Jesus, of course, made the same request three times in a row when He was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane (see Matt. 26:39-44). But keep in mind that He was not praying in faith according to God’s revealed will. In fact, as He prayed three times for any possible escape from the cross, He knew that His request was contrary to God’s will. That is why He three times submitted Himself to His Father’s will in the same prayer.

That same prayer of Jesus is often wrongly used as a model for all prayer, as some teach that we should always end every prayer with the words, “If it by Thy will,” or “Nevertheless not My will but Thy will be done,” following Jesus’ example.

Again, we must remember that Jesus was making a request that He knew was not God’s will. To follow His example when we are praying according to God’s will would be a mistake and display a lack of faith. To pray, for example, “Lord, I confess my sin to you and ask you to forgive me if it be Thy will,” would imply that it may not be God’s will to forgive my sin. We know, of course, that the Bible promises that God will forgive us when we confess our sins (see 1 John 1:9). Thus such a prayer would reveal one’s lack of faith in God’s revealed will.

Jesus didn’t end every prayer with the words, “Nevertheless not My will, but Thy will done.” There is only one example of Him praying in that manner, and it was when He was committing Himself to do His Father’s will, knowing the suffering He would endure because of it.

On the other hand, if we don’t know God’s will in a certain situation because He has not revealed it, then it is appropriate to end our prayer with the words, “If it be Thy will.” James wrote,

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow, we shall go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.” Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. Instead, you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we shall live and also do this or that.” But as it is, you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil (Jas. 4:13-16).

What should we do once we’ve made our requests based on a promise from God and are meeting all the conditions? We should continually thank God for the answer that we have believed we have received until it actually comes to pass. It is through faith and patience that we inherit the promises of God (Heb. 6:12). Satan will surely try to defeat us by sending doubts, and we must realize that our mind is the battleground. When thoughts of doubt attack our minds, we simply need to replace those thoughts with thoughts based on God’s promises and speak the Word of God in faith. As we do, Satan must flee (see Jas. 4:7; 1 Pet. 5:8-9).

One of the classic biblical examples of faith in action is the story of Peter walking on the water. Let’s read his story and see what we can learn from it.

And immediately [Jesus] made the disciples get into the boat, and go ahead of Him to the other side, while He sent the multitudes away. And after He had sent the multitudes away, He went up to the mountain by Himself to pray; and when it was evening, He was there alone. But the boat was already many stadia away from the land, battered by the waves; for the wind was contrary. And in the fourth watch of the night He came to them, walking on the sea. And when the disciples saw Him walking on the sea, they were frightened, saying, “It is a ghost!” And they cried out for fear. But immediately Jesus spoke to them, saying, “Take courage, it is I; do not be afraid.” And Peter answered Him and said, “Lord, if it is You, command me to come to You on the water.” And He said, “Come!” And Peter got out of the boat, and walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But seeing the wind, he became afraid, and beginning to sink, he cried out, saying, “Lord, save me!” And immediately Jesus stretched out His hand and took hold of him, and said to him, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?” And when they got into the boat, the wind stopped. And those who were in the boat worshiped Him, saying, “You are certainly God’s Son!” (Matt. 14:22-33).

It is significant that Jesus’ disciples had been caught in another violent storm in a boat on the Sea of Galilee sometime earlier (see Matt. 8:23-27). During that incident, Jesus had been with them, and after He calmed the storm by His rebuke, He then rebuked His disciples for their lack of faith. Before they had embarked on their journey He had told them that it was His will that they go to the other side of the lake (see Mark 4:35). When the storm arose, however, they were more persuaded by their circumstances, and at one point believed they were all going to die. Jesus expected them to at least not be afraid.

This time, however, Jesus sent them across the Sea of Galilee on their own. Surely He was led by the Spirit to do so, and surely God knew that a contrary wind would arise that night. Thus the Lord allowed them to face a small challenge to their faith. Because of those contrary winds, what would have normally taken just a few hours took all night. We have to credit the disciples for their endurance, but can’t help but wonder if any of them attempted to have faith for the winds to be calmed, something they had seen Jesus do just a few days earlier. Interestingly, Mark’s Gospel reports that when Jesus came walking to them on the water, “He intended to pass by them” (Mark 6:48). He was going to leave them to face their problem alone as He miraculously walked right by! This seems to indicate that they weren’t praying or looking to God. I wonder how many times the Miracle-Worker walks right by us as we strain at the oars of life against the winds of trouble.

Sometimes when we attempt to exercise faith in God, we fail to receive what we desire because we are not operating according to God’s Word. One of the most common mistakes occurs when we try to believe for something that God has not promised us.

For example, it is scriptural for married couples to trust God for children because God’s Word contains a promise upon which they can stand. I know of married couples who have been told by doctors that they could never bear children. They chose, however, to believe God instead, standing on the two promises listed below, and today they are parents of healthy children:

But you shall serve the Lord your God, and He will bless your bread and your water; and I will remove sickness from your midst. There shall be no one miscarrying or barren in your land; I will fulfill the number of your days (Ex. 23:25-26).

You shall be blessed above all peoples; there shall be no male or female barren among you or among your cattle (Deut. 7:14).

These promises should encourage childless couples! To attempt to believe specifically for a boy or a girl, however, is another story. In the Bible there are no specific promises that tell us we can pick the sex of our future children. We must stay within the boundaries of Scripture if our faith is to be effectual. We can only trust God for what He has promised us.

Let’s consider a promise from God’s Word and then determine what we can believe based on that promise:

For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God; and the dead in Christ will rise first (1 Thes. 4:16).

Based on this scripture, we can certainly trust that Jesus is going to return.

Could we pray, however, believing that Jesus will return tomorrow? No, because this scripture and no other scripture promises us that. In fact, Jesus said that no one knows the day or the hour of His return.

We could pray, of course, hoping that Jesus would return tomorrow, but we would not be guaranteed it would happen. When we pray in faith, we are certain that what we are praying for will happen because we have God’s promise on it.

Based on this same scripture, we can trust that the bodies of those believers who have died will be resurrected at the return of Jesus. But can we have faith that those of us who are alive at Christ’s return will receive resurrection bodies at the same moment as the “dead in Christ” do, or possibly even before they do? No, because this scripture promises us just the opposite: The “dead in Christ will rise first.” In fact, the very next verse goes on to say, “Then we who are alive shall be caught up together in the air” (1 Thes. 4:17). Thus, there is no possibility that the “dead in Christ” won’t be first to receive their resurrection bodies when Jesus returns. God’s Word promises just that.

If we are going to trust God for something, we must be certain that it is God’s will for us to receive what we desire. God’s will can only be safely determined by examining His promises recorded in the Bible.

Faith works the same way in the natural realm. It would be foolish for you to believe that I was going to visit your home tomorrow at noon unless I had first promised you I would be there then.

Faith, without a promise on which to stand, is not really faith at all—it is foolishness. So before you ask God for anything, first ask yourself the question—which scripture in the Bible promises me what I desire? Unless you have a promise, you have no foundation for your faith.

Many times Christians attempt to trust for one of God’s promises to come to pass in their lives without meeting all the conditions that accompany the promise. For example, I’ve heard Christians quote from Psalm 37 and say: “The Bible says that God will give me the desires of my heart. That’s what I’m believing for.”

However, the Bible doesn’t only say that God will give us the desires of our hearts. Here’s what it actually says:

Do not fret because of evildoers, be not envious toward wrong doers. For they will wither quickly like the grass, and fade like the green herb. Trust in the Lord, and do good; dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness. Delight yourself in the Lord; and He will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord, trust also in Him, and He will do it (Ps. 37:1-5).

Several conditions must be met if we are to believe that God will give us the desires of our heart. In fact, I counted at least eight conditions in the above promise. Unless we are meeting the conditions, we have no right to receive the blessing promised. Our faith has no foundation.

Christians also like to quote the promise found in Philippians 4:19: “My God shall supply all my needs according to His riches in glory.” However, are there conditions to that promise? Decidedly, yes.

If you examine the context of the promise found in Philippians 4:19, you’ll discover that it is not a promise given to all Christians. Rather, it is a promise given to those Christians who are givers themselves. Paul knew God would supply all the Philippians’ needs because they had just sent him an offering. Because they were seeking first God’s kingdom as Jesus commanded, God would supply all their needs, as Jesus promised (see Matt 6:33). Many of the promises in the Bible that relate to God’s supplying our material needs carry the condition that we first be givers ourselves.

We really have no right to trust God for our needs to be met if we’re not obeying His commands concerning our money. Under the old covenant, God told His people that they were cursed because they were withholding their tithes, but He promised to bless them if they would obediently give their tithes and offerings (see Mal. 3:8-12).

Many of the blessings promised us in the Bible are contingent upon our obedience to God. Therefore, before we endeavor to believe God for something, we should first ask ourselves: “Am I meeting all the conditions accompanying that promise?”

In the New Testament, Jesus stated a condition that applies to every time we pray and ask for something:

Have faith in God. Truly I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, “Be taken up and cast into the sea,” and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says is going to happen, it shall be granted him. Therefore I say to you, all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they shall be granted you (Mark 11:22-24, emphasis added).

The condition Jesus stated is to believe that we have received when we pray. Many Christians mistakenly try to exercise their faith by believing that they have received when they see the answer to their prayer. They believe that they are going to receive and not that they have received.

When we ask God for something that He has promised us, we should believe we receive the answer when we pray and begin thanking God for the answer right then. We must believe we have the answer before we see it and not after we see it. We should make our requests to God with thanksgiving, as Paul wrote:

Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God (Phil. 4:6).

As I previously stated, if we have faith in our hearts, naturally our words and our actions will correspond with what we believe. Jesus said, “The mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart” (Matt. 12:34).

Some Christians make the mistake of asking repeatedly for the same thing, which reveals they haven’t yet believed they have received. If we have believed that we have received when we pray, then there is no need to repeat the same request. To ask repeatedly for the same thing is to doubt that God heard us the first time we asked.

This is the key to harmonizing Jesus with Moses and Paul. Jesus was simply exposing the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. He was not laying down a law that forbids any remarriage. If He was, He was contradicting Moses and Paul, and creating a confusing mess for millions of divorced and millions of remarried people. If Jesus was laying down a law of remarriage, then what should we tell those who have been divorced and remarried before they heard about Jesus’ law? Shall we tell them that they are living in adulterous relationships, and, knowing that the Bible warns that no adulterers will inherit God’s kingdom (see 1 Cor. 6:9-10), instruct them to divorce again? But doesn’t God hate divorce?

Shall we tell them to cease having sex with their spouses until their former spouses die to thus avoid regularly committing adultery? But does not Paul forbid married couples from withholding sex from each other? And would not such a recommendation lead to sexual temptations and even foster desires for ex-spouses to die?

Shall we tell such people to divorce their current spouses and remarry their original spouses (as advocated by some), something that was forbidden under Mosaic Law in Deuteronomy 24:1-4?

And what about divorced people who have not been remarried? If they are only permitted to remarry if their former spouse committed some immorality, who will take it upon himself to determine if an immorality was actually committed? In order to remarry, will some people be required to prove that their former spouse was only guilty of lust, while others will need to bring forth witnesses to their former spouses’ affairs?

As I asked earlier, what about cases where a former spouse committed adultery due in part to being married to a person who withheld sex? Is it is fair that the person who withheld sex be permitted to remarry while the person who committed adultery not be permitted to be remarried?

What about the person who committed fornication prior to marriage? Is not his or her fornication an unfaithful act towards a future spouse? Would not that person’s sin be equivalent to adultery had he or his sexual partner been married at the time of their sin? Why then is that person permitted to marry?

What about two people who live together, unmarried, who then “break up.” Why are they permitted to marry someone else after their breakup, just because they weren’t officially married? How are they different than those who divorce and remarry?

What about the fact that “old things pass away” and “all things become new” when a person becomes a Christian (see 2 Cor. 5:17)? Does that really mean every sin committed except the sin of illegitimate divorce?

All of these and many more questions^[1] could be asked that are strong reasons to think that Jesus was not laying down a new law concerning remarriage. Certainly Jesus was intelligent enough to realize the ramifications of His new law of remarriage if that is what it was. That in itself is enough to tell us that He was only exposing the hypocrisy of the Pharisees—lustful, religious, hypocritical men who were divorcing their wives for “any cause” and remarrying.

Surely the reason Jesus said they were “committing adultery” rather than simply saying that what they were doing was wrong is because He wanted them to see that divorce for any cause and subsequent remarriage is really no different than adultery, something they claimed to never do. Are we to conclude that the only thing Jesus was concerned about was the sexual aspect of a remarriage, and that He would approve of remarriage as long as there was abstinence from sex? Obviously not. So let us not make Him say what He never meant.

^[1] For example, consider the comments of one divorced pastor who found himself cut off from the body of Christ when he remarried. He said, “It would have been better if I had murdered my wife than divorced her. If I had murdered her, I could have repented, received forgiveness, lawfully remarried, and continued in my ministry.”

Because Paul endorsed a gracious policy on remarriage, does that mean he was also soft on divorce? No, Paul was clearly opposed to divorce in general. Earlier in the same chapter of his first letter to the Corinthians, he laid down a law on divorce that harmonizes with God’s hatred of divorce:

But to the married I give instructions, not I, but the Lord, that the wife should not leave her husband (but if she does leave, let her remain unmarried, or else be reconciled to her husband), and that the husband should not send his wife away. But to the rest I say, not the Lord, that if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, let him not send her away. And a woman who has an unbelieving husband, and he consents to live with her, let her not send her husband away. For the unbelieving husband is sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified through her believing husband; for otherwise your children are unclean, but now they are holy. Yet if the unbelieving one leaves, let him leave; the brother or the sister is not under bondage in such cases, but God has called us to peace. For how do you know, O wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know, O husband, whether you will save your wife? Only, as the Lord has assigned to each one, as God has called each, in this manner let him walk. And thus I direct in all the churches (1 Cor. 7:10-17).

Note that Paul first addressed believers who are married to believers. They should not divorce, of course, and Paul states that this is not his instruction, but the Lord’s instruction. And that certainly agrees with everything we’ve considered in the Bible so far.

Here is where it gets interesting. Paul was obviously realistic enough to realize that even believers might divorce in rare cases. If that occurs, Paul stated that the person who divorced his spouse should remain unmarried or be reconciled to his or her spouse. (Although Paul gives these specific instructions to wives, I assume the same rules would apply to husbands.)

Again, what Paul writes does not surprise us. He first laid down God’s law regarding divorce, but is intelligent enough to know that God’s law might not always be obeyed. So when the sin of divorce occurs between two believers, he gives further instructions. The person who divorced his spouse should remain unmarried or be reconciled to his or her spouse. That would certainly be the best thing in the event of divorce between believers. As long as they both remain unmarried, there is hope of their reconciliation, and that would be best. Of course, if one of two remarries, that ends the hope and possibility of reconciliation. (And obviously, if they had committed an unpardonable sin by divorce, there would be little reason for Paul to tell them to remain unmarried or be reconciled.)

Do you suppose that Paul was intelligent enough to know that his second directive to divorced believers might not always be obeyed? I would think so. Perhaps he gave no further directive to divorced believers because he expected that true believers would follow his first directive to not divorce, and thus only for extremely rare cases was his second directive even needed. Surely true followers of Christ, if they had marital problems, would do all they could to preserve their marriage. And surely a believer who, after every attempt to preserve the marriage, felt he or she had no alternative but to divorce, surely that believer out of personal shame and desire to honor Christ would not consider remarrying anyone else, and would still hope for reconciliation. It seems to me that the real problem in the modern Church regarding divorce is that there is such a high percentage of false believers, people who have never truly believed in and thus submitted to the Lord Jesus.

It is quite clear from what Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 7 that God has higher expectations of believers, people who are indwelled by the Holy Spirit, than He does of unbelievers. Paul wrote, as we read, that believers should not divorce their unbelieving spouses as long as their unbelieving spouses are willing to live with them. Once again, this directive does not surprise us, as it lines up perfectly with everything else we’ve read in Scripture on the subject. God is against divorce. Paul goes on to say, however, that if the unbelieving one wants to divorce, the believer is to allow it. Paul knows that the unbeliever is not submitted to God, and so he doesn’t expect the unbeliever to act like a believer. May I add that when a non-believer consents to live with a believer, it would be a good indication that either the non-believer is potentially open to the gospel, or the believer is backslidden or a phony Christian.

Now, who would say that the believer who has been divorced by an unbeliever is not free to remarry? Paul never says such a thing, as he did in the case of two believers who were divorced . We would have to wonder why God would be opposed to the remarriage of the believer who had been divorced by an unbeliever. What purpose would that serve? Yet such an allowance apparently stands in opposition to what Jesus said about remarriage: “Whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery” (Matt. 5:32). This, again, makes me suspect that we have misinterpreted what Jesus was trying to communicate.

Jesus, Moses and Paul clearly all agree that divorce is an indication of sin on the part of one or both parties of the divorce. All are consistently against divorce in general. But here is our problem: How do we reconcile what Moses and Paul said about remarriage with what Jesus said about remarriage? Certainly we should expect that they should harmonize since all were inspired by God to say what they said.

Let’s examine exactly what Jesus did say and consider to whom He was speaking. Twice in Matthew’s Gospel we find Jesus addressing the subject of divorce and remarriage, once during the Sermon on the Mount and once when He was questioned by some Pharisees. Let’s begin with Jesus’ conversation with those Pharisees:

Some Pharisees came to Jesus, testing Him and asking, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason at all?” And He answered and said, “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.” They said to Him, “Why then did Moses command to give her a certificate of divorce and send her away?” He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way. And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery” (Matt. 19:3-9).

During this conversation with Jesus, the Pharisees referred to a portion of the Mosaic Law that I mentioned earlier, Deuteronomy 24:1-4. There it was written, “When a man takes a wife and marries her, and it happens that she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out from his house…” (Deut. 24:1, emphasis added).

In Jesus’ day, there were two schools of thought concerning what constituted an “indecency.” About twenty years before, a rabbi named Hillel taught that an indecency was an irreconcilable difference. By the time Jesus had His debate with the Pharisees, the “Hillel” interpretation had become even more liberal, allowing divorce for just about “any cause,” as the Pharisees’ question to Jesus indicates. One could divorce his wife if she burned his dinner, put too much salt on his food, spun around in public so her knees were exposed, took her hair down, spoke to another man, said something unkind about her mother-in-law, or was infertile. A man could even divorce his wife if he saw someone who was more attractive, thus making his wife “indecent.”

Another famous rabbi, Shammai, who lived prior to Hillel, taught that an “indecency” was only something very immoral, such as adultery. As you might suspect, among the Pharisees of Jesus’ day, Hillel’s liberal interpretation was much more popular than Shammai’s. The Pharisees lived and taught that divorce was lawful for any cause, and so divorce was rampant. And the Pharisees, in their typical pharisaical way, emphasized the importance of giving your wife a divorce certificate when you divorced her, so as “not to break the Law of Moses.”

We should keep in mind that the crowd to whom Jesus spoke during His Sermon on the Mount were also people who had spent their lives under the hypocritical influence of the Pharisees, the rulers and teachers in Israel. As we learned in our earlier study of the Sermon on the Mount, it is obvious that much of what Jesus said was nothing less than a correction of the false teaching of the Pharisees. Jesus even told the crowd that they would not get into heaven unless their righteousness exceeded that of the scribes and Pharisees (see Matt. 5:20), which was another way of saying that the scribes and Pharisees were going to hell. At the end of His sermon, the crowds were amazed, in part, because Jesus was teaching “not as their scribes” (Matt. 7:29).

Early in His sermon, Jesus exposed the hypocrisy of those who claim to never have committed adultery, but who lust or who divorce and remarry. He expanded the meaning of adultery beyond the physical sinful act between two people who are married. And what He said would have been obvious to any honest person who would have just given it a little thought. But keep in mind that, until Jesus’ sermon, most of the people in the crowd would have thought that it was lawful to divorce for “any cause.” Jesus wanted His followers and everyone else to know that God’s intention from the beginning was a much higher standard.

You have heard that it was said, “You shall not commit adultery”; but I say to you, that everyone who looks on a woman to lust for her has committed adultery with her already in his heart. And if your right eye makes you stumble, tear it out, and throw it from you; for it is better for you that one of the parts of your body perish, than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand makes you stumble, cut it off, and throw it from you; for it is better for you that one of the parts of your body perish, than for your whole body to go into hell. And it was said, ‘Whoever sends his wife away, let him give her a certificate of divorce’; but I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except for the cause of unchastity, makes her commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery (Matt. 5:27-32).

First, as I pointed out earlier, notice that Jesus’ words about divorce and remarriage not only directly follow His words about lust, linking them to that degree, but that Jesus equates both as being adultery, linking them even more so. So we see the common thread that runs through this entire portion of Scripture. Jesus was helping His followers understand what obeying the seventh commandment actual entails. It means not committing lust and not divorcing and remarrying.

Everyone in His Jewish audience had heard the seventh commandment read in the synagogue (no one owned personal Bibles), and they had heard the exposition as well as observed its application in the lives of their teachers, the scribes and Pharisees. Jesus next said, “but I say to you,” but He wasn’t about to add new laws. He was only going to reveal God’s original intent.

First, lust was clearly forbidden by the tenth commandment, and even without the tenth commandment, anyone who thought about it would have realized that it is wrong to long with desire to do what God condemns.

Second, from the earliest chapters of Genesis, God made it clear that marriage was to be a lifelong commitment. Moreover, anyone who thought about it would have concluded that divorce and remarriage is much like adultery, especially when one divorces with the intent to remarry.

But again in this sermon, it is clear that Jesus was only helping people to see the truth about lust and the truth about divorce for any cause and remarriage. He was not laying down a new law of remarriage that had heretofore not been “on the books.”

It is interesting that very few in the church have ever taken Jesus’ words about plucking out their eyes or cutting off their hands literally, as such ideas run so counter to the rest of Scripture, and they clearly serve only to make a strong point about avoiding sexual temptation. Yet so many in the church attempt to interpret quite literally Jesus’ words about the remarried person committing adultery, even when such a literal interpretation contradicts so much of the rest of Scripture. Jesus’ goal was to get His listeners to face up to the truth, with the hope that there would be much fewer divorces. If His followers would take to heart what He said about lust, there would be no immorality among them. If there was no immorality, there would be no legitimate grounds for divorce, and there would be no divorce, just as God had intended from the beginning.

Before we tackle the problem of harmonizing Jesus’ words on remarriage with Moses’, we need to realize there is one more biblical author who agrees with Moses, and his name is Paul the apostle. Paul clearly wrote that remarriage for those divorced is not a sin, agreeing with what the Old Testament says:

Now concerning virgins I have no command of the Lord, but I give an opinion as one who by the mercy of the Lord is trustworthy. I think then that this is good in view of the present distress, that it is good for a man to remain as he is. Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be released. Are you released from a wife? Do not seek a wife. But if you should marry, you have not sinned ; and if a virgin should marry, she has not sinned. Yet such will have trouble in this life, and I am trying to spare you (1 Cor. 7:25-28, emphasis added).

There is no doubt that Paul was addressing divorced people in this passage. He advised the married, the never-married, and the divorced to remain in their current state because of the persecution that Christians were suffering at that time. However, Paul clearly stated that divorced people and virgins would not sin if they married.

Note that Paul didn’t qualify the lawfulness of remarriage of divorced persons. He didn’t say remarriage was only permitted if the divorced person shared no blame in his previous divorce. (And what person is qualified to judge such a thing as that other than God?) He didn’t say remarriage was only permitted for those who had been divorced prior to their salvation. No, he simply stated that remarriage is not a sin for divorced persons.