Home Topics Index Download
Transcript 857A — The Issue of Remaining Single After Divorce
HC: Good evening. Welcome to Open Forum.
CALLER: Mr. Camping, I would like some information on the subject of divorce. I personally myself have never been married, and therefore never divorced. And so this doesn't apply to me, although I do have people who are my friends who have heard you on the radio and who have heard other people, and are somewhat confused regarding how people view this. The main thing is, if somebody is not a child of God, and he marries and then divorces, maybe five years later, then comes to know Jesus Christ as his Savior and Lord, is it right to say that this person is to remain single as long as his partner is alive?
HC: The question is, when God outlines sin in the Bible, or describes what sin is, does it make any difference whether a person is saved or unsaved when he commits that sin? If someone is unsaved and commits murder, is it just as much murder as when a saved person commits murder? When a person commits adultery who is unsaved, is it just as much sin as when a saved person commits adultery? And the answer is yes, sin is sin.
And likewise when a person has divorced, which is a sin, if he has divorced when he is unsaved, then that's a sin. And the same laws would apply as if he was saved. God's laws are for mankind. It's only the true believer who is really going to pay attention to the law of God and worry about whether he has broken the law of God. But the laws are for mankind.
Likewise the laws on marriage and divorce are for mankind. Jesus, when He's talking about "what God hath joined together, let not man put asunder," He reaches all the way back to the beginning. "From the beginning God made them male and female, and the two became one flesh." And so He umbrellas the whole human race by that statement.
Therefore the big difference is, if these two people who were divorced when they were unsaved continue unsaved, they eventually would remarry, probably. And that would just make the sin worse. But on the other hand, because they did become saved after they divorced, and the Bible is very clear that the one who marries someone who is divorced commits adultery, they know that they cannot marry again.
CALLER: May I read a certain part of Scripture and get your opinion on it? It's I Corinthians 6:9 to 11: "Do ye not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither the immoral, nor the idolaters, nor the adulterers, nor the sexual perverts, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor the drunkards, nor the revilers, nor the robbers will inherit the kingdom of God.
And verse 11 is the one I would like your opinion on more than anything else. "And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God."
Now to me it would seem to me that we have been cleansed. We are a new creation, as II Corinthians 5:17 says. And as I would understand it, if I was married and divorced prior to my conversion and my new life in Christ, that would have been washed away, as the other sins that I had committed were.
HC: In other words, what you're saying is that when the man on death row who has murdered someone becomes saved, because he's washed, because he's cleansed, therefore that murder rap can't hang over his head any longer. Or the man who has stolen before he was saved, now that he became saved, he doesn't have to spend any more time in jail paying for the fact that he did what he did.
You see, when it talks about being washed or cleansed or justified, it means that in the sight of God we have become absolutely as if we have never committed that sin. That is, that sin was paid for. The sin still exists, but Christ went to the cross and endured the wrath of God, the equivalent of an eternity in hell, in paying for that sin. And so God cannot hold that sin against us any longer.
But that doesn't change our condition in this world. We still have to obey the rules that God has laid down for this world. That doesn't mean that now we can forget about the fact that we have a wife somewhere whom we have divorced. The fact is, "what God has joined together, let not man put asunder."
You see, there's an aspect of marriage that is not clearly understood at all. But the Bible has got some very surprising language. The Bible says that when two people become married, and this has to do with anybody, in any kind of a marriage situation, whether they were believers or non-believers, or whether it was a hasty marriage or whether it was a marriage after very careful consideration, whether they're married in a church, or whether they're married before a Justice of the Peace, it's immaterial. Two people become married. And God fuses them or welds them into one flesh. God joins them together as one flesh. Now that's language that boggles the mind. There's no other human relationship that exists like that, where two people, from God's vantage point, are one flesh. They are one. And that's the Biblical language.
You see, when the secular world talks about marriage, they talk about it as a partnership, they talks about it as a contract, or as an arrangement, or as two people living together, or whatever language they want to use. But from God's vantage point, when He looks at two people who have become married, He says, "What God . . ." Now notice it says, "What God has joined together." God puts His stamp on that marriage and says, "Now you are one flesh." And then He adds, "What God has joined together, let not man put asunder."
That's how seriously tight the marriage is. Now God did this, of course, for the protection, not only of the marriage institution, but also for the protection of the wife, for the protection of the husband, for the protection of the children, because the family is the basic unit of society. And there's no language like this in the Bible anywhere, that is as strident or as strenuous, or as peculiar, or unique, as this. They have become one flesh.
Now when they divorce, therefore, they are violating God's rules. They are adulterating that marriage. They are engaging in fornication; they are engaging in adultery. That marriage is adulterated. Now when they marry somebody else, now that's an adulterous marriage because they have violated the first marriage. They belong to their first partner. But once they marry that second partner, again they become as one flesh, because that too is a marriage. But it's a marriage that began wrong. It was in violation of the rule of God.
CALLER: Okay. When you first started speaking a moment ago, you said in God's sight the sin of divorce, if a divorced person comes to know Jesus Christ as his Savior and Lord, is forgiven. Correct?
HC: Well, it's true that if someone has violated any rules of God, any . . . Here's a person who not only has divorced, but he has committed incest, he has been a child-beater, he's murdered, he's committed every sin in the book. And now he's become a child of God. Every one of those sins is paid for by Christ, so that he will never have to stand at the judgment throne to answer for them. But that doesn't change his place in society. That doesn't mean that now he doesn't have to answer to the law of the land for some of the sins he has committed. It's only insofar as Judgment Day is concerned that he'll never have to answer to God for those sins.
CALLER: Well, if the sin of divorce still exists when a person becomes a child of God, as you said, how did Christ then pay for this sin, if it still exists?
HC: No. You must remember that judgment comes on the last day. If you commit a sin, God does not judge you here and now, in this life. It's at the last day that you have to answer for that sin. And then God will find you guilty, and He will plunge you into hell because of that sin, and for all the other sins that you have committed. And it is that judgment that God covers by Christ's blood. Christ took upon Himself our sins so that we might become the righteousness of God.
But God did not take out of the way the fact that we have to live out our life according to the rules that God has laid down. And the rule that God has laid down is that someone who is divorced is not to remarry. That's simply the rule that God has laid down. Otherwise we would make a shamble of the rules that God has laid down. Then I could argue, "Well, I've murdered somebody, but I shouldn't go to the electric chair because my sins are forgiven; I have been justified by the Lord Jesus Christ." But the fact is, I still have to go to the electric chair.
Here's a drunkard. He's ruined his life through drink. He's got cirrhosis of the liver, his family has left him, and lo and behold, he becomes saved. Because he is saved, he's not going to go to hell. He's not going to be threatened by hell because of the ugly things that developed in his life, together with the sin of drunkenness. But that does not mean that he's not going to die of cirrhosis of the liver. That doesn't mean that now he's going to get his family back, necessarily. He still has to live in this world according to the rules that God has laid down insofar as the way this world goes. That still has to follow through.
And so we can't say, "Well, we can forget those things in the past as if they never happened, and now begin all over again," as some would like to do with divorce and remarriage. The Bible says that a divorced person is not to remarry. And that's transparent as to when he was divorced or when he was saved, or when he was not saved. It's irrelevant. It is simply a rule that God gives to mankind. A divorced person commits adultery if he remarries. That's a rule that stands all by itself, and it is not changed at all by anything else the Bible teaches.
CALLER: Could you please quote me the passage where it says that a divorced person is not to remarry?
HC: Oh, yes. It says, for example, in the Gospel of Mark. We read, "If a woman shall put away her husband and be married to another, she committeth adultery. Whosoever shall put away his wife and marry another committeth adultery against her."
Or let me read from Romans 7, just so that we'll get this very clearly before us. In Romans 7 we read in verse 2, "For the woman which hath an husband is bound by the law to her husband so long as he liveth. But if the husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband. So then if while her husband liveth she be married to another man, she shall be called an adulteress. But if her husband be dead, she is free from that law so she is no adulteress, though she be married to another man."
CALLER: In the same chapter in Romans Paul says, "For I am speaking to those who know the law." So if somebody has not been aware of the law, and then comes to know the Lord, in the first verse it says, "For I am speaking to those . . ."
HC: Are you saying that ignorance of the law does not make you guilty? If you drove . . . (just to take a case in modern jurisprudence, and our modern jurisprudence is very very close to the Bible in many places) . . . you're driving down the street and a police officer stops you, and he says, "Lady, do you realize that you just went through a school zone, where you had to slow down to twenty miles-per-hour and you went forty miles-per-hour?" You said, "Officer, I didn't see the sign. I didn't realize it." Do you think that's going to stop him from giving you a ticket?
CALLER: No, I do not.
HC: Of course it isn't. He's going to give you a ticket because you broke the law. If we break the law of God we still stand guilty before that law. Just because we didn't know we broke the law, that doesn't make any difference. We broke the law. And so if someone divorced in ignorance, and I feel just immeasurably compassionate and sorry for these dear folk who are in churches where pastors are encouraging them to divorce their husbands, because their husbands are philandering or doing this or doing that. And I could weep about that. What a terrible thing these wives are being told to do, because they're being told to violate God's rules. But just because they've been told wrongly, that doesn't make the sin any less. They have sinned against God when they divorce their husbands.
CALLER: I know. It just seems somewhat to me, though, that the striction that you lay down regarding divorce and remarriage, etc., is as though, when somebody divorced before they came to know the Lord, therefore according to you, they cannot remarry, and it's as though some type of a stain was left on them, and that the blood of Christ was not thoroughly cleansing them.
HC: No, you see, you can't go by our own thinking. And just realize, now just realize how grievous this is. Fifty years ago it would have been very very difficult in virtually any denomination or church to find a divorced person. And then the church began to let down the bars, and they decided that yes, in the case of fornication you can divorce. And then in the case of desertion you can divorce, in some churches. And then, oh yes, they were divorced before they were saved, so they can remarry. And so on and so on and so on.
Today we look at the marriage institution, and it is an absolutely shambles. It is screaming out to high heaven for retribution. What is happening? It's simply because this poor person and that poor person, the law of God was just too stringent. Now what everybody fails to realize (and I lay the blame right at the church, because they are the ones that encourage a departure from the law of God, and I'm talking about virtually every denomination, and what they have done is destroyed the family), they fail to realize that God has laid down these very careful laws, so that there would be protection for the family, so that the children would be protected, and the wife would be protected, and the husband would be protected.
But because they felt sorry for some dear soul because she's married to a beast of a husband, or whatever, or because of this or that, they slowly on changed the rules, so that today deacons marry and divorce, pastors marry and divorce. There is no restraint at all. It's just a horrible, horrible mess that has developed. And it all has taken place because man wanted their own sensual desires rather than to be faithful to God.
God did not lay down the rules to hurt us. God laid down the rules to protect us. The very fact that people fifty years ago, when the church did not permit divorce or remarriage after divorce, the only people who divorced were out there, way out on the edge, where they were doing all kinds of other sins, where women were first beginning to smoke cigarettes, like in the movie colonies, and so on. And everybody recognized it as flamboyant, flagrant sin. But a typical citizen of the U.S., even though he was unsaved, would never think about divorce.
But once the church began to break down the rules, that gave the signal to the unsaved of the world, "Oh, that's all right. We can divorce now, because the church also agrees that we can divorce." And each time the church made the rules more lax, then that gave the signal to the world, you can go further. And so now we not only have a marriage institution that's in a shambles, but we have sexual promiscuity that is making this world, particularly our U.S., look worse than Sodom and Gomorrah.
Now it is true that an individual who got caught in this, and now is divorced, cannot remarry. And I could weep for them that they got caught in this. But on the other side of the coin, if we really have become a child of God, and we read the rest of the Bible, we find that after all, we're only strangers and pilgrims here. We're only just passing through. This earth is not our home. We're looking for eternity, an eternity of bliss with the Lord Jesus Christ.
Secondly, to live a single life is not that bad in itself. God explains in I Corinthians 7 that there are some very signal advantages in living the single life. There are a lot of extra things that one can do for the Lord if they are not plagued by a husband or a wife. The Bible itself indicates that that creates its own difficulties when you have a husband or a wife.
At issue is, is my will sold out to God? And if God has said I can't marry, fine. I know an individual, for example, who's been divorced in the past and realizes that there can't be a marriage. And he is very very happy in the Lord, and being used of the Lord in a tremendous way. I know another individual who has been divorced and can't marry, and can't stand it. And so life becomes miserable. It all depends on whether our will is really sold out to the Lord. But we don't have to try to reconstruct the laws of God based on what makes sense, or what's rational, or whatever. We'd better be as obedient as we can to the Word of God.
CALLER: What do you think is God's greatest attribute? And why?
HC: What is God's greatest attribute? Oh, I don't think I could answer that, to say that God has one greatest attribute. God has revealed Himself as infinitely holy, as infinitely just, merciful, gracious, righteous. All of His attributes are just absolutely outstanding, far beyond our minds to cope with. And I think it would be impossible to say that one is greater than another.
CALLER: Okay, thank you very much for your time.