Some in your church want to make a man who has been divorced and re-married a deacon, some do not.
How many times has this man been divorced? What was the cause of this divorce? Did the man leave the church? Does God not forgive after a divorce? Are you no longer saved because you are divorced? Is the man no longer able to be happy because his first marriage did not work?
So many questions come in to play on this topic. First, who decided that because you are divorced, you can no longer be a deacon of a church? I don’t find that anywhere in the Bible. People use the scripture in Matthew 19:8 as a way of saying God hates divorce, which I’m sure he does, but he does not hate the person just like sins. The scripture states: 8 He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. –ESV
What exactly is the scripture saying? In my opinion, it states that these particular men may have divorced their wives in anger, maybe they just decided they no longer loved their wives and couldn’t really figure out a reason. It does not go into any detail on the circumstances, only “hardness of hearts” which we don’t know the circumstances.
Another scripture used to say re-marriage is a sin; 1 Corithians 7:10-11: 10 To the married I give this charge (not I, but the Lord): the wife should not separate from her husband 11 (but if she does, she should remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband), and the husband should not divorce his wife. – ESV
Some would say this scripture is clean cut…no excuses. Well, let’s look at Ephesians 5:22-25: 22 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. 25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her,-ESV
Unfortunately in this scripture, the only thing people choose to look to is “Wives, submit to your husband. However, there’s a huge picture here. Yes, wives are to submit to their husbands, but also husbands are to love their wives as God loves the church. That’s a HUGE statement. Should a woman stay with a man that doesn’t love the church? Should a man stay with a woman that won’t be submissive although he is doing everything in his power to honor Ephesians 5:22-25?
We all have our own personal relationship with Christ. The
