a former pastor used to ask (he's been dead for about 20 years now) couples who came to him to be married if they were willing to live single the rest of their lives if the marriage did not work out. That is how he understood the situation in
Matthew 19 applied. A person who was divorced for any other reason than unfaithfulness of the spouse could never be married again as long as that ex spouse was alive. He taught that a person like that became a eunuch for the kingdom's sake i.e. remained single as an act of obedience and devotion to the Lord.
To tell a person that he/she cannot preach because he/she has two wives seems pretty harsh. For one thing, in
Deut 24:1-4 a divorced person is spoken of as a "former husband" not as "another husband." Also, Jesus told the woman at the well in
John 4, "You have had (not you currently have) five husbands." Also, if a church member can divorce and remarry, why can't a minister?
I'm not trying to be argumentative here. I don't know what we can do about the plethora of divorces and remarriages. Folks in church have about the same rate of divorces and remarriages as folks outside the church from what I understand. Also, there is no standard way of dealing with the problem. The rules vary from church to church, section to section, organization to organization. A couple can just move to another assembly if they are not accepted in their current assembly. Also, district officials let some preachers get by with stuff that the won't let other preachers get by with. And pastors enforce the remarriage thing selectively also.
That's why I said earlier, I think the whole thing has just gone too far to correct. I think all we can do is accept whoever is "legally" married as far as the civil government is concerned and not try to have our own "church rules."
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