We are the woman at the well. We are Mary Magdalen. We are the woman caught in adultery.

And Jesus is our great Boaz, who doesn't care, who bears our sins, who pays our debts, who heals our diseases, who casts out our

demons, who drives away our accusers. Introduce. Introduction.

So one of the most challenging places the Church is called upon to exercise wisdom and judgment is in the matter of marriage, divorce, and remarriage.

The stakes really are high here,

and bone-headed laxity on the one hand

or severe legalisms on the other do no one any favors

and can only add to our current cultural babble.

If we wish to speak with authority into the pansexual orgy taking place in our world, we must

be resolute, wise, and cheerful on the issues surrounding

the biblical marriage covenant, and when, if ever, it may be dissolved, and when, if ever,

a previously divorced person may marry again.

In what follows, I'm expressing my own views in my own words, but they represent broadly the views of the sessions I have served.

First, the Bible teaches that ordinarily anyone who divorces his wife and marries another

commits adultery.

Full stop, Luke 16, verse 18.

The man who divorces his wife

breaks covenant and covers his garments with violence,

Malachai 2 14 through 16.

Jesus said it this way, and the Church must clearly and unapologetically

teach this as well. In a time when the world has lost sight of what a covenant is or

means the Church must labor to name the world rightly in this

...