Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Biblical Guidelines for Remarriage

Statistics show that most people who are divorced will want to remarry someday. If you want to remarry as God allows it, you must understand and follow the Bible's guidelines. In the following explanation by Dr. Craig Keener, the "innocent" party is the one who does not want the marriage to end and who attempts to hold the marriage together.

Dr. Keener explains: "If a divorce is on valid grounds, the innocent party is automatically free to remarry. Paul makes that explicit, especially in 1 Corinthians 7:15 where he says that if the unbelieving spouse departs, the believer is not under bondage. That phrase 'not under bondage' means he or she is free to remarry."

Be careful though. Just because you are free to remarry does not mean you are ready to do so. Dr. Dennis Rainey in Staying Close examines God's purposes for marriage. If you are considering remarriage, first decide if your goals for this new relationship line up with God's. God's purposes for marriage are "to mirror God's image, to multiply a godly heritage, to manage God's realm, to mutually complete one another, and to model Christ's relationship to the church."

Dr. Rainey continues, "What these five purposes bring to a marriage are a sense of direction, internal stability, and the stamp of God's design."*
Does your new relationship reflect these five godly purposes?

"'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.' This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband" (Ephesians 5:31-33).

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