E-mail:			christiandivorce.info says that the Bible contains a number of key insights which make its teaching on divorce easy to understand. Without these insights, in our culture, we can easily become confused about what the Bible is saying. These insights are gained from not limiting ourselves to one or two verses taken out of context, but by considering all the relevant scriptures, and the teachings they contain. These insights are listed below...   Artwork provided courtesy of artist, James Theopistos and BibleVerseArt.com If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us.

Insight 1: Marriage is "what God has joined together".

Insight 2: There are some combinations which God obviously hasn't joined together, because he forbade them in his law. These include incestuous marriages.

Insight 3: God clearly forbade believers to marry unbelievers, both in the Old Testament and the New Testament. Where a Christian chooses to marry a non-Christian, they are breaking God's law and so the marriage is not valid, and can legitimately end unless the unbeliever becomes a Christian.

Insight 4: This is different from a situation where two unbelievers marry and then one becomes a Christian. There, no commandment has been broken, and they are joined - but because those involved now have different masters, God has allowed the unbeliever to bring the marriage to an end.

Insight 5: The "law of the lord is perfect" and therefore, what it said about divorce could not be immoral. Jesus Christ restated the law which allowed divorce and did not change it. His comments to the Pharisees pointed out the consequences of not accurately following all the law's requirements for one type of divorce.

Insight 6: God expects different things from men and women in marriage. This went as far as allowing a man to take many wives but insisting that women could have only one husband. This means that biblical adultery is something different from how the word is used today, and that we cannot understand biblical divorce if we force the men's rules on to the women or vice versa.

Insight 7: What we call "divorce" is in fact two different things in the Bible:- a man "sending away" his wife and a wife "leaving" her husband. Each has its own set of rules and they refer to what happened, rather than to what anyone thought 'should' happen.

In addition to the list of scriptures, the following articles are available:-

• The biblical concept of "One Flesh" - showing that sex is not marriage and does not make it permanent, but that denial of sex can be biblical grounds for divorce.
• Marriage and the Master - how divorce is valid if someone becomes a Christian, and their marriage partner leaves them.
• What God has not joined together - showing that God's command that Christians should not marry non-Christians is in itself grounds for divorce in such marriages.
• Remarriage and the Bible - showing where the Bible allows divorcees to remarry.