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Christ’s poverty, our riches
Spiritually, we are very poor, by nature. We are poverty-stricken, spiritually bankrupt in ourselves. This...
God’s armor for us: The sword
The sword is necessary for the advance of God’s kingdom, first of all, because the...
Thanksgiving
Whenever we gather to give thanks, we should remember what scripture teaches about the activity, especially this time of year when even the ungodly claim to engage in it. Thanksgiving is essentially an act of worship performed only by faith. Although we thank each other and consider it courteous, with few exceptions thanksgiving in scripture is directed entirely to God. Giving thanks is a sacrifice of praise, a freewill offering of the heart to express our gratitude to God (Heb. 13:15; Lev. 22:29). Entering his gates with thanksgiving is simply part of our reasonable service and payment of our vows (Ps. 50:14, 100:4). And it should describe our entire life—we must be thankful in whatsoever we do in word or deed (Col. 3:15-17).
Rightly, we associate thanksgiving mainly with prayer. Thanksgiving begins with prayer (Neh. 11:17). Godly officebearers like Moses, David, and Daniel regularly gave thanks in prayer. Jesus customarily gave thanks in prayer before he broke bread to eat (John 6:23), and Paul ceased not to pray thanks (Eph. 1:16). We also are told to continue in prayer with thanksgiving (Col. 4:2; Phil. 4:6). For Christians, prayer is simply the chief part of thankfulness (LD 45). But an important, perhaps overlooked, means of thanksgiving is singing. Scripture refers to it frequently. David wrote songs and appointed Levites to give thanks morning and evening by singing with instruments (1 Chr. 16:4-7). Scripture says it is good to give thanks by singing (Ps. 92:1), and urges us to come before his presence with thanksgiving, making a joyful noise unto him with psalms, and with voices of thanksgiving to publish all his works (Ps. 95:2, 26:7).
It is of the Lord's mercies...
His Mercy Endureth Forever illustrated by Kathleen DeJong To him which led his people through the wilderness:...
The Grammatical Gymnastics of an Advocate for Divorce and Remarriage: Active Voice
We have seen that the use of the passive (or middle) voice in the Greek of Matthew 5:32, 19:9 and Mark 10:11, 12 (even if we accept the translation in the passive or middle, which we do not) does not justify remarriage after divorce (at most it increases the guilt of the man who divorces his wife, but it does not permit the divorced woman to remarry). Luke records the teaching of Jesus on divorce in a different context, and in the active voice.
Since in Luke 16:18 Christ uses the active voice (and moicheuoo instead of moichaoo), a different argument is required to justify remarriage after divorce. In Luke 16:18 our advocate for remarriage clings to the present tense of the participles and the verbs: “Everyone putting away…and marrying…commits adultery.” This supposedly refers to the Pharisees who “were continually divorcing and continually marrying…The actions of divorcing and marrying resulted in continual adultery, actively destroying the very institution of marriage.”
Perhaps, to capture the fullness of the present tense, we could render it thus, although it would be an over-translation: “Everyone (who keeps) putting away his wife and (who keeps) marrying another (keeps on) committing adultery and the one (who keeps) marrying her who has been put away from (her) husband (keeps on) committing adultery.”
Nevertheless, I do not see how an appeal to the present tense helps the case of our remarriage advocate. In Matthew 5:32a the same phrase appears: “Everyone (who keeps) putting away his wife…” The point of the present tense is that when remarriage occurs the relationship that results (the second or subsequent marriage) involves the remarried persons (both of them!) in continuous, ongoing adultery. This is true whether the remarrying person is a Pharisee on his second or seventeenth relationship or whether he or she is a modern Westerner (even a church member or officebearer) on his or her second or third marriage. If the original spouse still lives, any subsequent relationship (second, third, fourth marriage) is adultery.
The Grammatical Gymnastics of an Advocate for Divorce and Remarriage: Passive Voice
The first argument concerns the “voice” of the verbs in Matthew 5:32, 19:9, and Mark 10:11–12. In grammar the voice of a verb describes the relationship of the action of the verb to the subject of the verb. For example, “John eats an apple” is in the active voice, for John performs the activity of eating (John is the “subject” of the verb “to eat”). On the other hand, “The apple is eaten by John” is in the passive voice, for the subject of the verb (the apple) does not perform the activity of eating. Instead, the activity happens to the subject, for the apple is eaten.
Our advocate for remarriage writes,
The verbs in Matthew 5 translated “to commit adultery” are passive. The woman put away and the man who marries her are passive. The original husband is the only active agent in the adultery. He commits adultery against them… To say that the woman commits adultery is as false as can be.
If we attempted to translate Matthew 5:32 with passive verbs, it would read something like this: “Everyone putting away his wife [active]…makes her to have adultery committed against her [passive] and if anyone marries [active] the divorced woman he has adultery committed against him [passive].” This would make the remarried woman (32a) and the man who marries her (32b) the victims (rather than the culprits) of adultery. Our advocate for remarriage writes:
God is principally protecting the innocent. The wife who is put away for any reason other than fornication is wronged. God protects those. Adultery is committed against them wrongfully in that the dismissed woman and the man who marries her are made to appear as adulterers.
We should notice that in the mind of our remarriage advocate, the remarrying people (the divorced woman and her second husband) are not adulterers; they only appear so in the eyes of others. Only the divorced woman’s first husband actively commits adultery. If this were true, it would mean that the guilty party in the divorce is an adulterer and it would forbid him from remarrying. It would not forbid, so the argument goes, remarriage to the innocent parties. Sadly, few advocates for remarriage limit remarriage to the innocent party; they allow remarriage for the guilty and the innocent party.
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