The cross of the Cross and the Eternal Damnation of the Divorce-Remarried
“Marriage is honorable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will condemn” (Heb. 13:4).
“Whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery” (Mt. 5:32).
Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither…adulterers” (1 Cor. 6:9).
“There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death” (Prov. 14:12).
“His disciples say unto him, If the case of the man be so with his wife, it is not good to marry” (Mt.19:10).
“Contracting a new union, even if it is recognized by civil law, adds to the gravity of the rupture: the remarried spouse is then in a situation of public and permanent adultery: If a husband, separated from his wife, approaches another woman, he is an adulterer because he makes that woman commit adultery, and the woman who lives with him is an adulteress, because she has drawn another's husband to herself (Vatican Catechism).
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Do you have divorced-remarried people in your church,” I asked? “Yes,” the man said. “Are they committing adultery,” I asked? “God has forgiven them.” he cried, greatly agitated. “Of what,” I asked? “For divorcing.” But the Bible does not say a divorced person will be damned. A church could be full of divorced people, all in good standing. It excludes “adulterers” from the kingdom of God. There will not be one adulterer in heaven. You can be divorced and be in perfect standing in the Church. But you cannot be divorced-remarried without committing adultery. And that’s where the Bible slams the door. "Adulterers,” Hebrews says, “God will condemn.” A person can be divorced through no fault of their own, and in such circumstances has no need to repent. Likewise, the divorced-remarried are forgiven–if they repent: “I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish” (Lu. 13:3). “Did they repent,” I asked? “ I have to go,” he cried, and off he went. In other words, the divorce-remarried are “forgiven” (as he says), but he cannot tell you of what? Of divorce? But divorce is not adultery, and sometimes people are divorced through no fault of their own, and have no need to repent. Likewise, divorce-remarried-adultery is no different than any other sin. But he has “forgiven” divorce-remarried-adulterers in his church. “Did they repent,” I asked? “I have to go,” he cried. Before he raved on and on about his church (Apostolic Lutheran–they dress almost like the Amish). Why did he suddenly become afraid? Because, now he’s confronted with the hard fact that his church harbors unrepentant adulterers. He would not rave about his church if it was widely known that they harbor adulterers. He would not say, “Yes, we do have members who commit adultery, but God has forgiven them.” But now a simple question made him very afraid. It will make any Evangelical shake in their boots if you ask it of them. They will become very angry and point you to Calvin’s tricks and a thousand tapes to prove that what your question implies cannot be true. Because it condemns the entire Protestant-Evangelical Church of being infested by soul-damning sin: unrepentant adultery. This is what this boils down to. Go back (above) and read what Catholics worldwide have to accept in their Catechism. It is precisely what the Church believed until Luther and Calvin destroyed Jesus’ teaching on the 7th Commandment with their tricks, when they brought Herodias (The Protestant Evangelical Churches now have more notches on their bedpost than the Great Whore of Revelation, the Antichrist’s wife) back into the Church to sanitize the filthy habits of their protectors, the politicians. Protestantism has never charged Catholics with being unscriptural here. Instead, they argue that if Catholics understood grace they would not have come up with a new anti-remarriage law, as under grace all sins are equally forgivable (Luther). This was too shallow for Calvin, who argued that Catholics failed to see “the exceptions'' allowed by Scripture (there are now thousands). Baptists followed Calvin in his tricks in saying that the adultery in the Sermon of the Mount is in fact real adultery, that which is condemned by the 7th Commandment. They add to Calvin's tricks by making a show of “the exceptions'' (case by case, as they say), failing which, they pronounce the last marriage as “what’s done is done, repent somehow–all under grace.” Without exception they all “hate divorce,” and are against it. And no one is more against it than their preacher. “So you don’t have divorced-remarried couples in your church,” I ask. “Yes,” they say, “but what’s done is done. And they are now legally married, and you can’t now ask them to divorce again. Two wrongs don’t make a right.” Herod was legally married to Herodias (Mk. 6:17), tame compared to what is “legal” today. tHEy too “are married.” Then there are those who say that the remarried are indeed in a state of adultery. But you see them fellowship and break bread with them without ever raising the issue. Like Spurgeon, who preached that “war is a monstrous crime and mass murder” until he found it necessary to “counsel war,” so here, they are against divorce in season, and for divorce, out of season. Their religion is the windvan, they ride for any and all brands, as long as they are not "cast out of the synagogue." Thus they sow to the wind and reap the whirlwind in their children and grandchildren, who look on and draw the obvious conclusion: when it’s all said and done, you do what you need to do, and God will have to settle for that. After all, everybody does it and God cannot condemn everyone. God once destroyed the whole world, save eight. “Few will be saved.” Doesn’t that give the Devil the lion’s share? “Few will be saved.” The few made it to the End against all odds. God wins with “small things.” His grace is magnified in smallness. God always wins, and the winner gets to write the History books. When God is done settling His accounts, it will be the ultimate outcome based History. God stopped the clock for Joshua, and reversed it for Hezekiah. He could roll back every atom since the Creation, and make them all disappear without leaving a trace. The Bible is the record of pure subversion. Everything man does as man, God turns upside down. "For what is highly esteemed among men is an abomination in the sight of God." That, to the unprofitable servant, was unbearable, and he charged God with a malignant nature. The others trusted God and applied common sense. God gave them a talent--what to do? What would any man do? Get busy and improve on it. If the Creator of the Universe presents a little worm with a gift, the worm is not to put God under the microscope to see what "He's about." But you see here the contempt of the Pharisee, who spends his days splitting formulas, and convinces himself that his kind are none other than the eternally elect. On Judgement Day, God will make an example of them by pointing to the "cup-bearers," who had both the "appearance of Godliness, and the power thereof."
So how, you ask, do you repent of divorce-remarriage? What would you tell such a couple to do? What is the sin here, if any? That you made a mistake? But the marriage texts in the Bible are the divorce texts, which are the adultery texts. What happens to the adultery in such a marriage? When was it committed? When did it cease? How do you repent of it, without repenting of it? Because, Paul says, if a woman remarries “she shall be called an adulteress as long as her real husband is alive.” But Evangelical churches are full of such people. And these people professed to be saved when they divorced, and were not "unsaved heathens." Are these people covered under grace? Is this really adultery? After all, they remarried so as not to commit adultery. How can you put these people in the same category as Hugh Hefner? And how do you repent without ceasing to do what you are repenting of? “Sin boldly,” Luther told his followers, to show how great grace is. Why would divorce-remarriage be different from any other sin? Why would grace not cover the sin of divorce-remarriage? For Lutherans put the teaching of Jesus in a category of either “Jesus had not yet died,” an ideal to put up there to be reached for, or what life will be when “the lion lies down with the lamb.” But they cannot possibly be taken literally. To take them literally is to fall into the “strawy” rubbish of the Book of James, who contradicts and subverts everything Paul says, Luther thought. “Take up the cross” is of that nature. But once you understand the Cross, you realize that “taking up the cross” as literal is to fall back under the works of the Law, salvation by works. The Gospel cannot be made into another law, which is what you do if you make marriage into an unbearable burden. “It is better not to marry then,” the disciples said. They did not yet understand grace. And Jesus was still teaching doctrine that would become meaningless once He was resurrected. The rich young ruler had the misfortune of meeting Jesus in this “salvation by works” timeframe. Had he waited for the time of grace, he would not have had to walk away sorrowfully. Nicodemus could not possibly have understood what being “born again” means because grace was not yet revealed, and no one had the Holy Spirit yet. Luther believed that Jesus saves men “in'' their sins, because to speak of repentance before a man is saved is to require good works before a person has salvation, making good works a requirement for salvation. This is what he saw in James. Which means that “by their fruits ye shall know them” is contrary to saving grace as taught by Paul, and does not pertain to the Church Age. Once saved, you may or may not wish to have good works. But you can never speak of good works in the context of faith, grace, salvation, justification, or redemption. Luther would have told the Sodomites to look to the Cross and continue to “sin boldly” to prove the infinite power of grace. “Life among us,” he chortled, “is no better than among the papists. But we have the right doctrine.” Divorce-remarriage adultery? He would have said you understand nothing about grace. “Taking up the cross,’” he would say, is to try to earn salvation, exactly the opposite of what Paul taught. Thus Luther and Calvin leapfrogged over the confusion of the Sermon on the Mount and found in Paul what the life of Jesus meant. Because His teachings could never be reconciled with the real world. Hence the saying, “We don’t know if Christianity works, because it’s never been tried.” The hollow Cross.
You can see what this does to the Bible. The Beatitudes, the Light of the World, the Lord’s Prayer, the Parables all fall by the way as half-Jewish props. Try to live like that and you’ll end up like Abel. Luther and Calvin solved the problem of Abel by putting themselves under the protection of Caesar. The price was high: the pollution of their marriages and their children as cannon-fodder. But they escaped the fate of Jacob Hutter, one of the last victims of the Augustinian Inquisition.
The Calvins understood what this implied and sought to keep the Gospels by making them usable and pruning them of their extremism. The “adultery” in the Sermon on the Mount is real adultery and pertains to the Church age, but is easily dealt with by “the exceptions.” Calvin found one in the teaching of Jesus and three more in Paul. His followers took the bait and multiplied them like the flies on the stink of Beelzebub. Babylon, his Great Whore, like Herodias, would not feel unwelcome. Like Augustine’s doctrine of Just War, so here. They have yet to find one of their own wars “unjustified,” and have not felt compelled to separate or excommunicate one divorce-remarried member in 500 years. Lutherans don’t read their Bible because they could not possibly understand it literally, and the Calvins don’t read their Bibles because everything in it can be fatwa-ed into its opposite. They did no more than reinvent the Pharisee with his endless traditions. The first martyr in the New Testament was killed for preaching against the Temple whore, Herodias. Herod "had married her," and what's done is done, two wrongs don't make a right, and the Pharisees could have provided a thousand exceptions. Luther would have asked if she held the correct formula. "For," he would have smirked, "life among us is no better than among the heathen. The difference being, we have the correct formulas."