Divorce and Remar­riage: A Bib­lic­al Perspective

In this art­icle we want to exam­ine what the Bible says con­cern­ing the ques­tion of divorce and remar­riage. Jesus’ words recor­ded in Matthew’s gos­pel, usu­ally trans­lated as “except on the grounds of sexu­al immor­al­ity”, do not con­tra­dict the clear rejec­tion of divorce in oth­er texts of the New Test­a­ment. Although the Old Test­a­ment law per­mit­ted divorce because of peoples’ sin­ful­ness, it has nev­er been God’s will. Jesus showed us unmis­tak­ably what God’s will is in this mat­ter. By his work of sal­va­tion he changes our hearts and enables us to remain faith­ful in accord­ance with God’s will, even if it may be neces­sary under cer­tain cir­cum­stances to live sep­ar­ated from one’s unbe­liev­ing spouse. In clos­ing we will add some thoughts that should provide guid­ance for those seek­ing solu­tions to today’s often com­plex and tangled life situations.

1 Is Divorce the Solution?

Lov­ing someone means seek­ing the best for that per­son regard­less of any dif­fi­culties that it might involve. Mar­ried people are also con­stantly faced with the chal­lenge to deny them­selves. In the very situ­ation when prob­lems arise it can be tempt­ing to choose the easi­er way and get divorced or to be remar­ried after hav­ing been left by one’s spouse. Yet mar­riage is an irre­vers­ible step, even if it was a step taken in dis­reg­ard of one’s own conscience.

There­fore we want to encour­age any­one con­sid­er­ing divorce or remar­riage to be cour­ageous enough to open them­selves to receive the words of Jesus. He not only shows us the right way, but he helps us to put his words into prac­tice, even if that is hard for us to imagine.

The fol­low­ing Bible pas­sages on this top­ic show that Jesus expects uncon­di­tion­al, life-long faith­ful­ness to one and only one part­ner. The Bible pas­sages are fol­lowed by more detailed explanations.

2 Clear Words from the Bible Con­cern­ing Divorce and Remarriage

Sev­er­al pas­sages in the New Test­a­ment show us that mono­gamy is God’s will, i.e. to be mar­ried to one spouse and to remain faith­ful until the mar­riage part­ner dies:

Every­one who divorces his wife and mar­ries anoth­er com­mits adul­tery, and he who mar­ries a woman divorced from her hus­band com­mits adul­tery. (Luke 16:18 ESV)

And Phar­isees came up and in order to test him asked, “Is it law­ful for a man to divorce his wife?” He answered them, “What did Moses com­mand you?” They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a cer­ti­fic­ate of divorce and to send her away.” And Jesus said to them, “Because of your hard­ness of heart he wrote you this com­mand­ment. But from the begin­ning of cre­ation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ‘There­fore a man shall leave his fath­er and moth­er and hold fast 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 not man separate.”

And in the house the dis­ciples asked him again about this mat­ter. And he said to them, “Who­ever divorces his wife and mar­ries anoth­er com­mits adul­tery against her, and if she divorces her hus­band and mar­ries anoth­er, she com­mits adul­tery.” (Mark 10:2–12 ESV)

To the mar­ried I give this charge (not I, but the Lord): the wife should not sep­ar­ate from her hus­band (but if she does, she should remain unmar­ried or else be recon­ciled to her hus­band), and the hus­band should not divorce his wife. (1 Cor­inthi­ans 7:10–11 ESV)

For a mar­ried woman is bound by law to her hus­band while he lives, but if her hus­band dies she is released from the law of mar­riage. Accord­ingly, she will be called an adul­teress if she lives with anoth­er man while her hus­band is alive. But if her hus­band dies, she is free from that law, and if she mar­ries anoth­er man she is not an adul­teress. (Romans 7:2–3 ESV)

God rejects divorce clearly, even in the Old Testament :

This is anoth­er thing you do: you cov­er the altar of the LORD with tears, with weep­ing and with groan­ing, because He no longer regards the offer­ing or accepts it with favour from your hand. Yet you say, “For what reas­on?” Because the LORD has been a wit­ness between you and the wife of your youth, against whom you have dealt treach­er­ously, though she is your com­pan­ion and your wife by cov­en­ant. But not one has done so who has a rem­nant of the Spir­it. And what did that one do while he was seek­ing a godly off­spring? Take heed then to your spir­it, and let no one deal treach­er­ously against the wife of your youth. “For I hate divorce,” says the LORD, the God of Israel, “and him who cov­ers his gar­ment with wrong,” says the LORD of hosts. “So take heed to your spir­it, that you do not deal treach­er­ously.” (Mala­chi 2:13–16, NASB)

3 Except for Sexu­al Immorality?

There are two pas­sages in the Gos­pel of Mat­thew (Mat­thew 5:31–32 and 19:1–12) where an excep­tion seems to be pos­sible in the case of sexu­al immor­al­ity. Why don’t we find this import­ant excep­tion in oth­er Gos­pels and let­ters of the New Test­a­ment? The Gos­pel of Mat­thew was writ­ten for Jew­ish read­ers.  In the fol­low­ing sec­tion we will show that the Jews under­stood these words dif­fer­ently than most people nowadays. Unfor­tu­nately today’s under­stand­ing has also influ­enced the mod­ern Bible trans­la­tions, so we will have to explain some ques­tions of trans­la­tion. We will, how­ever, try to keep this as brief and con­cise as possible.

3.1 Mat­thew 5:32

The ESV trans­lates Mt 5:31–32 as follows:

It was also said, ‘Who­ever divorces his wife, let him give her a cer­ti­fic­ate of divorce.’ But I say to you that every­one who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexu­al immor­al­ity, makes her com­mit adul­tery, and who­ever mar­ries a divorced woman com­mits adultery.

The Greek word “parek­tos” trans­lated here as “except” lit­er­ally expresses that some­thing is out­side, not men­tioned, or excluded (e.g. in 2 Cor­inthi­ans 11:28 it is trans­lated either with “extern­al” things or “unmen­tioned” things. Here it does not refer to an exception.)

A trans­la­tion keep­ing as close as pos­sible to the text could be rendered:

It was also said, ‘Who­ever divorces his wife, let him give her a cer­ti­fic­ate of divorce.’ But I say to you that every­one who divorces his wife (the ground of sexu­al immor­al­ity is excluded), causes adul­tery to be com­mit­ted con­cern­ing her^[1], and who­ever mar­ries a divorced woman com­mits adul­tery.^[2]

Sexu­al immor­al­ity was gen­er­ally accep­ted as a reas­on for divorce

In the whole con­text of Mat­thew 5 Jesus refers to the Jew­ish law and the Jew­ish tra­di­tions. In verses 31–32 he refers spe­cific­ally to a pas­sage in Deu­ter­o­nomy 24:1:

When a man takes a wife and mar­ries her, if then she finds no favour 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 of his house, and she departs out of his house, … (Deu­ter­o­nomy 24:1 ESV)

The expres­sion “some inde­cency” was under­stood by the rab­bin­ic schools of that time to mean “sexu­al immor­al­ity”.  For many Jews this was the only legit­im­ate reas­on for divorce.^[3]

Jesus brings some­thing new

Jesus said, “It was also said, … But I say to you”.  It is obvi­ous that Jesus was teach­ing some­thing new—something the Jews had nev­er heard before.  In the con­text of the Ser­mon on the Mount (Mat­thew 5–7) Jesus intens­i­fies God’s com­mands in regard to pur­ity and love. In Mat­thew 5:21–48 Jesus com­men­ted on the com­mand­ments of the Old Test­a­ment with the words, “But I say to you …” and poin­ted out what God’s ori­gin­ally clear will was con­cern­ing the top­ics he addressed. For instance in verses 21–22 he says:

You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and who­ever murders will be liable to judg­ment.’ But I say to you that every­one who is angry with his broth­er will be liable to judg­ment;  …  (ESV)

If Jesus had only wanted to express in Mat­thew 5:32 that he agrees with the gen­er­ally accep­ted reas­on for divorce, his state­ments about divorce would not fit this con­text. He would not be bring­ing any­thing new (the “new” things brought by Jesus are, how­ever, the “old” etern­al will of God).

The mes­sage of Jesus is that the gen­er­ally accep­ted reas­on among the Jews for divorce is no longer val­id.  Jesus excludes this reas­on with the words “the ground of sexu­al immor­al­ity is excluded”.

This does not mean, how­ever, that a per­son is obliged to remain togeth­er with his or her spouse in all cir­cum­stances, even if the spouse’s beha­viour is unac­cept­able. It may indeed be neces­sary to sep­ar­ate from one’s part­ner due to their bad mor­al con­duct. Under cer­tain cir­cum­stances, this sep­ar­a­tion can even take the leg­al form of a divorce. Even then, though, the bond of mar­riage still remains intact and with it, the oblig­a­tion to mar­it­al faith­ful­ness. What this means is that no fur­ther mar­riage is pos­sible. A divorce in which the mar­riage bond is dis­solved and both part­ners are free to marry again was rejec­ted by Jesus.

3.2 Mat­thew 19:9

With Mat­thew 19:9 the situ­ation is very sim­il­ar to Mat­thew 5. Darby trans­lated close to the Greek text:

And the Phar­isees came to him tempt­ing him, and say­ing, Is it law­ful for a man to put away his wife for every cause? But he answer­ing said, Have ye not read that he who made [them], from the begin­ning made them male and female, and said, On account of this a man shall leave fath­er and moth­er, and shall be united to his wife, and the two shall be one flesh? so that they are no longer two, but one flesh. What there­fore God has joined togeth­er, let not man sep­ar­ate. They say to him, Why then did Moses com­mand to give a let­ter of divorce and to send [her] away? He says to them, Moses, in view of your hard­hearted­ness, allowed you to put away your wives; but from the begin­ning it was not thus. But I say unto you, that who­so­ever shall put away his wife, not for for­nic­a­tion, and shall marry anoth­er, com­mits adul­tery; [and he who mar­ries one put away com­mits adul­tery.] His dis­ciples say to him, If the case of the man be so with his wife, it is not good to marry. (Mat­thew 19:3–10)

There are two words in the Greek lan­guage which can be trans­lated into Eng­lish as “not”. One is the Greek word “me” found in the phrase “not for for­nic­a­tion” which is used in the con­text of pro­hib­i­tions. There a sev­er­al examples in the New Test­a­ment where the word “me” is used without a verb that explains it, and where the con­tent of the pro­hib­i­tion has to be derived from the con­text^[4]. So Jesus is say­ing that some­thing in par­tic­u­lar should not be done in the case of for­nic­a­tion. From the con­text we can see that what should not be done is to divorce. Thus the mean­ing is: “not even for for­nic­a­tion (sexu­al immorality)”.

Mark 10:12 shows that in the reverse case, that is, when a wife sends her hus­band away, the same is true.

Mat­thew 19:1–12 and Mark 10:1–12 are par­al­lel in con­tent and speak about the same situ­ation. In reply to the Phar­isees’ ques­tion, wheth­er it is law­ful to divorce one’s wife for any cause^[5] Jesus refers to the order of cre­ation in which man and woman are one flesh and what God has joined togeth­er, man must not sep­ar­ate. The giv­ing of a cer­ti­fic­ate of divorce, com­manded by Moses, was allowed only because of the hard­ness of their hearts. God’s ori­gin­al will was dif­fer­ent. Jesus “cor­rects” the law at this point. The indis­sol­uble char­ac­ter of the mar­riage cov­en­ant is foun­ded in the order of creation.

The reac­tion of the dis­ciples in Mat­thew 19:10^[6] also shows us that what Jesus was teach­ing on this mat­ter was some­thing com­pletely new for them. Accord­ing to Jew­ish law, it was law­ful to divorce and remarry, for instance when the wife had sinned in sexu­al immor­al­ity (accord­ing to Rabbi Shammai). The dis­ciples under­stood from the words of Jesus, how­ever, that accord­ing to God’s will the bond of mat­ri­mony can­not be dis­solved, not even if a man’s wife com­mits an act of sexu­al immorality—and then they ask them­selves wheth­er it is advis­able to marry at all. This reac­tion also shows that Jesus brought some­thing new. If Jesus had taught that a hus­band was per­mit­ted to remarry after a divorce which was due to adul­tery, his teach­ing would have been the same as that of many oth­er con­tem­por­ary Jews and would not have been so aston­ish­ing for his disciples.

3.3 Con­cern­ing Both Passages

In both Mat­thew 5:32 and 19:9 we find that the Mosa­ic law of the cer­ti­fic­ate of divorce (Deu­ter­o­nomy 24:1) is in the back­ground of the words of Jesus. In both pas­sages Jesus expressed that it is not accord­ing to God’s will to regard sexu­al immor­al­ity as a reas­on for divorce. As the ques­tion of the inter­pret­a­tion of Deu­ter­o­nomy 24:1 was import­ant espe­cially for Jew­ish Chris­ti­ans, it should not sur­prise us that these two verses in which Jesus said that not even sexu­al immor­al­ity can be a reas­on for divorce (with the option of remar­riage) are only found in Mat­thew^[7]. Mark and Luke, whose audi­ence was mainly non-Jewish, did not want their read­ers to deal with the ques­tion of how to inter­pret the reas­on for divorce men­tioned in Deu­ter­o­nomy 24:1 and thus omit­ted these words of Jesus which were dir­ec­ted to Jews.

Mat­thew 5:32 and 19:9 are in agree­ment with all the oth­er words of the New Test­a­ment and do not speak about a pos­sible reas­on for divorce but just the opposite—they explain that the reas­ons the Jews held on to were not valid.

4 Why Was Divorce Per­mit­ted in the Old Test­a­ment, But Not Any More Accord­ing to the Words of Jesus?

Divorce was nev­er God’s will. Moses per­mit­ted divorce because of the dis­obedi­ence of the nation. It was an unfor­tu­nate fact that in the Jew­ish nation only very few really strove for obed­i­ence. The major­ity were often dis­obedi­ent. That is why God per­mit­ted divorce and remar­riage in the Old Test­a­ment, because oth­er­wise some people would have had to suf­fer greatly due to the sins of oth­ers. A woman who had been sent away was prac­tic­ally forced to remarry because she could not provide for her­self, and without chil­dren she had no pro­spect of sup­port in her old age. That is why Moses com­manded a hus­band who sent his wife away to give her a cer­ti­fic­ate of divorce. This cer­ti­fic­ate was an import­ant means of pro­tec­tion for her because it was proof that she was neither a pros­ti­tute nor had she had any sexu­al rela­tions out­side of mar­riage (a crime pun­ish­able by death). It showed that she had been sent away and was law­fully per­mit­ted to marry again.

To live togeth­er in obed­i­ence, love and deep unity was nev­er attain­able for the whole nation of Israel—but Jesus made this a real­ity in the Church. There are no unbe­liev­ers in the church^[8], but every single mem­ber has decided to fol­low Jesus without com­prom­ise. They have all received the power of the Holy Spir­it to live a life of holi­ness, devo­tion, love and obed­i­ence. It is only by under­stand­ing and prac­tising Jesus’ com­mand to share our lives in broth­erly love that we can fully com­pre­hend the stand­ard set by Jesus—from God’s per­spect­ive, there is no such thing as divorce, and as Chris­ti­ans it is pos­sible to live accord­ing to this stand­ard. In God’s eyes, a mar­riage is val­id until the death of one of the part­ners. If one part­ner is an unbe­liev­er, and he or she wants to sep­ar­ate from their Chris­ti­an part­ner, Paul expresses that this is pos­sible. From God’s per­spect­ive, how­ever, this does not con­sti­tute a divorce which would entitle them to remarry. As far as God is con­cerned, they are still mar­ried, but they can live separately.

Mar­riage is a cov­en­ant before God—to which one must remain faith­ful, even if the oth­er part­ner breaks this cov­en­ant. Should the unbe­liev­ing part­ner sep­ar­ate from the Chris­ti­an, regard­less of the reas­on, and the Chris­ti­an then remar­ried, the Chris­ti­an would not only be break­ing the mar­riage cov­en­ant, but draw­ing their “new” part­ner deeply into the sin of for­nic­a­tion and adul­tery with them.

Chris­ti­ans share their pos­ses­sions as an expres­sion of broth­erly love (Acts 2:44–47, Acts 4:32–37), which means that a Chris­ti­an wife whose hus­band has sep­ar­ated from her will be taken care of. She will not be on her own either, because through shar­ing their lives in broth­erly love and unity, God gives every Chris­ti­an deep joy and fulfilment.

5 How Should We Assess Mar­riages from One’s “Old Life” (Before Becom­ing a Christian)?

There­fore, if any­one is in Christ, he is a new cre­ation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. (2 Cor­inthi­ans 5:17 ESV)

Paul’s words here are very import­ant and show that becom­ing a Chris­ti­an involves a com­plete trans­form­a­tion. Yet this does not mean that all our com­mit­ments from the time before becom­ing a Chris­ti­an are invalidated.

Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’! (Mat­thew 5:37 ESV)

This is espe­cially val­id for wed­ding vows. As already men­tioned (sec­tion 3.2) Jesus based the indis­sol­ubil­ity of mar­riage on the order of cre­ation. The belief that a mar­riage which a per­son entered into before becom­ing a Chris­ti­an is not val­id and can there­fore be dis­solved (because becom­ing a Chris­ti­an means begin­ning a new life), is a heresy and dis­reg­ards Jesus’ words.

In 1 Cor­inthi­ans 7:12–15 Paul writes about Chris­ti­ans who got mar­ried before their repentance:

(12) To the rest I say (I, not the Lord) that if any broth­er has a wife who is an unbe­liev­er, and she con­sents to live with him, he should not divorce her. (13) If any woman has a hus­band who is an unbe­liev­er, and he con­sents to live with her, she should not divorce him. (14) For the unbe­liev­ing hus­band is made holy because of his wife, and the unbe­liev­ing wife is made holy because of her hus­band. Oth­er­wise your chil­dren would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy. (15) But if the unbe­liev­ing part­ner sep­ar­ates, let it be so. In such cases the broth­er or sis­ter is not enslaved. God has called you to peace.

Paul’s prin­ciple is that if the unbe­liev­ing part­ner accepts their Chris­ti­an partner’s new way of life with good will they should not sep­ar­ate. If a sep­ar­a­tion does occur (verse 15), Paul’s advice from verse 11^[9] still applies, i.e. that the Chris­ti­an is either to remain alone or recon­cile with his or her partner.

At this stage, we would like to point at Romans 7:2–3 again. Here, Paul is mak­ing gen­er­al state­ments about mar­riage that applies to all people, inde­pend­ently of wheth­er they are believ­ers (Chris­ti­ans) or not. A per­son is bound to his or her spouse as long as he or she is liv­ing. Only when he or she dies is it pos­sible to enter a new marriage.

6 Some Thoughts Con­cern­ing the Situ­ation Today

We live in an age in which God’s inten­ded stand­ard for mar­riage, i.e. that a hus­band and wife share their lives in mutu­al faith­ful­ness until death as they prom­ised one anoth­er when they mar­ried, has become a rare excep­tion. “Blen­ded fam­il­ies” are becom­ing increas­ingly com­mon. Even the teach­ings and prac­tices of vari­ous “churches” and reli­gious groups are being influ­enced by this development.

In order to under­stand the Bible’s clear rejec­tion of divorce with the option to remarry, it is help­ful to keep in mind the pos­it­ive value of mar­riage with­in God’s plan of cre­ation. You can read more about this in our art­icle on “Mar­riage and Stay­ing Single for God”. It is also always import­ant to con­sider how a gen­er­al bib­lic­al teach­ing ought to be applied prac­tic­ally to each spe­cif­ic individual’s situation.

Jesus brought to light the ori­gin­al clar­ity in regard to the issue of divorce and remar­riage. This shocked even his dis­ciples, who were well acquain­ted with the prac­tice of the Old Testament.

Among the first Chris­ti­ans there were cer­tainly some (from both Jew­ish and Gen­tile back­grounds) who were liv­ing in their second mar­riage. We can­not derive from the Holy Scrip­tures that these couples had to dis­solve their second mar­riage, as they had not entered the second mar­riage with the aware­ness that they were doing some­thing that was abso­lutely for­bid­den by God, even if Jew­ish believ­ers, at least, ought to have known that God did not regard divorce as good.

Paul wrote to Timothy in 1 Timothy 3:2 that an over­seer must be the hus­band of only one wife. This shows that men who had remar­ried (before becom­ing Chris­ti­ans) were not allowed to be eld­ers, but that they cer­tainly were accep­ted as mem­bers of the church. In our time the prac­tice that in the church remar­ried people can con­tin­ue their second mar­riage can­not be applied in all cases. This is because the New Test­a­ment, and con­sequently Jesus’ clear pos­i­tion on this issue, are widely known. Many people are aware of the (the­or­et­ic­ally) clear view of the Roman Cath­ol­ic Church on this mat­ter. Thus, there is a stronger aware­ness nowadays that enter­ing a second mar­riage is wrong than at the time of the first Chris­ti­ans. Cer­tainly, a lot depends on how much a per­son knew about God’s will at the time when he entered his second mar­riage. If someone remar­ried with the know­ledge that this con­tra­dicts God’s will, this mar­riage can­not be con­sidered to be a mar­riage accord­ing to God’s will. The prob­lem often has deep­er roots, espe­cially if when enter­ing one’s first mar­riage, a per­son neg­lected to face the spir­itu­al ques­tions, most import­antly the ques­tion of which atti­tude one’s part­ner had towards God.

How­ever, it is always neces­sary to exam­ine each spe­cif­ic case and to look hon­estly for God’s will. Even if the res­ult of this hon­est exam­in­a­tion turns out to be that the second mar­riage can­not be con­tin­ued, vari­ous oth­er factors must be con­sidered. Espe­cially if both part­ners are Chris­ti­ans the con­sequence will prob­ably not be a com­plete sep­ar­a­tion. In many cases there will be tasks which need to be shared, espe­cially the task of bring­ing up their chil­dren. It is cer­tainly not help­ful for chil­dren to see that their par­ents are sep­ar­ated. But in such a case (if the con­clu­sion has been reached that the second mar­riage can­not be con­tin­ued) there will be no room for a sexu­al rela­tion­ship with­in this partnership.

7 Sum­mary and Encouragement

Jesus emphas­izes that life-long faith­ful­ness to one mar­riage part­ner is God’s will. This is vis­ible from the way he argues that the two become one flesh and from his state­ment that a man should not divorce his wife. If they divorce, then neither he nor she may enter into a new mar­riage, as long as the former part­ner is alive, because the first mar­riage cov­en­ant still stands as long as both are alive. If one part­ner enters into a new mar­riage while his ori­gin­al part­ner is alive, he is com­mit­ting adul­tery. From God’s point of view there is no such thing as divorce. A mar­riage is val­id as long as both part­ners are still alive. Jesus does not make an excep­tion in any of these pas­sages depend­ing on wheth­er the part­ner who was sent away was guilty or innocent.

Because Jesus makes no excep­tions in Mark or Luke, he can­not have inten­ded to make an excep­tion in Mat­thew either. The reac­tion of the dis­ciples also shows that in the mat­ter of divorce there is no excep­tion. It is not pos­sible to remarry as long as both part­ners are alive.

Paul addresses oth­er cases in more detail in 1 Cor­inthi­ans 7:

If someone is already divorced, and then becomes a Chris­ti­an, they should remain alone or be recon­ciled to their ori­gin­al part­ner. If the unbe­liev­ing part­ner wants to sep­ar­ate from the Chris­ti­an part­ner, then the Chris­ti­an should allow this:

“In such cases the broth­er or sis­ter is not enslaved. God has called you to peace.”

The point that the broth­er or sis­ter is not “enslaved” in such cases means that they are not con­demned to a life with an unbe­liev­er in strife and prob­lems. They can separate—and remain unmarried.

What may be hard to ima­gine for many is nev­er­the­less not an unbear­able bur­den. Through Jesus Christ a Chris­ti­an has a new rela­tion­ship with God. This new rela­tion­ship con­fronts us much more strongly with what God’s holi­ness requires of us. A high­er demand is placed on us than on the believ­ers of the Old Test­a­ment. In this way we are made much more aware of our own weak­nesses and sins and God teaches us to become fully depend­ent on him. Our close rela­tion­ship with him gives us strength to do what goes bey­ond our own strength.

With him and through him the “impossible” becomes pos­sible. God also helps us through the fel­low­ship with broth­ers and sis­ters which every Chris­ti­an needs very much. This is the fel­low­ship with those who listen to God’s words and do them. They are our broth­ers and sis­ters in Christ, our spir­itu­al fam­ily that remains for etern­ity. So even without a spouse a Chris­ti­an is nev­er on his own.