responsibility to commit?

[Guest]

if believers fall into sexual sin before marriage do they have a responsibility to marry that person? And if they have since married some else, should they seek reconcilliation with the former partner? any counsel on this would be welcomed. thanks.

[Guest]

if believers fall into sexual sin before marriage do they have a responsibility to marry that person? And if they have since married some else, should they seek reconcilliation with the former partner? any counsel on this would be welcomed. thanks.

Once someone has married "someone else" as you say, then no you don't want to beak up one marriage to marry someone else, even if that person was a partner in fornication.

[Guest]

Some people have had numerous sexual partners before Christ came in their lives. Even if fornication happened while a believer we are not instructed to marry that person.

[Guest]

I was recently surprised in reading a position paper in which a church elder made a case that fornication actually does create a marriage bond, because Paul wrote that "he that is joined to a harlot is one body with her" (1 Cor.6:16). He quoted several respected commentators who seemed to take this position. The case he was making seemed to be that a couple who had fornicated needed to marry each other, whether they afterward wanted to do so, or not.

I did not agree with the thesis. It is true that the law (Exodus 22:16-17) required a man who had fornicated with a virgin to make an "honest woman" of her by marrying her, unless her father refused to allow the marriage. However, this has application within only a limited set of circumstances. First, that the woman is a virgin. If a woman had had multiple partners in her single years, she clearly could not be considered to be married to all of them. Alternatively, if one were to say that such a woman is bound to the first sex partner she had, then the others would have to be seen as cases of adultery, which would release her first partner from any bond they had formed (assuming he wished to be released), and the subsequent partners would not have the status of husbands to her either.

Now, in the case of a woman who had only one partner before she was married, one might argue that she must marry that original partner. But what if that partner was a married man, a sibling, or her own father? What if her first partner was a woman? It is clear that these sexual experiences (even if, as Paul says, some of them create a "one body" situation) do not create a covenantal marriage, since marriage involves more than the mere sexual union, but also a sworn agreement to become husband and wife.

Also, if her father would not have approved of her marrying the first man she slept with, she would have no obligation (nor permission) to marry him.

And even if all circumstances were such as would have righteously obligated her to marry the first man, the fact that she has since married another would seemingly break any such bond with the first.

In my opinion, the law about this was more concerned that a man not violate a woman's virginity and then abandon her, leaving her as "damaged goods" in the sight of other potential suitors in that society. The passage makes it clear that the girl's father had a financial stake in his being able to present his virgin daughter to a fututre husband. Her no longer being a virgin would be viewed as reducing her value and her future opportunities for marriage.

The fact that her father can forbid the marriage suggests that it is not a completely inflexible moral obligation. The fact that the man who is not permitted to marry the woman has to pay her father "the price of a virgin" (to compensate him for the loss of dowry that he would have received from another suitor if she had remained a virgin) suggests that this law represents more of an economic concern than one that had the sanctity of marriage in mind.

I may be mistaken, but this is my take on the data of scripture related to this subject.