Booklet Information

Divorce, Remarriage, & Apostolic Doctrine
© 2003 by Abundant Life Ministries Reformed Press
Workbook - 12 pages
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In the summer of 1993, I went through a devastating divorce. I had been married for ten years. Because neither my wife nor I had been involved in adultery, the convenient grounds for divorce were stated as: "irreconcilable differences." My wife and I had met while serving overseas in a two-year missions program. After we married, we taught and administrated in a Christian school and then went on to complete courses in missions and theology on a seminary level. We were also active in our local church. We were not neophytes in biblical understanding; we understood that divorce was not God's design for His people. Jesus poignantly pronounced: "Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, permitted you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so" (Matt. 19:8).

A friend suggested we visit with a local pastor, Wilson Phillips, whom he believed could help heal our relationship. We met with Pastor Phillips, and he explained that he would like to counsel with us separately with the primary purpose of healing our personal relationships with God. He believed that as we individually submitted our hearts to God, the Lord would draw us closer to Himself and to each other and bring the needed restoration. My wife chose not to receive this counseling, and within a very short time, we were divorced. Division always brings destruction. Our house was sold, goods were divided, and one life was ripped into two.

Pastor Phillips graciously invited me to stay with him and his wife until I could find alternate living arrangements. During this time, I took him up on his offer for counseling. God quickly began putting my broken life together again as I began renewing my mind to God's truth. I began to embrace what God said about my value to Him and the significance of His life at work in me. These were days of foundational building in my life.

Several months later, Pastor Phillips said to me, "I believe God wants you to be open to a new relationship." This was a surprise to me, for I had resigned myself to the fact that I could not marry again. Jesus told the Pharisees that if one divorces for any reason other than sexual immorality, he/she would be committing adultery by marrying another person (Matt. 19:9). I had even written a paper in seminary on what the Bible had to say about divorce and remarriage. However, I did promise that I would ask God for His direction on the matter. I had learned by that stage that I did not have all the answers!

The new covenant Scriptures found their inception in the verbal teachings and life experiences of Jesus. Under the inspiration of God's Holy Spirit, disciples, as eyewitnesses, chronicled these accounts in the form of the four Gospels. Christ's initial disciples and those subsequently appointed came to be known as Apostles (Gk: sent-ones}. It was these apostles who instructed the fledgling church both verbally and in written form in order to equip the saints "for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ" (Eph. 4:11).

It is recorded that the early church devoted themselves "to the apostles' doctrine and fellowship... " (Acts 2:42). The Greek word used here for "doctrine" is didache (did-akh-ay') from which we get our English transliteration "didactic." The doctrine that the apostles taught and wrote was far from a formal set of creeds and articles of faith; the word didache conveys: teaching and instruction in moral behavior with appli­cation to lifestyle. Thus, when Apostle Paul wrote to the believers in the churches that he had established, he was primarily addressing current issues rather than disseminating creeds and dogma. Among other things, the apostles dealt with such crises as: disunity, offenses, sexual immorality, divorce, remarriage, lawsuits, workplace conduct, false teaching, laziness, pride, persecution, etc. The Holy Spirit inspired Paul and the other apostolic writers to address these concerns with God's truth in light of the circumstances and events of the hour. They were not written in an irrelevant vacuum.