This week we examine Paul’s epistles for instruction regarding divorce and remarriage and we review our entire study. What we believe we’ve established so far:

1. Marriage is an institution ordained by God that is “trans-dispensational”, meaning from Genesis through the gospels and through to today, it has never been altered, (described by Moses in Gen 2:24, and during Jesus earthly ministry in Mat 19, Mark 10, and by Paul in Eph 5).
2. Under the Mosaic law premarital fornication by a betrothed woman, adultery and contempt of the law are all capital offenses (Deut 22:20, Lev 20:10 & Deut 17:12-13).
3. Since the Law contains no instructions for the legal administration of “divorce according to the Law,” the writing of a bill of divorce, for any of the reasons debated by rabbinical scholars, before or since Jesus would be contempt of the law. Contempt of the law is a capital offense (Deut 17:12).
4. The mass divorce event recorded in Ezra was not commanded by God (Ezr 10:2-3).
5. There is a romantic subtext that runs through the Old Testament and the Gospels that figuratively presents God’s relationship with Israel as a courtship in the wilderness (Jer 2:1-2, Hos 2:14), a marriage (Jer 31:32, Ezk 16:8), an unfaithful wife, (Jer 2:20, Ezk 16:15, Hos 4:12), a divorce, (Jer 3:8, Hos 2:2), and God’s taking back of Israel, (Isa 54:5, Jer 31:31-34). God, “the husband” would have proof of adultery against his “wife” Israel (Jer 2:20 & 3:8). According to the Law, she should be put to death, (Lev 20:10, Deut 13:6). But the husband set aside the Law, in apparent violation of the law (Deut 13:9 & 17:12-13). Appropriating man’s tradition of divorcing their wives, He divorced her instead (Isa 50:1, Jer 3:8); He would then embody the violation by being “made sin”, (2 Cor 5:21) and then He would remove the “sin”, (both His symbolic “sin” and His wife’s actual sin) by conquering sin and death by His resurrection, (Rom 8:2, Rev 1:17), after which He will again appear to violate the law and take her back, (Lev 21:7, 13-14, Deut 24:4) after cleansing her by Great Tribulation, (Rev 14:4).
6. The so-called exception of sexual immorality as biblical grounds for divorce recorded in Matthew was spoken in parables against Jesus’ adversaries by the theme of the romantic subtext, and not as doctrinal instruction for the church today.
7. Seeking a divorce is a sin. The sin is taking God’s name in vain.

We look at Paul’s reference to “I, not the Lord,” reproof, correction and instruction in righteousness, and Paul’s analogy of earthly marriage and eternal life in Christ. We cover church authority, excommunication, the spiritual union of marriage, and what we are to do when a couple claims they can no longer live together.

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