Marriage, Divorce, and Remarriage in the Bible

A Fresh Look at

What Scripture Teaches

JAY E. ADAMS

GRAND RAPIDS, MICHIGAN 49530 USA

WWW.ZONDERVAN.COM

Marriage, Divorce, and Remarriage in the Bible

Copyright © 1980 by Jay E. Adams

Requests for information should be addressed to:

Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530

All New Testament quotations are from The Christian Counselor’s New Testament.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Adams, Jay Edward.

Marriage, divorce, and remarriage in the Bible.

(The Jay Adams library)

Originally published: Phillipsburg, N.J.:

Presbyterian and Reformed Pub. Co., ©1980

1. Marriage—Biblical teaching. 2. Divorce—Biblical teaching. 3. Remarriage—Biblical teachings.

I. Title. II. Series: Adams, Jay Edward. Jay Adams library.

BS680.M35A22 1986 234’.165 86-4125

ISBN 0-310-51111-9

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

To Dave and Bill,

whose marriages have been a model for many.

Contents

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

PART ONE: MARRIAGE

1. SOME BASIC CONSIDERATIONS ABOUT MARRIAGE

2. WHAT MARRIAGE IS ALL ABOUT

3. THE PLACE OF MARRIAGE

PART TWO: DIVORCE

4. A BIBLICAL ATTITUDE TOWARD DIVORCE

5. THE CONCEPT OF DIVORCE

6. WHAT IS DIVORCE?

7. THE TWO GROUPS IN I CORINTHIANS 7

8. DIVORCE AMONG BELIEVERS (Preliminary Considerations)

9. DIVORCE AMONG THE UNEQUALLY YOKED

10. THE EXCEPTIONAL CLAUSE

11. CHRIST, DEUTERONOMY AND GENESIS

12. THE ORIGIN OF DIVORCE FOR SEXUAL SIN

PART THREE: REMARRIAGE

13. REMARRIAGE

14. REMARRIAGE AFTER DIVORCE

15. PERSONS WITH A PAST

16. DEALING WITH DIVORCE AND REMARRIAGE

CONCLUSION

PREFACE

I work with pastors regularly and have done so for 14 years. I know most of the problems they face. And I know that large on their agenda of areas for study (in which thorny problems grow thickly) is the whole territory of divorce and remarriage. Pastors, as a whole, simply do not know how to handle the knotty questions they are being called upon weekly to face. I am not referring to liberal ministers but to conservatives—Bible-believing, Bible-preaching men!

These pastors want to follow the Scriptures wherever they may lead, but they do not yet see that way clearly. The problem is not, as Dwight Small concludes (after hyper-dispensationalizing half the New Testament1), that the Bible has nothing definitive to say on the subject; what is left of his Bible may not—but mine does. God surely hasn’t left us on our own as Small suggests. No! There is more than enough pertinent revelation concerning the issues involved. Our problem is of a different sort.

We have neglected the whole area for so long, uncritically accepting local or denominational traditions, most of which side-step many of the most crucial problems, that we are at sea. Seminaries ...