorce and remarriage. I went through the various things that people say and both sides of the question that godly men have argued.

I said that there is no command in the New Testament that you have to get divorced. In some societies you would have to. If your partner became promiscuous, society would demand that you divorce that partner. If you didn't, you would be thought to be living on ill-gotten gains. But there is no command in the New Testament itself that you've got to get divorced, is there?

I said to this young man, 'Did you love your former wife? Well, now you've got converted, why don't you go and tell her that you love her and you would like her back?'

He said, 'I have, but she told me that was nonsense. I was only trying to make myself feel good.'

I said, 'That's understandable. Do you suppose she's going to believe that you have changed into an angel overnight? You will have to bear with this, and prove it perhaps over long years.'

'Ah,' he said, 'I can't wait that long.'

'Why not?'

'Well,' he said, 'there's a young lady in the meeting and she wants to marry me. The elders want us to marry, and are pushing me to marry her.'

Oh dear. Oh dear.

First Corinthians is the epistle that will tell you what your rights are. It will call upon you sometimes to forego your rights for the sake of winning other folks to Christ.¹

And as for trivializing marriage, my other story concerns a great and dear friend. Because he is such a delightful Christian he's been asked to marry many young men and women. The last time I stayed with him he said, 'David, I am getting worried by this situation.'

He said, 'I married recently a fine young couple, beautiful young couple they were. Then about nine months later I got a phone call one morning.'

'It's all over,' she said.

'What's all over?'

'The marriage. It didn't work out.'

'What, in nine months?'

That is trivializing marriage, isn't it? God help us, because in our island we shall feel those pressures more as the days go by. Let us not trivialize marriage.

On the other hand, there are circumstances, as I understand it, when divorce is not only necessary but permissible, and remarriage possibly the only thing that can be done for the best in that situation, all things considered. But my reasons for that would be many, and I cease from that now.

¹ See ‘The Christian Philosophy of Man’, p. 45 ‘Was it all right to eat meat offered to idols?’