HuntingMan
Well-Known Member
then how about you take some time and educate me ?
Or will this just be a hit and run thing to tell me Im wrong without PROVING your case ?
I ignore nothing.
that passage does not represent the WHOLE truth as you seem to believe
READERS SEE->Click->>> "Bound by Law" (Romans 7, 1 Cor 7:39)
What I know is that there is more to the story than you seem to think there is.
Im open for debate on the issue if youd care to give it a shot.
I'll keep my eye out in the P& E forum for your thread when youre ready
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The wife is bound by law until the husband is dead
(Romans 7:2-3, 1 Cor. 7:39)
By WmTipton
Assertions/Conclusions of this article
In this article we will show that the two passages in question speak of the ‘law of the husband’ and that even though these verses say that this law is until death, that is is not an unconditional law that cannot be ended before the death of the spouse. The law of the husband is intended to be until the death of one of the spouses, as God created it from the very first marriage, Adam and Eve, but it has never been without condition.
Supporting Evidence
In Romans Paul was speaking to "those who know the law" (Romans 7:1)
The law reigned over a man all his days. Paul uses this analogy of marriage, the wife being bound to her husband all his days, to represent that it was the same.
What Paul didn’t state, and those knowing the law would know this, is that there was provision in the law for a husband to put away his wife while he was alive . (Deut 24:1-4 )
This shows conclusively that Paul was not laying out the whole scope of rules on marriage in Romans 7 but was using one aspect of it to explain our relationship to the law and to the new covenant.
This idea is presented again in 1 Corinthians 7:39. The wife is bound to the husband until his death.
We must ask ourselves one question here. ‘What law’ bound this woman to her husband for life?
Was it the Mosaic law? How then could any wife have been bound at all to her husband from Eve until the Law ?
It is cemented that it is not the Mosiac law when we find no actual law making this commandment.
So, is Paul lying when he says she is ‘bound by law’ to him until he is dead? By no means.
We are left with one conclusion. That this ‘law’ is an unwritten law of marriage and had to be put into place in the garden with Adam and Eve. It was set into place as a parameter to be accepted in all marriages from thence forth.
Now, we ask ourselves, why, if this law is for life, did Moses ever permit it to end while the former spouse lived?
We ask ourselves about the wife in Exodus 21:7-11 who was permitted to walk out on her marriage if her husband denied her the basics of marriage, food, clothing and conjugal duty.
Why, if this law that existed from the beginning, was Moses so determined to undermine its supposed finality by ever allowing men or women to end it this side of death? Was Moses a rogue prophet who defied Gods will in the matter and even added divorce proceedings to His law? Not at all.
Moses understood Gods intent, that marriage is for life, but Moses also knew Gods heart and that God wanted mercy over sacrifice and he knew the hearts of evil, hardhearted men who would treat their wives horribly as they wished.
And so Moses understood that this ‘law’ was not unconditional.
If it were unconditional, then it was that way in the beginning and Moses would make himself a heretic by ever going against it.
So we see that when Paul gives his words in 1 Corinthians 7:39, that this is not the whole picture. This ‘law’ that Jesus presents as being ‘from the beginning’ was never meant to be unconditional. Jesus’ very words ‘except for’ in Matthew 19 show conclusively that even He does not see it as being without condition.
Paul was asked some questions by the Corinthians as is made apparent in the beginning of chapter 7;
These believers had asked him some weighty questions about marriage, fornication, virgins, etc, to which he responded with what is written in this chapter.
They clearly had pondered the right of the believer to put away an unbeliever, to which Paul said “no, if the unbeliever is pleased along with the believer, the do not put them away, you might be the catalyst in their salvation”.
Paul is showing these believers who think they can just walk away from marriage that no, they cannot because it is for life.
But Pauls words also show condition. What if this unbeliever isn’t ‘pleased’ along with the believer, but is abusive, hateful, adulterating...then what does Pauls condition show?
Please see this page for more on that issue
Aslo see THIS PAGE that shows conclusively that man CAN indeed 'put asunder' a marriage, thus the 'law of the husband" ("bound by law") is quite conditional.
When you’ve finished there, I believe you will see that there is condition in Pauls words. A condition that is perfectly harmonized with the heart of other scriptures such as Exodus 21 where the wife can leave over nonsupport, Jeremiah 3:8 where even God the Father issued a bill of divorce for harlotry, and Matthew 19 where Jesus shows that the same harlotry is just cause for ending this marriage.
Another point with Romans 7:1-4 or so is that at no time does this passage show that there was ever any divorce as permitted by Mosaic law. If we take it 'as written' it shows that this woman has only left her husband and gone to join with another. Without a divorce as presented by the law Paul speaks of, without the breaking of that marriage covenant, then of course she would be called an adulteress by joining herself to some man not her husband.
Pauls words in Romans 7 and 1 Corinthians 7 are true. They are just harmonized with the whole of Gods word. If we fail to harmonize correctly, then we end up with absurd teachings such as ones that say that we “cannot sin” because the literal reading of 1 John 3:9 would seem to show as much when taken alone and not properly harmonized with the whole.
Without ALL of the facts we can end up drawing very wrong conclusions from very CLEAR scripures, such as presented here:
The REST of the story...
We hope that this has been helpful in showing you the truth, dear reader, and how to harmonize the whole of Gods word so that you understand the whole truth.
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