dmar198,
I think the higher law announced by Christ pertaining to divorce is attainable by couples and by whole cultures, but I think it requires a whole culture of righteous people who have taught their children righteous actions and where abuse does not happen because of the righteousness in the hearts of the people.
So let me get this straight… Christ announced a law that won’t go into effect until there’s no more abuse? Until everyone is righteous? Come on! The Law does not exist for the righteous but for the unrighteous. Christ came to save sinners, not people who were already righteous, and His whole teaching was designed to strengthen us by grace to keep the moral law! For anyone to say that His laws aren’t attainable until you’ve already become righteous is completely circular because
becoming increasingly righteous means keeping Christ’s law. How can you possibly say that Christ’s will is only attainable after you’ve already attained it, and until you’ve attained it, you don’t have to keep it? That’s insane! It is simply an excuse to not listen to Him.
In the same passage where He taught that post-divorce remarriage = adultery (Matthew 5:31-32), He also taught that lustful thoughts are sinful (5:27-28) and that hatred is sinful (5:21-22). Would you say that lustful thoughts are okay until we’ve reached a culture that’s already righteous? Or that hatred is fine for us, and will only be sinful for our children if we’ve reared them correctly? Of course not! So why do you say that remarriage (which = adultery) is lawful!? Only because you’re trying to defend a teaching that flatly contradicts the express words of Christ.
I don’t think the new husband if she remarries has caused her to commit adultery. I think the sin is caused by the first husband, and he bears the guilt in the situation.
Sure, that’s why it says, “anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, causes her to become an adulteress.” But that’s only half the verse, the other half says, “and anyone who marries the divorced woman commits adultery.”
So you say:
(1) It’s okay for the new husband,
(2) but it’s not okay for the old husband.
But the Bible says,
(1) It’s adultery for the new husband,
(2) and it’s adultery for the old husband.
And you claim to be following Christ’s moral law!? Don’t be ridiculous! One cannot take these, which are the clearest words of Scripture, and twist them into a standard that Christ does not mean for us, and yet claim that you believe in His Word!
To make it more clear, God repeated this teaching in 1 Corinthians 7:10-11 - if a woman leaves her husband, “she must remain unmarried.” Are you going to say that this won’t go into effect until a new “righteous culture” too? How completely off-the-wall can you get!! In 1 Cor. 7:1, 7:8, 7:10, and 7:12 he explicitly states that this is a teaching of God for those to whom he wrote; and they were certainly not living during the “completely righteous culture” that still hasn’t taken hold. How much more do they apply to us? He states, “This is the rule I lay down in all the churches.” (1 Cor. 7:17) But Mormons say, “This is the rule that has not been laid down yet, and when it is, it will only be for churches where righteousness is already attained.”
I ask you again: How can you claim that you are the one keeping the Biblical injunction, when you twist every word of the Scripture so that it conforms to your wishes, instead of conforming your wishes to the Scriptures?
God bless!
-Dmar198