Adultery

I summarise your last post as "nothing bad can come of true Christian witness". I might add that "God moves in mysterious ways".

Moving on to another subject that I am having difficulties with currently. I'll start with (and this is all from BLB btw at http://www.blueletterbible.org

Exodus 20:14 Thou shalt not commit adultery.

Ok this is a commandment which seems pretty straightforward to me. If I may, I'll forego the references in the Old Testament which instructs the dealth penalty for said sin and move to the New Testament Covenant:

Matthew 5:28 But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.

This is a tough one as men are gene-programmed to do such a thing, this is how the race is propagated. I doubt that Matthew knew what a gene was. Certain "innate" behaviours are handed down on RNA chains, it's how a baby instinctively knows certain things.

And finally:

Matthew 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 who so marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery.

What does Matt 19:9 mean?

Consider:

"put away" - does this mean divorce?
"fornication" - presumably sexual relations outside of the marriage? So if a man "puts away" his wife because she has fornicated then is it ok (in Biblical Law) for him to divorce her?

and the last part, does that mean that any man who marries a woman who has been married before is committing adultery?

I know that there are many Christian works on the subject of divorce. Phil, the pastor at my local church once tried to sell a particular one (written by a friend of his) at the pulpit on a Sunday morning! I suspected that was because he himself was divorced and remarried and was desperate to confirm that that was "ok" and vindicated scripturally. I may have been wrong.

Thoughts?

Current Song: "No woman no cry" -- Bob Marley and the Wailers