Till Death Do Us Part!
By Lerato Maswanganyi
“… don’t you know that the law applies only while a person is living? For example, when a woman marries, the law binds her to her husband as long as he is alive. But if he dies, the laws of marriage no longer apply to her. So while her husband is alive, she would be committing adultery if she married another man. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law and does not commit adultery when she remarries.”
Romans 7:1-3 NLT
The Word of God says in Genesis 2:24 that as a physical union, marriage is broken only by a physical cause, or death to be specific. That is; for as long as they live, the husband and wife must obey the authority set out under the law of marriage. Hence it is through death that the marriage union can be broken and the woman is set free.
What is astonishing is that when a man dies, the wife mourns for her husband in isolation from events in her life and often finds it hard to move. However, that is not the case when the husband is still alive and the union has been ended through a divorce or separation that took place …
“Since they are no longer two but one, let no one split apart what God has joined together.”
Matthew 19:6 NLT
We are able to accept the separation caused by the failure of a declared unity before witnesses during which we took a vow declaring: ‘till death do us part!’ but failed along the way because circumstances forced us to reach the dead end…
We should be honoring God’s Word by not splitting what He has joined together according to His ideal patterns.
The Lord’s teaching has only one base for divorce and that is sexual sin. There is no encouragement of a divorce regardless of the offense. He certainly implied that; forgiveness, healing and restoration of broken relationships are possible. Unfortunately it is hard for the above to be the Christian approach due to hardened hearts (Matthew 19:8-9), making it impossible to heal the wounds of deception.
Our hearts are not only hardened but also very ignorant and lack the understanding of what marriage is all about – Lord we REPENT!!
