How NOT to forgive your spouse’s adultery and remarry

This article will show you how to hold yourself prisoner to your negative emotions by NOT forgiving your spouse’s adultery and remarrying. I have personally known some very bitter people who have remarried. On the outside they seem to have it all, another spouse who seems to love them, beautiful children, a good home and a good paying job, but on the inside they cling to unforgiveness and feelings of revenge towards the spouse who committed adultery. Looks and appearances can be deceiving.

The most efficient way to stay bitter and not forgive your spouse is to keep going to church and keep being misinformed. I have yet to meet a church going person who is not confused about the writing of the “exception clause”. Unfortunately, this massive confusion is keeping everyone in the dark. Married people are disappointed by the “exception clause”! When married people divorce their spouse for adultery, it means that they have not forgiven.

Jesus is NOT saying that it was okay for “one-flesh marriages” to divorce when one partner committed adultery. We have to put writing in proper perspective. Bible study involves many questions, such as, ‘Who was Jesus talking to?’, ‘Why was he saying it?’, ‘What were the circumstances?’, and so on.

Regarding the exception clause in Matthew, Jesus was speaking to the Jewish community about engaged couples who had not yet consummated the marriage in the “one flesh” of marriage. If he is not reading the King James Version of the Bible, he will be dead wrong about this scripture, as well as many others.

He knows them: “Because of the hardness of your hearts, Moses allowed you to put away your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.And I tell you, whoever divorces his wife, except for fornication, and marries another, commits adultery, and whoever marries the repudiated, commits adultery. (KJV Matthew 19:8-9)

The exception clause does not speak of two married people but of two fiance people. Betrothal was VERY important to the Jewish community during these times, and to some still is. Betrothal is something like the commitment of marriage, but with much more moral observance at its core, which is why; when a fiancé committed the sexual sin of “fornication” it was an exception for the other to get out of the betrothal.

There are two areas we need to keep in mind when translating the exception clause. The first is that “fornication” is having sexual relations between two unmarried people. If they had actually been married, Jesus would have used the term “adultery.” “unless it is for adultery”. And the second is that the betrothed couples were called husband and wife, even Mary and Joseph, being betrothed, were called husband and wife and had not yet consummated the marriage.

So when we take these two areas into account, it helps us to understand this scripture in its true context. Now you won’t have to be disappointed anymore. To summarize, Matthew 19:8-9 does not speak of “one flesh marriages” but of Jewish betrothed couples, who had not yet consummated their relationship in a “one flesh” marriage.

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