The NXR Podcast - American Glory - Is Divorce and Remarriage Sinful？ - The Hard Biblical Truth

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00:01:21.700 Today on American Glory, I'm answering the question,

00:01:24.340 is divorce and remarriage sinful? And what are the grounds for a lawful divorce? And if you're

00:01:30.900 already divorced, how should you move forward? All that and more coming up right now.

00:01:48.520 Welcome to American Glory. This is season three on The American Family. I'm your host,

00:01:52.620 Dale Partridge. This episode is number seven of season three, and it's titled,

00:01:57.840 Is Divorce and Remarriage Sinful? The Hard Biblical Truth. Now, this season, I'm covering

00:02:04.720 the history of the American family from multiple different directions. Last week, I spoke about

00:02:08.540 birth control, vasectomies, and the evil people behind America's sterilization. Now, if you don't

00:02:13.940 know, American Glory is also a podcast. If you want to listen, you can just search for the American

00:02:18.480 Glory podcast on Google. You can find me on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or wherever podcasts

00:02:22.960 can be downloaded. And if you're listening to the podcast and you want to watch the video,

00:02:26.460 it comes with lots of helpful slides and great video clips. We'd love to have you on our YouTube

00:02:31.220 channel at Dale Partridge TV, or you can watch that also on the NXR YouTube channel. On that

00:02:36.500 note, let's begin. When something is so common, we forget how evil it really is. In our pornified

00:02:44.980 culture, it's nearly impossible to scroll social media as a man and not see some woman in a bikini

00:02:51.000 or some exercise clothing that's so tight that you can see her anatomy. And every generation

00:02:56.300 before us would be horrified and appalled. Now, many of these women would have been literally 0.91

00:03:01.700 arrested for the moral crime of immodesty, and not just by our Christian forefathers and foremothers,

00:03:07.020 but by liberals and pagans and atheists in the 1920s. They would have even called the police 0.53

00:03:12.600 on today's Christian women for how they wear bikinis and butt-sucking leggings at the gym. 1.00

00:03:18.840 That's how far we've drifted. Yesterday's evil people would have corrected today's Christians. 1.00

00:03:24.840 Just think about that for a second. It's insane. That's how numb we've become to the sin of 0.98

00:03:30.700 whoredom. Now, the same thing has happened with divorce. Prior to 1960, many people in America 1.00

00:03:37.860 and Europe had never even met a divorced person. In 1925, the official federal statistics recorded

00:03:44.660 175,495 divorces in the entire United States, which had a population of about 116 million

00:03:51.900 people at that time. That's about 0.15% of all active marriages ended in divorce that year.

00:03:59.080 Divorce was more rare than experiencing the death of a young child. I just want you to think about

00:04:04.480 how many divorced people you've met. I've met probably, honestly, probably hundreds.

00:04:11.000 And now I just want you to just think about this for a second. How many people have you met

00:04:15.100 that have experienced the death of a young child? I probably met five or 10, and that's because I'm 1.00

00:04:21.240 a pastor. So that is how rare this was. Divorce was extremely shameful. It was viewed similarly

00:04:29.220 to the way maybe that we view things like pedophilia, okay? To get a divorce prior to 0.97

00:04:35.840 1960, a person, well, actually prior to 1969, but prior to 1960s, a person had to stand in open court

00:04:42.880 and be publicly proven guilty of something heinous like desertion of their family or adultery or

00:04:49.960 attempted murder or something, right? A divorce decree was an official government stamp declaring

00:04:55.920 you morally bankrupt. Now, it was one of the most shameful, sinful, humiliating acts that a person

00:05:03.560 could commit or be attached to. And it branded you as this kind of social outcast and it barred you

00:05:10.860 from respectable company. And it even ruined your family's name, not just for your lifetime,

00:05:17.060 but for generations to come. So people would have rather died than to get a divorce. Now today,

00:05:23.660 one in six people have experienced a divorce. About 50% of all marriages end in divorce.

00:05:32.220 60% of second marriages end in divorce. 73% of third marriages end in divorce. So that's about

00:05:38.560 just on the 50% number. That's about a 30% or 30,000% growth in divorce in a hundred years.

00:05:48.240 Okay. People who divorce are, I mean, just like, I want to just back up for a second.

00:05:55.020 30,000%. We're from 0.15% to 50%. It's just astonishing. We have to realize how insane

00:06:07.840 that is. Now, people who divorce, they double their mortality rate just because of the stress

00:06:15.560 of a divorce. 70% of divorces are initiated by women. If the woman has a college degree,

00:06:22.120 then it goes up to 90%. 90% of college-educated married women are the ones that initiate a 1.00

00:06:29.080 divorce. That is wild. That tells us so much about feminism. Now, data shows that if a married 1.00

00:06:37.880 woman's closest friend gets divorced, her marriage has a 75% increase of also getting

00:06:48.340 a divorce. It's just wild. And the results are devastating for children. Kids whose parents

00:06:55.840 are divorced have significantly higher high school dropout rates, elevated rates of substance abuse

00:07:02.860 and early drug experimentation. They engage in early sexual activity leading to higher teen

00:07:09.640 pregnancies, suffering from different levels of much higher levels of depression, and obviously

00:07:16.700 suffering with suicidal temptations. And so if there was one national relational factor that

00:07:25.180 led to the most devastating effects on a civilization, it would be divorce. That is that

00:07:30.080 If you want to know why America is crumbling, it's because marriages are crumbling. 1.00

00:07:36.400 Now, we have feminism, which led to the insane laws and open borders and nanny state and 1.00

00:07:43.820 rampant whoredom and singleness. 1.00

00:07:45.780 We have birth control that I talked about last week that led to promiscuity and the 0.99

00:07:50.000 collapsing birth rates. 0.95

00:07:51.340 And we have divorces that destroy the American household and damage the next generation.

00:07:57.180 and it just produces this cycle of societal death. 0.99

00:08:01.420 Yes, sure, the Jews are involved. 0.61

00:08:03.500 Yes, Israeli politics are in play. 0.89

00:08:05.800 But at some point, we need to just take responsibility

00:08:08.580 for our own sin, for our own rejection

00:08:12.220 of God's way of doing life.

00:08:15.460 And I tell people all the time,

00:08:16.480 when a nation leaves the biblical model for men,

00:08:19.280 for women, for sex, for marriage, for family,

00:08:21.280 for parenting, whether they're coerced

00:08:23.180 or they make the choice,

00:08:25.680 the entire nation will be destroyed. That is what we are experiencing in the West,

00:08:31.800 especially in Europe, starting in America or leading into America. It's not complicated,

00:08:37.600 right? Follow God's way and life is good. Reject God's ways and life is bad. So the question

00:08:47.180 becomes, what does the Bible say about marriage and divorce and remarriage? And that's what I

00:08:51.900 want to spend the rest of this episode discussing. Now, this is, I'm going to be given a short

00:08:58.000 treatment because there are many books on this topic about marriage and remarriage, you know,

00:09:03.460 the permanence view, the semi-permanence view. We'll talk about those things, but I just want

00:09:07.000 to be clear and succinct and hopefully give you a little bit of an understanding of this overall

00:09:13.140 discussion that it might be helpful and you can apply it to your own life, into your friends'

00:09:16.800 lives, your parents' lives, et cetera. So first, we know that marriage is instituted by God. We see

00:09:23.280 that in Genesis chapters one and two. God creates man and woman. He blesses them. That's the

00:09:28.380 marriage. He commands them to become one flesh, to be fruitful and multiply. Now, second is a

00:09:36.180 permanent covenant, okay? It's not just a temporary legal contract. And I know you probably know that

00:09:42.120 intellectually, but I want you to understand this at a deep level. So a covenant is entirely

00:09:47.480 different from a contract because a contract contains terms for cancellation and dissolution

00:09:54.880 if one party desires to depart. And as long as they keep the terms for cancellation,

00:10:01.020 there's no sin involved. However, a covenant is permanent. And if it's broken, it is sinful

00:10:08.900 before the Lord. And it's sinful because the conditions for entering the marriage covenant

00:10:13.980 were a lifelong commitment sworn with vows, signs, seals, all made before God. And so we see this

00:10:25.380 really, if you want to actually see a biblical example, you can look to Malachi 2. And it notes

00:10:30.140 that basically a portion of God's spirit is given into each marriage. Verses 14 through 15 says,

00:10:36.360 the Lord was witness between you and the wife of your youth. Did he not make them one with a 0.77

00:10:43.280 portion of the spirit in their union? End quote. In other words, unlike a contract, even if two

00:10:50.260 people agree to leave the covenant, you are still bound to it because it's not held together just

00:10:56.440 by two parties, but by three parties. And there are only a few scriptures that talk about things

00:11:03.580 that God hates. And one of them is that God hates divorce. Malachi 2.16, just another verse later,

00:11:11.620 it says, for the Lord God of Israel says that he hates divorce, end quote. Now, Jesus himself

00:11:18.380 reinforces this view of marriage when he says, what therefore God has joined together, let no man

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00:13:28.420 Now, just a few weeks ago, I actually had the opportunity to speak those very words

00:13:33.460 as I declared a man and a woman to be a husband and wife. And when I did so, I was not speaking

00:13:40.880 on my own authority, right? I was not speaking as an authority from the state of Arizona.

00:13:47.320 I spoke as a representative of Christ, right?

00:13:50.160 I was declaring what God himself established.

00:13:54.160 So in the same way that when a minister announces or offers the absolution or the assurance of

00:14:00.840 pardon and forgives sin, it's not by my own power when we do the absolution at church

00:14:06.400 or when I tell somebody that they're forgiven.

00:14:08.500 What's happening is that I'm declaring the forgiveness that Christ has promised in his

00:14:12.860 word and granted to those who are ordained as representatives to declare that truth.

00:14:19.620 And so just think about how this works with like an earthly king. When a king sends a representative

00:14:24.800 into a town with a royal decree, that representative speaks with the authority of the one who sent him.

00:14:32.560 So if the townspeople reject the message, they are not just rejecting the messenger,

00:14:37.960 They are rejecting the king himself. This is precisely what we see in Jesus's parable of the

00:14:43.860 wicked servants. And so, sorry, not the wicked servants, the wicked tenants. The owner of the

00:14:49.880 vineyard sends his servants to collect what is rightfully his, but the tenants reject them,

00:14:56.420 right? They beat them. They even kill some of them. And finally, the owner says, you know,

00:14:59.900 hey, if they're going to, they're surely not going to reject my son. So he sends his son,

00:15:04.980 but what do they do? Well, they reject him. So instead they seize the son and they kill him.

00:15:12.000 And so the servants in that parable represent the prophets, which are God's representatives,

00:15:16.980 who God sent to Israel and the son represents Christ himself, who also Israel rejected. So

00:15:23.320 Israel rejects God's representatives and ultimately they are rejecting and killing even the son of the 0.80

00:15:30.640 vineyard owner, or the son of God. Now, in other words, what this means is in rejecting the 0.78

00:15:35.140 representatives and the son, they are rejecting God himself. And what was the consequence of their

00:15:41.540 rejection of God? Well, in 70 AD, God brought judgment upon Jerusalem. So the Romans destroyed

00:15:49.220 the temple. They devastated the city. They scattered all the Jews. And this wasn't just 0.97

00:15:53.740 some sort of political catastrophe. It was a covenantal judgment upon a people who had

00:16:00.160 rejected God. So the principle behind this is simple. To reject the rightful representative

00:16:06.320 of the king when he faithfully delivers the king's words is to reject the king who sent him.

00:16:13.520 So all that to say is that at a wedding, when an ordained minister declares,

00:16:19.840 I pronounce you husband and wife. What God has joined together, let no man separate.

00:16:26.900 When those words are said, you are witnessing more than a ceremony or some sort of sentimental

00:16:32.660 tradition. This isn't merely a legal arrangement. Okay. You are witnessing a minister of Christ,

00:16:39.500 a representative of Christ publicly declare what God himself is declaring or is establishing.

00:16:45.420 And when the husband and wife hear those words, they're not merely receiving some sort of like

00:16:51.960 pastoral instruction. Okay. They are hearing the command of their King. So to separate what God

00:16:58.520 has joined is not simply to disregard the words of the minister, but to defy the authority of

00:17:05.020 Christ himself. Now, now that that I get, well, let me just move on for a second. So that's been

00:17:11.440 laid out, and that's important. The central question that's still remaining is, are there

00:17:17.640 any circumstances under which God does permit divorce? Now, this is the critical question of

00:17:26.100 this episode because the question is not what circumstances the state allows for divorce or

00:17:33.540 even what circumstances a pastor or the church permits divorce. The question is, are there any

00:17:40.260 circumstances where God himself has authorized in his word, a marriage covenant to be broken.

00:17:48.260 And I would say, yes, yes, there are two circumstances, adultery and abandonment

00:17:57.400 and, or desertion, if you want to call it desertion, but adultery and abandonment.

00:18:03.980 But allow me to offer some very important historical and cultural context for why this

00:18:09.480 has been so difficult for many Westerners to grasp. Now, if you don't know, prior to 1969,

00:18:17.080 divorce required one spouse to demonstrate that the other had violated the marriage covenant

00:18:22.880 through adultery or abandonment or some, again, heinous situation. Now, marriage was not something

00:18:30.660 a person could simply walk away from because they were unhappy or they had stopped loving the person

00:18:36.440 or whatever, right? If they actually did that, they would be punished both by the state and by

00:18:42.740 the church. If a husband just disappeared and stopped paying for his wife's life,

00:18:50.200 stopped paying for his children, he would be traced down or tracked down by the state.

00:18:57.020 He would be put under church discipline in the church. That was a real thing.

00:19:01.020 Now, that changed in 1969 when California Governor Ronald Reagan signed the nation's

00:19:06.100 first comprehensive no-fault divorce law, which took effect in 1970. Now, under this new system,

00:19:12.760 a spouse no longer needed to prove any sort of wrongdoing to dissolve the marriage. It was

00:19:16.720 basically enough to claim that the marriage had, quote, irreconcilable differences. Now, other

00:19:22.600 states gradually followed. And by 2010, I was, let's see, how old was I in 2010? I was 25 years

00:19:29.760 old. All 50 states at that point had adopted no-fault divorce. So this is not that long ago,

00:19:35.380 This is not that long ago. Today, every state allows divorce without proving adultery or

00:19:42.020 abandonment or any other sort of insane marital misconduct. In many cases, one spouse can obtain

00:19:48.240 a divorce even when the other one desperately wants to preserve the marriage. Now, some states,

00:19:55.000 including Arizona, where I live, still recognize what they rightly call covenant marriage. And so

00:20:01.400 if you get married at our church, you would take a covenant marriage. That's a form of legal

00:20:07.860 recognition from the state. You are saying, I want to be held to this standard. So basically,

00:20:13.120 a husband and wife at the state level deny their rights to a no-fault divorce. So before the state,

00:20:21.600 the law requires specific grounds, such as adultery or abandonment, or again, some sort of

00:20:27.840 serious criminal conduct to justify divorce. In other words, what it does is it places

00:20:33.520 additional legal weight upon the promises that are made at the altar. And this is good because

00:20:39.860 it's the state enforcing God's word upon the population for the good of the people.

00:20:44.620 That is Christian nationalism at its core. And this is how it used to be nationwide.

00:20:51.060 So these are very important contextual understandings. So we've talked about

00:20:56.220 scripture's view of marriage, the state's view of marriage. Now, I want to talk about the church's

00:21:02.180 view of marriage. Now, historically, there have been three ecclesiastical traditions

00:21:07.360 that have treated marriage as a sacrament. So, Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy,

00:21:14.540 and Anglicanism. Now, all three recognize that there are seven sacramental rites.

00:21:22.100 baptism, Eucharist, confirmation, holy matrimony, holy orders, et cetera, right?

00:21:27.840 But Anglicans, the tradition that I fit in, they make an important distinction between

00:21:35.300 the two sacraments of the gospel, right? So that would be the Lord's Supper and baptism,

00:21:41.780 and then the five sacraments of the church. And so that's a distinction that's made there that's

00:21:48.860 not made in Roman Catholicism or in Eastern Orthodoxy. And so again, one of these sacraments

00:21:58.500 is, well, actually to say over here, one of these sacraments is holy matrimony. And this is

00:22:04.980 important because it aligns with each of the positions of these traditions on marriage and

00:22:12.040 divorce. So Roman Catholicism is teaching, what it does is it teaches that if there's a valid,

00:22:21.060 consummated, sacramental marriage, that it cannot be dissolved by any human authority ever,

00:22:27.620 church or state. Eastern Orthodoxy regards marriage to be lifelong, but permits divorce

00:22:35.040 and remarriage under certain circumstances through what's called pastoral economia,

00:22:41.020 which is basically like adjusting church rules for merciful application. And they do not allow

00:22:48.540 more than three total marriages in a person's life. Now, Anglicanism allows for permanent 0.91

00:22:57.240 separation for, you know, essentially to add peace if you have a case of adultery or irreparable

00:23:07.320 abandonment, but historically did not allow for remarriage while a spouse remained alive.

00:23:15.980 So those are the general historic positions. And then there was kind of a more emerging

00:23:23.180 reformed position that I'm going to talk about here in a minute. But all three of these traditions

00:23:28.040 agree on this fundamental principle that marriage belongs first to God, is administered by the

00:23:39.060 authority of the church, not the state, and is not merely an institution of the government.

00:23:47.000 And that's very important. We really want to lay that down, is that marriage is governed by the

00:23:53.740 church and not by the state. So in other words, marriage is far more than a civil arrangement

00:24:01.720 established at a courthouse. In fact, as weddings and their ceremonies increasingly moved outside

00:24:09.620 of the church and were performed by civil officials, random people, rather than ordained

00:24:15.840 ministers, the public perception of marriage gradually shifted from a sacred covenant before

00:24:21.560 God instituted by the church to a union that was regulated and dissolved by the state.

00:24:28.580 And so, yes, I'll leave it at that. So some would argue that even if you were not married by a

00:24:36.540 pastor, you have not been rightfully married and should actually be formally married. Some people

00:24:42.820 would say that. American Christians have to understand that the state has no authority

00:24:51.080 over what God has joined together. Yes, you can have laws about how married couples need to

00:24:57.740 interact within the civilization that it governs, but marriage has no, there's no authority over

00:25:05.260 the institutionalizing of a marriage and the dissolving of a marriage at the state level.

00:25:12.100 So a judge may issue some sort of divorce decree, but that decree does not mean that the marriage

00:25:20.200 has lawfully been dissolved in the sight of God. If the divorce is not permitted by scripture and

00:25:26.920 not declared by the church, then those who pursue divorce have to be actually placed under church

00:25:33.940 discipline and called to repentance. If they persist in their sin and they refuse to repent,

00:25:39.080 the church must ultimately excommunicate them in accordance with the process that you see in

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00:27:42.600 NXR. So just because the state says these things, it is entering into its tyranny. It's when one

00:27:52.680 sphere enters into the authority of another sphere that it has no right to. And that's exactly what's

00:27:58.900 happening, right? So when the state comes into your family and tells you how to parent, that's

00:28:03.760 tyranny because they are taking the authority of the father, which is at the family level,

00:28:08.600 and they're putting people that don't have the authority that are in the state in your home. 0.98

00:28:13.240 When the family comes in and says, this man should be killed, therefore I'm going to kill him in my

00:28:20.200 backyard, I'm going to be the judge, the jury, and the executioner, then that's family tyranny 0.98

00:28:27.520 over the state, you've just taken the role of the state. And when the church, or I'll say the state

00:28:32.440 says, you are now divorced, that is tyranny because what they've done is they've come into

00:28:37.780 the sphere of the church and they've exercised authority that is not theirs according to the

00:28:44.840 word of God. And so for the Christian, the question is not simply whether the state recognizes a

00:28:52.200 particular divorce, but whether God permits it. So a civil decree, again, cannot make lawful before 0.84

00:29:00.520 God what God himself has forbidden. Now, yes, that means that many people who are divorced today

00:29:10.000 are actually still married in the eyes of God and are committing forms of adultery. And it's why

00:29:17.520 Jesus said in Mark chapter 10, verse 11 through 12, quote, anyone who divorces his wife and

00:29:23.640 marries another woman commits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband and marries

00:29:29.420 another man, she commits adultery, end quote. And as we will see, it's not that divorce could never

00:29:37.300 happen. It's that divorce without valid grounds, which was very common in Israel when Jesus was

00:29:43.800 talking about this, was a form of adultery. And adultery was a highly shameful act to be identified

00:29:51.680 with that name would have been terrible for the reputation of a particular person. 0.98

00:29:57.280 We know that in Israel, if you're an adulterer, you should be stoned.

00:30:01.960 So this is why the strong language here. Now, the theological controversy surrounding biblical

00:30:07.160 divorce and remarriage, it often centers around two passages, 1 Corinthians 7 and Matthew

00:30:13.660 chapter 19. Now, historically, again, there are three primary views held by the church. So there's

00:30:19.700 the permanence view. Marriage is unbreakable until death. Divorce is never permissible.

00:30:28.060 And remarriage, while a spouse is living, is always considered adultery. And that is

00:30:32.800 the Roman Catholic view. There is the tragic concession view. Marriage is an eternal bond, 0.62

00:30:40.920 but sin can cause its spiritual death.

00:30:46.160 Full divorce is permitted for severe causes

00:30:49.380 and remarriage is allowed while the spouse is alive

00:30:53.220 up to a strict limit of three total marriages.

00:30:57.300 That is the Eastern Orthodox view.

00:31:00.780 Then you have the reform view,

00:31:03.500 which is kind of a little bit nuanced,

00:31:08.200 softer view of the Anglican view.

00:31:10.100 and it's the view that I hold, which is God permits both divorce and remarriage under strict

00:31:20.140 biblically defined exceptions of adultery and desertion only under church authority.

00:31:29.660 And that again is the reformed view. Now, I want to explain why I reject the permanence view

00:31:36.360 and that, well, the tragic concession view

00:31:40.820 is essentially a form of the reform view as well,

00:31:44.760 but it has its different limits

00:31:46.520 and its different language from the Orthodox position.

00:31:49.640 But the Roman Catholic Church teaches

00:31:52.340 that a valid consummated sacramental marriage

00:31:54.660 cannot be dissolved by any human authority.

00:31:58.880 Only death ends the marriage bond.

00:32:00.760 Okay, now I have sympathy for this position 0.91

00:32:03.580 because it takes the words very seriously, what therefore God has joined together, let no man

00:32:09.300 separate. But I believe this view struggles to account for the exception that Christ himself

00:32:17.800 gives in Matthew chapter 19, verse 9. Jesus says that whoever divorces his wife, except

00:32:24.180 for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery. Now, some Roman Catholic 0.94

00:32:32.520 interpreters argue that the Greek word pornea, which is where we get our word for pornography,

00:32:39.160 in the English, it's translated as sexual immorality. And they would argue that it refers

00:32:44.520 only to an unlawful union that was never a legitimate marriage. And what they try to do

00:32:51.860 is connect the context of Herod and Herodias and their incestual marriage. So if you remember John

00:33:00.560 the Baptist confronted Herod for taking his brother's wife. Maybe it's not incestuous.

00:33:06.560 Maybe it's consanguineal, the idea that there's some sort of kinship violation here. And he told

00:33:14.820 him plainly, it's not lawful. It's not lawful for you to take this woman as your wife. And this was,

00:33:20.920 according to the Roman Catholic view, pornea. And they try to back that up with some texts from

00:33:26.140 Leviticus. And I would agree at some level that it is a sexual perversion to do those marriages

00:33:35.380 in which Leviticus says that you cannot do. So they would say that John the Baptist wasn't

00:33:41.200 permitting divorce from a legitimate spouse, that Jesus was saying, hey, he's just, he's defending

00:33:47.400 Jesus, or sorry, Jesus is defending John, and that John is talking about calling for this

00:33:58.040 illegitimate marriage. He was essentially permitting divorce from a relationship that

00:34:03.920 God never recognized as marriage in the first place. So that's kind of the argumentation there.

00:34:09.240 Now, I agree, again, that unlawful unions must be distinguished from legitimate marriages, but

00:34:14.560 I don't believe this explanation actually adequately accounts for Matthew chapter 19.

00:34:22.060 And here's why. Because that isn't what the Pharisees were asking when they were talking

00:34:26.940 to Jesus. They weren't asking about incestuous or illegitimate relationships or Herodias.

00:34:33.220 Okay. They were asking whether a man could divorce his wife for any cause. And Jesus,

00:34:39.880 He answers their question. He takes them back to creation. He explains why Moses permitted divorce

00:34:45.920 and then gives an explicit exception. And the Greek word pornea does not have any connection

00:34:54.100 to an unlawful marriage in this particular context. It's like, it's totally distant.

00:35:00.200 There's nothing there. And so it refers broadly to sexual immorality, which of course includes

00:35:07.300 adultery. Now, I believe the exception concerns actual sexual misconduct within a marriage,

00:35:15.780 not merely just like an invalid union. And now we have to be careful here when we're trying to

00:35:22.640 determine what sexual immorality and what are valid grounds for divorce. And so there's very,

00:35:27.700 very delicate stuff. Jesus teaches in Matthew chapter five, that a man who looks at a woman

00:35:33.680 with lustful intent has already committed adultery in his heart. And that's true, but there's a

00:35:40.460 difference between committing adultery in the heart and committing an outward act of sexual

00:35:45.900 infidelity that provides grounds for divorce. So for example, viewing pornography is sinful.

00:35:53.160 An emotional affair with another person that's not your spouse is sinful. Kissing someone romantically

00:35:58.580 outside of marriage is definitely sinful. Lusting over someone else is sinful. These things require

00:36:06.200 repentance and sometimes church discipline, but they are not, in my view, and I think most of

00:36:12.700 the reformed world, acts of pornea and biblical grounds for divorce. Maybe the kissing, but let me

00:36:20.520 explain why. Watching pornea, pornography, is different than performing pornea. Thinking

00:36:29.720 about pornea is different than engaging in pornea with another person's body. And so I believe

00:36:37.520 Matthew's exception concerns actual sexual misconduct with another person that is not

00:36:46.040 your spouse. Now the Greek word itself is broader than intercourse alone. And so, and we know that

00:36:53.960 because there's another Greek word for adultery, moikia. And so this distinction, what it does is

00:37:00.860 it requires pastoral judgment when you're dealing with some sort of sexual misconduct that maybe not

00:37:07.400 necessarily be intercourse or adultery. This episode is sponsored by Reform Forge. Reform

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00:37:41.820 Now, here's another important principle. Just because adultery may permit grounds for divorce 0.95

00:37:50.780 or separation does not mean adultery requires separation or divorce or remarriage. And I want

00:37:58.440 you to consider God's relationship with Israel. So throughout the Old Testament, Israel is described

00:38:03.640 as an adulterous wife who repeatedly violates her covenant with God over and over again. And what

00:38:08.800 does God do? Well, he confronts her. He disciplines her. He also repeatedly calls her to repentance.

00:38:15.540 Now in Jeremiah chapter three, it even describes God giving a faithless Israel, a certificate 0.90

00:38:21.880 of divorce, which by the way, I think further supports my position that divorce is valid

00:38:27.940 in repeated cases of adultery and why I reject the permanence view. But in that same chapter,

00:38:35.620 God also calls for his people to return and offers an opportunity of forgiveness.

00:38:42.500 And like, I just think about the example of Hosea, right? Gives a great parallel here.

00:38:49.240 So God commands Hosea to love an unfaithful woman. Hosea receives this unfaithful woman

00:38:54.880 back over and over again. And his marriage becomes basically this picture of God's extraordinary

00:39:01.700 covenant mercy between God and Israel. Now, if God demonstrates that kind of patience toward

00:39:07.560 his adulterous people, shouldn't Christians approach adulterous spouses with a disposition 0.82

00:39:15.000 that matches God's mercy? And I think, yes, yes, we should. So it's similar to the parable of the 0.78

00:39:22.280 debtor, right? When you realize how much you have been forgiven, you ought to extend that degree of

00:39:29.440 forgiveness to others. So if a husband or wife commits sexual immorality, pornea, genuine grounds,

00:39:38.520 adultery, and genuinely repents, abandons their sin, seeks restoration, the Christian response

00:39:47.020 should be forgiveness. Now this, again, follows God's mercy toward us. We're mimicking God there.

00:39:53.820 but there's a difference between a repentant spouse and someone who repeatedly commits

00:40:00.780 adultery, lies about it, refuses to repent. It's a totally different situation. So persistent,

00:40:05.980 unrepentant sexual infidelity will certainly justify separation for the sake of peace

00:40:11.500 and where necessary, divorce. Now, this is why I believe we must distinguish between

00:40:18.620 separation and divorce for a second. So separation creates distance without dissolving the marriage

00:40:24.920 covenant. It allows time for peace and for repentance and for correction and for hopefully

00:40:30.520 reconciliation of the marriage. And frankly, I wish more couples, even that had valid grounds

00:40:36.700 for divorce, would pursue separation before rushing into divorce. And here's why. I've

00:40:41.760 actually witnessed a few couples reconcile and remarry each other after being divorced. So I

00:40:49.760 just want you to think about that. A marriage that appeared completely destroyed was eventually

00:40:54.720 restored by God's mercy. Now imagine if one of those spouses had immediately remarried somebody

00:41:01.320 else and that opportunity for reconciliation would have been lost. This is why I believe

00:41:07.140 that Christians should be extremely slow to pursue divorce and even slower to pursue remarriage. 1.00

00:41:16.380 Now, if a period of separation, six months, a year, a year and a half, I don't know,

00:41:22.260 does not produce repentance or reconciliation and a proper church court determines that biblical

00:41:31.840 grounds for divorce do exist, I believe that the innocent party, the innocent spouse may lawfully

00:41:38.140 be granted a divorce and a period of years for prayer should be at least counseled and then

00:41:49.960 eventually is free to remarry. And that is consistent with the reformed view, which

00:41:57.020 recognized serious covenant violations, such again as adultery or desertion, are legitimate

00:42:03.380 grounds for dissolving a marriage. But permission, again, permission is not obligation. Just because

00:42:10.640 you have grounds to divorce does not mean you must divorce. And just because you can remarry

00:42:16.560 does not mean that you should remarry. The Christian should always desire reconciliation.

00:42:24.000 Okay, sometimes that reconciliation occurs during separation.

00:42:29.900 Sometimes it recurs even after divorce.

00:42:34.040 And so I think it's very wise to wait and wait and wait and pray and remain single,

00:42:43.200 waiting and hoping for this individual to repent.

00:42:48.260 And so this is, again, a pastoral judgment call that requires lots of wisdom as you navigate

00:42:55.960 these realities. Now, let's talk about abandonment just for a second. So 1 Corinthians 7, verse 15,

00:43:02.780 Paul says that if an unbelieving spouse separates from a believer, the believer is not in bondage.

00:43:09.120 And there's lots of discussion about it. In bondage to what? Well, in bondage to the covenant

00:43:12.700 vows is what the vast majority of people have interpreted. Now, remember, this is the ancient

00:43:17.060 world. Imagine a Christian woman whose unbelieving husband abandons her. He leaves the province or

00:43:23.660 the country and he never returns. She waits five years, 10 years. She doesn't even know where he

00:43:29.460 is. Perhaps he might not even be alive anymore. He might have died at sea. Is she required to

00:43:36.020 spend the next 50 years alone because her husband has permanently abandoned her? Well, that's what

00:43:44.160 the Roman Catholic position would say, you'd have to essentially have a body identification.

00:43:50.000 Now, again, I don't believe that's what Paul is teaching. And consider what Paul says earlier in

00:43:53.740 the same chapter. He says, quote, it is better to marry than to burn with passion. Now he's talking

00:43:58.600 about single people. It's better to marry than to burn with passion. So Paul recognizes that not 0.70

00:44:04.380 everyone possesses the gift of celibacy, but marriage is God's ordinary provision for sexual

00:44:10.760 temptation and relations. Now, that verse alone doesn't authorize remarriage after

00:44:16.560 divorce, especially if it's between two Christians without the grounds of adultery or

00:44:20.980 desertion. Now, a husband leaving the house during an argument is not desertion, right? A temporary

00:44:27.960 separation is not a desertion. I'm talking about willful, permanent, irreparable abandonment where

00:44:36.140 reconciliation is no longer reasonably expected. And maybe the other spouse left. Maybe they moved

00:44:44.660 to a different state. Maybe they moved to a different country. Maybe they married another

00:44:49.120 person. Maybe you haven't had any contact with this person for years at a time. And I believe

00:44:56.980 the determination of true abandonment, again, belongs to the church, not just the abandoned

00:45:06.040 spouse. It doesn't belong to a civil judge. It doesn't belong to the state, but to a proper

00:45:12.320 church court. And this is where the elders can investigate the circumstances. They can hear a

00:45:17.820 testimony. They can examine the evidence. They can determine whether a spouse has truly and

00:45:22.160 permanently deserted the marriage. And where that has been established, I believe the church

00:45:28.980 may grant divorce and the right to remarry. And the responsibility for that will rest upon the

00:45:38.140 pastors. And this is why a few of you should become pastors and teachers, right? A few of you,

00:45:44.220 we're going to be held to a higher standard. It requires discernment and wisdom to grant such

00:45:53.240 things to couples in the church. It is very dangerous if you make the wrong decision. And

00:46:02.100 that's why I believe it should be very slow and it should be done with a council of many pastors

00:46:06.860 involved. Now, this raises one more very important question. Why does the traditional

00:46:15.080 Anglican wedding service ask whether, if anyone can show just cause, why they may not lawfully

00:46:22.400 be married, speak now or else forever hold your peace? Most people think that that is just

00:46:28.520 ceremonial. It's not. It's under the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. And any sort of forthcoming

00:46:34.600 marriage was actually publicly announced on three Sundays prior so that anyone aware of a lawful

00:46:41.580 impediment could come forward. What if the man was already married? What if a woman had a living

00:46:48.540 and believing husband? What if the couple was biologically related with prohibited degrees of 0.89

00:46:56.080 kinship? What if the father of the bride did not permit it? Maybe he's been unlawfully divorced

00:47:04.320 from another woman. So the church wanted to establish that the proposed union was lawful 0.60

00:47:11.780 before a priest would solemnize it. In fact, the Book of Common Prayer warns, quote,

00:47:18.160 for be ye well assured that so many are coupled together otherwise than God's word does allow

00:47:25.440 are not joined together by God, neither is their matrimony lawful, end quote. And I think that's

00:47:31.860 pretty remarkable because the Anglican church, what it did is it recognized the very concern of

00:47:37.320 the Roman Catholics about invalid unions, but rather than assuming Matthew's exception referred

00:47:43.860 exclusively to those particular unions, it established safeguards to prevent unlawful

00:47:49.060 marriages. And this is why I believe the church must have authority to judge marriage cases.

00:47:55.880 The state might, again, recognize divorce decrees. They might legally divide property or determine

00:48:03.980 legal matters, maybe around children or whatever it may be, but a civil judge cannot establish

00:48:10.160 that a marriage has ended before God. And so these questions require ecclesiastical judgment

00:48:18.640 because they are the ones that have the authority to declare someone to be married. And so a proper

00:48:24.920 church court has to determine whether biblical grounds for separation do exist, whether there's

00:48:32.100 reconciliation as possible, whether remarriage would be lawful. And these are very important

00:48:38.580 questions that are not for the state. Now, there's one final position or question that I think a lot

00:48:46.740 of people wonder about. What happens when someone divorced on unbiblical grounds? They remarried

00:48:53.080 and only afterward came to understand

00:48:55.660 that the original divorce was actually sinful and not lawful.

00:49:00.300 Should that person divorce the second spouse

00:49:03.760 and attempt to restore the first marriage?

00:49:07.420 Now, I would say no,

00:49:10.040 and I don't believe that another divorce

00:49:13.300 is the proper remedy for the first divorce.

00:49:16.360 And that person should confess the original wrongdoing,

00:49:21.580 repent before God, seek forgiveness where appropriate, and remain faithful to the marriage

00:49:32.560 they now have. And now you might be thinking, well, where do you get that, Dale? Where do you

00:49:36.880 get that position? Well, Deuteronomy chapter 24 demonstrates that a subsequent marriage

00:49:41.320 cannot simply be undone by just returning to the original spouse. You can go back and read

00:49:47.620 Deuteronomy chapter 24. And I know that passage doesn't settle every New Testament question,

00:49:53.040 but it certainly offers the principle that I'm talking about. So repentance does not always mean

00:49:58.740 reversing every consequence of past sin. Sometimes it means acknowledging the sin and faithfully

00:50:06.860 fulfilling the obligations that now exist. And so a man who abandoned one wife does not necessarily

00:50:15.720 make himself righteous by abandoning another to be rejoined to that former wife. Now,

00:50:22.940 some are going to say that position is foolish or that's too strict. Others are going to say 0.99

00:50:28.600 it's too permissive. But my concern, again, is not to find a position that satisfies everybody.

00:50:34.520 My concern is to preserve the distinctions that scripture gives to us. As a pastor, I know that

00:50:41.080 I'm going to stand before the Lord for the words that I speak and teach. And so I'm very careful.

00:50:45.880 And again, I think this is something that needs to be extremely slow, extremely slow. We need to

00:50:54.320 make sure that we are, if we are having tensions in our marriage, we bring the church into that

00:51:00.940 conversation quickly. I hate it when people let me know that they're been fighting for six months

00:51:08.700 and they're right about to get a divorce.

00:51:10.760 And I'm going, how are we just hearing about this now?

00:51:13.920 We should have been having this conversation

00:51:15.340 in counseling six months to a year ago.

00:51:17.660 So bring your pastors involved

00:51:20.620 into this conversation of counseling very early

00:51:23.640 that they can navigate with true authority and grace

00:51:27.320 and submit to their authority

00:51:29.120 as you walk through those marriage counseling sessions.

00:51:33.620 And then if that doesn't work,

00:51:35.300 again, you have separation as an alternative to divorce. I think you should exercise that

00:51:40.980 opportunity for separation in order to have a season of peace, to stop the fighting or conflict

00:51:47.080 or whatever may be going on. But at that same time, while you're in separation, you should be

00:51:52.900 wanting, hoping, praying for reconciliation, working towards that, examining oneself. And if

00:52:00.820 that one spouse is still not there and is still being sinful. There's no repentance

00:52:06.180 and you've been working through it. They've just neglected. They're no longer coming to

00:52:10.100 counseling sessions. They've left. They're not communicating. You've waited maybe six more

00:52:15.380 months. They're still not communicating. Then you go back to the church and you say, I think

00:52:19.260 that we need to file for a request of divorce. And you work through, again, if there's valid

00:52:26.700 grounds, I'm talking about abandonment. They're not communicating. They're gone. They moved away.

00:52:30.820 maybe they're dating somebody else, remarrying somebody else. Or if there is adultery, you

00:52:36.580 already had valid grounds. You could have divorced already, but you chose separation. So again,

00:52:40.500 you walk through these things. And then even after the divorce, and you got to remember that God

00:52:48.180 hates divorce, even if it's valid, even if you have valid grounds for it, it's still something

00:52:54.120 that's not good. It might be necessary in this fallen world. So marriage is a lifelong covenant

00:52:59.320 established by God. The church alone has the authority to solemnize and grant divorce.

00:53:06.200 Separation should be preferred over divorce. God hates divorce, even when there's valid grounds

00:53:12.360 for it to exist. And marriage, or I'll say remarriage, even though it's sometimes lawful,

00:53:21.960 should be approached with extreme caution, if not avoided altogether. So take that for what it's

00:53:28.760 worth. I hope it's helpful at least to give you a warning of the seriousness and gravity

00:53:34.520 of marriage before the Lord. So that's a wrap for this episode of American Glory.

00:53:40.220 If you don't already, you can follow me on X, Instagram, or YouTube. I'm posting new content

00:53:44.460 every single day. My future product for this episode is the ReLearn app. It's the app that

00:53:49.680 our ministry created. We've got 30 to 40 excellent books on marriage, parenting,

00:53:59.580 things for husband, things for wives, things around the family, maybe even more.

00:54:03.200 But excellent audiobooks with great narration, slightly modernized if they're from the 1700s

00:54:09.160 or 1800s. It's really great stuff. And you can download the app at the App Store, just the

00:54:13.400 ReLearn app, or the Google Play Store. You can also learn more at relearn.org. Now, next week,

00:54:18.920 I'm going to be discussing really the multi-generational Christian family vision so that it might help

00:54:26.420 us think about restoring America through the family.

00:54:30.760 I'm hoping to cap off this season with that episode, and then we will move into season

00:54:36.460 four, which I will announce next week.

00:54:39.480 My name is Dale Partridge.

00:54:40.780 Thank you for listening or watching American Glory.

00:54:43.440 I'll see you next week.

00:54:48.920 Everything we do here at NXR Studios is simply one part of a three-pronged approach to winning

00:55:05.060 America for Christ. On the ground, we have our local church where I preach the Bible and administer

00:55:11.500 word and sacrament. Here at NXR Studios, we focus on politics and culture. But we have a third

00:55:19.180 organization that I am the president of, Right Response Ministries, that sits between the church

00:55:25.200 and NXR Studios. Right Response Ministries puts out weekly written and audio content focused on

00:55:32.600 theology, discipleship, and the church at large. If you'd like to support what we do over there,

00:55:39.280 Right Response Ministries is a 501c3 charitable organization, and your donation of any amount

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00:55:53.440 forward slash donate. Again, that's rightresponseministries.com forward slash donate.

00:56:00.560 Thank you very much.

The NXR Podcast - October 20, 2026

American Glory - Is Divorce and Remarriage Sinful？ - The Hard Biblical Truth

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