A man would look inside himself and seek to find what he did that he ought not to have done and what he left undone that he ought to have done that may have contributed to the destruction of his marriage....
I see it as a case by case basis...and...a very personal issue between those two people.
Beyond that, all we outsiders to their relationship could do would be to further muddy the waters of clarity in judgement, mercy and faith needed during such a trying time.
Such things are not always as cut and dried as you have proposed.
So no moral absolutes when it comes to divorce? ("Hey honey, let's just go our own separates ways, no big deal, have a good life.").
Beyond that, all we outsiders to their relationship could do would be to further muddy the waters of clarity in judgement, mercy and faith needed during such a trying time.
Such things are not always as cut and dried as you have proposed.
This thread stems from a conversation Doser and I had about his marriage.
Or I should say a non-marriage, as the marriage had broken up and they parted.
Even though Doser admitted that in they eyes of God he and his wife were no longer married, he insisted that he could still legitimately say he was married because our Civil Court said he was married.
In other words, even though the marriage was over, he did not give his wife a bill of divorce (as scripture demanded) because he wanted to keep the benefit to claim himself on her insurance policy.
Which he why he asked this question today in another thread:
It was a waste of my time talking with a man that purposely avoided God's rule of giving her a divorce so he could hold on to a Civil Court rule in order to personally gain from it for as long as he could.
That's the sordid background of this thread.
Sorry ya'll got hooked into his nonsense.
Hosea is a special book because I can think of so many problems with marrying, and staying married to Gomer.
We are supposed to be careful not to be unequally yoked. A lot of couples could save a lot of later heartache if premarital counseling were attended with both hearts and minds. A good pastor will ask the tough questions. Oddly, there haven't been a lot of good manuals that help pastors with this task. Perhaps one reason is because a couple 'in love' is really hard to get through to, and so we hope and pray for the best.
Hosea would have married 'despite' my premarital counseling. I'd have said "Unequally yoked. Paul says not do it. I won't be marrying you two today." But Hosea was told by God to marry her, and for a specific reason: to illustrate God's love with unfaithful Israel. Anybody that is against God's tenacity to hold on, probably hasn't read Hosea in a long time or perhaps never at all :noway: If I summarized the book: "God doesn't let go!" Or 2 Timothy 2:13
So, if Hosea was a unique book (and it was) does it have anything to tell us about our marriages anyway? I think so. A few teachers of the law came to Jesus and asked Him about divorce (Matthew 19; Mark 10):
Spoiler
Mat 19:3 And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, "Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?" Mat 19:4 He answered, "Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, Mat 19:5and said, 'Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'? Mat 19:6So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate." Mat 19:7 They said to him, "Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?" Mat 19:8 He said to them, "Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. Mat 19:9And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery." Mat 19:10 The disciples said to him, "If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry." Mat 19:11 But he said to them, "Not everyone can receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given. Mat 19:12For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let the one who is able to receive this receive it."
I've read and reread this passage a lot. It doesn't say "yes" but rather goes into more details concerning one's own behavior if a spouse is put away.
Mark actually turns this around a bit:
Spoiler
Mar 10:4 They said, "Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to send her away." Mar 10:5 And Jesus said to them, "Because of your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment. Mar 10:6But from the beginning of creation, 'God made them male and female.' Mar 10:7'Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, Mar 10:8and the two shall become one flesh.' So they are no longer two but one flesh. Mar 10:9What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate." Mar 10:10 And in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. Mar 10:11 And he said to them, "Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her, Mar 10:12and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery."
He says that is you divorce her, she will become an adulteress unless she is one already. And again, Jesus doesn't say 'yes, you can divorce her.'
Back to Hosea: As I've read it, and it is a picture of God and His bride, it quickly brings to my mind Ephesians 5 which is Paul's chapter concerning marriage:
Spoiler
Eph 5:21 submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. Eph 5:22 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. Eph 5:23 For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Eph 5:24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Eph 5:25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, Eph 5:26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, Eph 5:27 so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. Eph 5:28 In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. Eph 5:29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, Eph 5:30 because we are members of his body. Eph 5:31 "Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh." Eph 5:32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. Eph 5:33 However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.
Verse 32 always threw me. Hosea helped me to piece this together. For me, it is almost as if this chapter and Hosea are inseparable. God would not let Israel go. Christ will not let the church go. Should a man let his wife go?
I titled this "Do the loving thing." I don't have pat answers for divorce. 1) they are to be avoided if possible, especially as they related to Christ's love for His church that He would sacrifice for her, and not let her go. OTOH, there are times where the lives of women and kids are in danger and so I think 'do the most loving' and perhaps 'most necessary' thing is the best advice. Paul tells couples in 1 Corinthians that if a spouse is willing to stay, we should stay married, but that if an unbelieving spouse wishes to go, we should divorce. Jesus had a lot of compassion on divorcees and adulterers. Hosea spells out the love and Compassion of Christ. 2) Do the thing that expresses the most love, and that might mean choosing to protect a child, and/or oneself.
Doser, I've no way to help you with your decision post divorce, but this is about what I would have said to you prior. I'd have told you, in the end, to pray a lot, see what she wanted, and to do the most loving thing, to the best of your understanding and ability. In Christ, -Lon
I could give links to commentary that says it is not a parable.
So how about we just stick with what scripture says.
Hosea 1 KJV
(1) The word of the LORD that came unto Hosea, the son of Beeri, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash, king of Israel.
(2) The beginning of the word of the LORD by Hosea. And the LORD said to Hosea, Go, take unto thee a wife of whoredoms and children of whoredoms: for the land hath committed great whoredom, departing from the LORD.
(3) So he went and took Gomer the daughter of Diblaim; which conceived, and bare him a son.
Hosea was a real person with a real parentage.
So was Gomer.
God told this real Hosea what to do, and Hosea obeyed God.
The bible teaches that you are no longer bound.
God always desires reconciliation but it's not held against you if you leave and cleave to a new honey.
I think it's cool Tam has a family member (son) who posts here, now. I love posting with my husband, it's way more fun than being a member of a forum without someone you love to share the experience with.
A man would look inside himself and seek to find what he did that he ought not to have done and what he left undone that he ought to have done that may have contributed to the destruction of his marriage....
Never have I stated any justification for adultery. But I do feel that a marriage is often destroyed by degrees. Lack of meaningful communication being one of the most potent of destroyers.
I see it as a case by case basis...and...a very personal issue between those two people.
Beyond that, all we outsiders to their relationship could do would be to further muddy the waters of clarity in judgement, mercy and faith needed during such a trying time.
Such things are not always as cut and dried as you have proposed.
Likewise, for I do agree that someone on the receiving end of such a betrayal might do well to consider what role their own role may have played; whether intended or not and so on. Such reflection can only make one wiser.
I mean; it takes all sorts of things to either make, sustain, or break a relationship - and often, one's contribution at any point within that spectrum is not crystal clear. Just as often, one just happened to do the right thing by their partner's standard. Other times, an unintentional wrong.
One can bring up morality and all the rest (including this or that verse) all one wants. But in the end such things are not as cut and dried as they are too often perceived from the outside.
A man I once knew who had a clear testimony as to the gospel of our salvation ( in other words, 1 Cor. 15:1-4) told me of his having counciled his daughter towards helping her save her marriage some years back.
She ended up murdered by her husband, who then took his own life, in the presence of their two toddlers.
Both children ended up in trouble with Law Enforcement over the years.
One of them took his own life; the other had continued in and out of trouble.
To his regret, he had found how easy it is to conjecture "right" solutions in a vacuum.
Let's hope that res isn't banned for starting this thread in what someone thinks is the wrong forum.
God (Jesus) defined grounds for divorce, one of them being sexual immorality. If a parable about Israel's unfaithfulness to God (yet God continued to be faithful towards Israel) somehow trumps Matthew 19: 1-9, I guess I missed it.
No; he reminded THEM that THAT had been THEIR grounds for divorce due to THEIR hardness of heart - THEIR unwillingness to forgive in the grace that He forgave the woman CAUGHT in adultry.
There is no denying the bitter pill anyone in such a predicament would have to confront BUT this was a "weightier matters of the Law" issue.
I have to agree with ACW here. You err, not knowing the scriptures nor the power of God.
The Pharisees' question 'Can a man divorce... on any matter?' Arose from a debate between two Rabbis of Jesus's day. One of whom, translated the passage from Deuteronomy as 'immorality and a matter' whilst the other translated it as 'on the matter of immorality'. So it was an argument about the interpretation of the law.
Jesus came down on the side of the traditional Rabbi who wanted it kept as 'on a matter of immorality'. That is why Jesus cites the passage as 'except for the cause of immorality' as contrasted with the original question as put which was 'on any matter'.
Exceptions to the rule of marriage permanence were well stated in the OT law. Jesus isn't overruling these. He is upholding them. He just doesn't support the liberalising (Romanising) tendencies of his day allowing divorce on a whim.
As to Tambora's comment, Jesus says you cannot love God and Mammon. However, from a legal point of view, if you take out a whole of life insurance policy for your benefit on the life of another person because at the time you took it out you had a financial interest in their life (such as a spouse or business partner), and if at a later point you no longer have that financial interest, then the law states that you have the full right to continue that policy. It doesn't lapse when you get divorced or the interest ceases. So long as you keep paying the premiums, then the policy is valid. In this case, it would be irrelevant whether there was a divorce or not. I don't know though what Resodko had in mind specifically. It may not be a life insurance. If it was state benefits to married couples, then of course he would be committing fraud if he continued to claim. And that would be very immoral if he used his Christian faith as evidence that he was still married.
I don't know what the terms of such a policy are, but it sounds to me like you have described. Love of money. My guess is that it provides benefit to the well partner for support in the event the unwell partner is ill, as well as the basic benefit of medical protection to the unwell one. I would say this was a contract of indemnity and the benefit is lost if the interest ceases.
But I would add, that surely such joint policies can be taken out by non-married people? For example, homosexual couples or, more commonly, common-law husband and wife. I am almost certain that an insurance company would look at the substance of the relationship to determine insurable interest, not the legal technical status of it. So in this case it would not matter if he was divorced or not. It would be the fact of separation that caused the interest to cease. The divorce paper is a technicality from an insurer's perspective.
Again, love of money apparently, seeking to rely on a technicality to obtain a financial benefit.
If I summarized the book: "God doesn't let go!" Or 2 Timothy 2:13 
