Divorce Your Remarriage: Remarriage is Continual Adultery if a Prior Valid Spouse is Alive Hardcover – July 10, 2025

Jesus proclaimed that remarriage is adultery. His proclamation shocked the disciples, and it has shocked Bible readers ever since. Today, evangelical leaders, scholars, students, and believers are unsure how to faithfully apply this teaching. The uncertainty in evangelicalism primarily comes down to two questions:When a remarriage is adultery, how should the situation be corrected?Are all remarriages adultery, or are there any exceptions?Author Chris Iverson takes on these questions in Divorce Your Remarriage. Iverson provides his readers with useful conceptual tools by outlining the necessary elements for a marriage, highlighting the distinction between moral permissibility and validity of a marriage, and explaining four theories of marriage: contract, covenantal, family, and sacramental. He then shows that, while a civil divorce ends a marriage in the records of the government, a civil divorce is unable to dissolve a valid marriage from God's perspective. Therefore, a subsequent remarriage is a continual state of adultery, not a mere one-time act of adultery, if that remarriage occurred during the life of the civilly divorced valid spouse. Such a remarriage is invalid and should be divorced since that is the only way to stop the ongoing sin. Iverson identifies the common evangelical solution to repent and continue the remarriage. However, he notes that, since repentance of the remarriage cannot unjoin the first marriage, repentance without a civil divorce does not end the adultery of the remarriage. Therefore, to avoid being adulterers, the remarried couple should divorce. This is important as adulterers will not inherit the kingdom of heaven.Iverson addresses the Matthean exception clauses by showing from Scripture and extrabiblical sources that the exception clause refers to a scenario where a person's first marriage is porneia, i.e. they married a divorced person. Furthermore, Iverson shows that I Corinthians 7 does not provide permission to remarry, but in extreme cases, the phrase "in such cases" in verse 15 provides an allowance to separate from a spouse. This bold study is faithful to early church writers and their councils as it only differs from their interpretation in minor ways. This book can serve as a means to redirect evangelicalism away from an overly permissive interpretation of the divorce and remarriage passages by restoring a more biblical approach to the subject of divorce and remarriage. Read more