Quote:
V. Adultery or fornication committed after a contract, being detected before marriage, gives just occasion to the innocent party to dissolve that contract.11 In the case of adultery after marriage, it is lawful for the innocent party to sue out a divorce and, after the divorce,12 to marry another, as if the offending party were dead.13
11 MAT 1:18 Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost. 19 Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing to make her a publick example, was minded to put her away privily. 20 But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.
12 MAT 5:31 It hath been said, Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement: 32 But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery.
13 MAT 19:9 And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery.
ROM 7:2 For the woman which hath an husband is bound by the law to her husband so long as he liveth; but if the husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband. 3 So then if, while her husband liveth, she be married to another man, she shall be called an adulteress: but if her husband be dead, she is free from that law; so that she is no adulteress, though she be married to another man.
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This is really a no-brainer. I'm shocked your friend was tripped up over this.
1. I hope it's first clearly established that the Scriptures permit divorce in the case of adultery. If a man commits adultery, she is free to divorce him. She is then free to re-marry based on the dissoloving of the marriage over the fact that the husband has violated the covenant and she is not at fault. She is no longer bound to remain in relationship with the man. If she re-marries she is not an adulteress.
In like fashion, if a husband dies then a woman is free to re-marry. Why? She has been released from the vow because marriage covenants are only binding "until death do us part." The Saducees question to Jesus is silly but, in the hypothetical, she is not married to
any man after he dies. Paul's purpose in Romans 7 is larger than the marriage covenant but it is true as far as it goes. He's pointing out the obvious (that you're no longer bound to a covenant when one of the members dies).
I don't know if there is a grammar comprehension problem in the reading of the paragraph by your friend to assume that Romans 7 is meant to "prove" the entire paragraph.
The paragraph is not saying that a woman is released from the marriage covenant in the case of adultery on the basis that her husband is dead. The point of Romans 7 is to show that women are not adulteresses if they re-marry after their husbands die. Now for the connection...
Other passages demonstrate that a woman who remarries after divorcing a man on grounds of adultery is not an adulteress.
Thus, she is free to re-marry and not be an adulteress
in the same way that she's not an adulteress if her husband was dead.
The point is that she's not an adulteress in both cases.