This series on Marriage, Divorce and Remarriage can be found within the Difficult Subjects in Scripture branch.

I want to begin a series entitled “Difficult Questions from the Scriptures.”  The first in this series is a topic that is often just swept under the carpet. Yet, it is perhaps one of the most widespread issues needing to be addressed in the church. There is often no clear or definitive understanding of this within the doctrines and practices of most church denominations. It is the difficult subject of marriage, divorce, and remarriage. Even as I say it, you very well understand that there is almost no clear policy articulated by most churches on this issue. When there is some policy, it is grotesquely incomplete and leaves all manner of things unaccounted for. That is because, by and large, the doctrine in this area has simply been undeveloped. What policy there is suffers greatly from such influences as the relationship between the church and the state, and the whole matter of the state church, where there is a presumption that the policies of the church apply equally to citizens of a state. 

What I want to do at the outset of this is to frame the issue in Scripture, and we will leave no unattended portion of this. When I am done, I hope that this mysterious subject will be brought fully into the light so that persons who have been affected by it will have great clarity. Some may need to repent; others may understand that they were never bound up in the fashion in which the church would have had them bound up.  So, I would like to begin with the reference in the Scriptures that focuses on this intensely, Matthew 19:1-11.