What About Marriages Before One Was Saved?

I hear believers all the time try to make excuse for their current adulterous marriage by saying their previous marriage was before they were saved. What does that have to do with anything? Marriage was instituted in Genesis 2:24 long before Christianity started (Matthew 19:4-6). Jesus didn’t say in verse 9 “Whosover IS A CHRISTIAN and shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery;” Instead he said “WHOSOEVER” – and that gets everybody, every Christian and every non-Christian alike.

If marriage does not really exist between non-Christians, does that mean none of the couples before Christianity was instituted were married? Wouldn’t that mean married people in our world today are not really married if they are not Christians? Were Herod and Herodias Christians when John the Baptist told Herod in Matthew 14:4 “It is not lawful for thee to have her”? According to this position it should have been okay for these two divorcees to remain married each other because since they weren’t “saved” their previous marriages did not count.

Wendell Wiser wrote correctly “Some argue that God does not recognize a sinner’s marriage. Paul said a man can have a wife who is an alien sinner (I Corinthians 7:12). The Holy Spirit tells us Pilate had a wife. (Matthew 27:19). Pilate and his wife were alien sinners. The Holy Spirit tells us Felix had a wife named Drusilla. (Acts 24:24). Felix and Drusilla were not Christians. They were alien sinners (Acts 24:25).”

Many times we know this “but I wasn’t saved then” excuse is just that, an excuse, because the person in question thought of themselves as saved during their first marriage, but now that they want to marry a second person, they suddenly declare themselves as being unsaved previously. That way they can declare their first marriage invalid and marry again – contrary to what Jesus said in Matthew 19:9. And some keep doing this (declaring themselves unsaved and then saved again so they can remarry) over and over again. No, we see from I Corinthians 7:12-13 marriages to non-Christians are real marriages; they entail obligation just like any other marriage.

Rom 7:2-3 also helps us on this question. It reads “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. 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.” Notice the text doesn’t say one is bound to their spouse if they are a Christian. It doesn’t say a second marriage is not adulterous if one was not a Christian during their previous marriage. No, one is bound (obligated) to their original spouse regardless of whether they were Christians at the time or not. If a sinner is in an adulterous marriage, that is one of the sins they need to repent of when becoming a Christian (Acts 2:38).