EXCEPT IT BE FOR FORNICATION The Purchase of Christ, the Sovereignty of God, and the Question of Natural Marriage
The Pharisees came to Jesus with a question concerning man's authority over marriage:
"Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause?" — Matthew 19:3
Jesus did not begin His answer by giving them a list of permissible causes for divorce. He took them back to the beginning:
"Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder." — Matthew 19:4–6
The importance of the order is immediate.
They asked about man's authority to separate.
Jesus answered first with God's authority in joining.
Before discussing when man might put something away, Christ established that man is not the highest authority over the relationship:
"What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder."
The Pharisees then appealed to Moses:
"Why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away?" — Matthew 19:7
Jesus answered:
"Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so." — Matthew 19:8
Now another element enters the discussion.
Jesus not only distinguishes God's joining from man's putting asunder; He identifies something within man that stood behind the Mosaic concession:
hardness of heart.
Then comes the statement around which this inquiry has developed:
"Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication…" — Matthew 19:9
The progression matters:
God joins. Man seeks authority to put away. Moses permitted putting away because of hardness of heart. From the beginning it was not so. Then Christ speaks of fornication.
Consequently, "except it be for fornication" should not be isolated from everything Christ has just established and treated merely as a legal formula giving man permission to divorce.
The discussion has already raised greater questions:
What has God joined?
What authority does man possess over what God has joined?
What does hardness of heart have to do with the desire to put away?
And ultimately:
Who possesses jurisdiction over man himself?
That final question takes us beyond Matthew 19 and into the work Christ came to accomplish.
Before determining the ultimate claim of one human relationship upon another, we must determine the claim of Christ upon the person.
And that takes us to the blood.
Bought With a Price
Paul writes:
"Ye are not your own. For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's." — 1 Corinthians 6:19–20
The first consequence of the purchase is unmistakable:
"Ye are not your own."
This is more than a call to improved morality.
It is a declaration of ownership.
The body is God's.
The spirit is God's.
The members are God's.
The person has been purchased.
The blood of Christ therefore establishes a claim upon the whole person.
Revelation describes Christ as having redeemed unto God by His blood people:
"out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation." — Revelation 5:9
Those once "far off" are "made nigh by the blood of Christ" (Ephesians 2:13). Those who "in time past were not a people" become "the people of God" (1 Peter 2:10).
This marks an important movement in God's dealings with mankind. Israel had occupied a particular covenantal position as a people called unto God, while the Gentiles were described as strangers from those covenants. Yet through Christ's blood the call reaches beyond that former boundary.
Paul, speaking at Athens, declared:
"And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent." — Acts 17:30
There is a significant "but now."
The blood has been shed.
The purchase has been made.
The nations are called.
And those answering that call are called unto holiness.
The purchase therefore establishes the governing premise of this inquiry:
The person purchased by Christ cannot possess an independent jurisdiction over himself greater than the jurisdiction of the One who purchased him.
If the person himself belongs to Christ, then everything involving that person's body, spirit, members, conduct, relationships, and joinings necessarily comes beneath Christ's authority.
This includes marriage.
Can Natural Marriage Supersede Christ's Authority?
Marriage is among mankind's oldest and most deeply established relationships.
But its antiquity cannot make it sovereign.
A marriage may be recognized by family.
It may be recognized by society.
It may be recognized by civil government.
It may be recognized by a religious institution.
It may have existed before either person consciously came to Christ.
None of those facts, standing alone, can establish that the relationship possesses authority superior to Christ's ownership of the person.
If Christ has purchased someone, can a natural relationship say to Christ:
"You may possess this person's spirit, but concerning this relationship Your jurisdiction ends"?
The language of the purchase does not allow such a conclusion.
"Ye are not your own."
Therefore, the question is not whether marriage matters to God. Jesus' teaching plainly establishes that it does.
The question is whether natural marriage is sovereign over God.
It cannot be.
A proposition that may appear radical must therefore be faced:
If Christ, exercising His jurisdiction over a person He has purchased, calls that person out of a particular natural marriage, no human institution possesses authority superior to Christ by which it can forbid Him to do so.
This must immediately be distinguished from a very different proposition.
It does not mean that an individual possesses unrestricted authority to leave a marriage.
The authority belongs to Christ.
Personal dissatisfaction cannot manufacture His call.
Desire for another person cannot manufacture His call.
Human reasoning cannot manufacture His call.
Neither can an individual simply rename an unwanted marriage "fornication" and thereby give personal desire divine authority.
The proposition is not:
"I may leave because I have decided God does not approve."
It is:
If Christ calls, Christ possesses the authority to call.
The distinction is fundamental.
What God Hath Joined
This brings us back to the precision of Christ's statement:
"What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder."
Notice where Jesus places the decisive action:
God hath joined.
He does not merely say, "What has been joined."
God's action stands at the center of the statement.
This gives extraordinary weight to a joining that proceeds from God. Man does not possess authority to put asunder what God has joined.
But the statement also raises a question that should not be answered carelessly:
Is everything human beings call marriage necessarily identical with "what God hath joined together"?
Matthew 19 does not explicitly answer that question.
We therefore should not put words into Christ's mouth and claim that He expressly divided marriages into two categories—those God joined and those He did not.
But neither can His statement reasonably be reversed into another proposition:
Whatever man joins, God is thereafter obligated to recognize as His own joining.
That would make man's action sovereign over God.
The text says:
God hath joined.
And God's sovereignty must remain intact.
Can Man Make Something Holy?
The same question appears when we consider holiness.
God says:
"Be ye holy; for I am holy." — 1 Peter 1:16
Holiness originates with God.
Man does not create holiness merely by attaching a religious or legal title to something.
Age does not produce holiness.
Tradition does not produce holiness.
Civil recognition does not produce holiness.
Even religious ceremony, considered independently of God, cannot compel God to call something holy.
This does not mean that a marriage involving an unbelieving or unholy person is automatically nonexistent or invalid. First Corinthians 7 prevents such an easy conclusion.
Paul says that where an unbelieving spouse is pleased to dwell with the believer, the believer is not to put that spouse away. He even describes the unbelieving spouse as sanctified in relation to the believer.
That is important evidence.
It shows that an existing natural marriage may continue when one person comes into Christ.
But it does not establish the larger proposition that Christ has thereby surrendered all personal jurisdiction over the believer and can never direct otherwise.
Indeed, Paul says within the same chapter:
"But as God hath distributed to every man, as the Lord hath called every one, so let him walk." — 1 Corinthians 7:17
The Lord's call remains governing.
Therefore neither extreme follows.
It is not:
Everything that existed before Christ must be abandoned.
Nor is it:
Everything that existed before Christ must necessarily remain unchanged.
The governing question is:
What is the Lord pleased to do with what now belongs to Him?
The Former Life Becomes History
This is where the nature of new birth becomes indispensable.
Christian conversion cannot adequately be described as the natural man accepting a new set of religious teachings while otherwise continuing under his former governmental identity.
Paul writes:
"Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him…" — Romans 6:6
And:
"Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead… even so we also should walk in newness of life." — Romans 6:4
Something dies.
Something comes forth.
"Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." — 2 Corinthians 5:17
Paul speaks similarly concerning the former lives of believers:
"And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified…" — 1 Corinthians 6:11
The glory of redemption is not that Christ must take everything belonging to the former life and declare it holy.
The glory is that the former life becomes history.
What I was belongs to the history of sin.
What I have become belongs to God.
The old man is not merely renovated and renamed.
He dies.
The new creature comes forth.
Consequently, the old man's history cannot automatically dictate what Christ must require of the new creature.
Some things Christ may leave in place.
Some things He may sanctify to continued use.
Some things He may call the believer away from.
But the governing authority belongs to Him.
Married to Another
Paul uses marriage itself to describe this change of jurisdiction:
"ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead…" — Romans 7:4
This passage specifically concerns the believer's death to the Law and union with Christ. It should not be made to say directly what it does not say about natural divorce.
But its underlying movement is unmistakable:
death → release from former jurisdiction → marriage to Christ → fruit unto God.
The believer is:
married to another.
That "another" is Christ.
Entrance into Christ therefore establishes a relationship higher than every natural relationship.
The believer's highest allegiance is Christ.
His highest ownership is Christ's.
His ultimate marriage is to Christ.
No natural relationship can properly be elevated above that union.
Christ Was Already the Bridegroom
The identification of Christ as Bridegroom was not something Paul invented when he later wrote concerning Christ and the church.
Jesus spoke of Himself as Bridegroom:
"Can the children of the bridechamber mourn, as long as the bridegroom is with them?" — Matthew 9:15
John the Baptist likewise declared:
"He that hath the bride is the bridegroom…" — John 3:29
The Bridegroom mystery therefore already exists within Christ's own ministry.
Paul later unfolds it:
"Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it." — Ephesians 5:25
Then, after quoting the Genesis declaration—
"For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife…"
—Paul says:
"This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church." — Ephesians 5:32
Natural marriage therefore points beyond itself.
It participates in a mystery whose greater reality is Christ and His church.
Male and Female: The Mystery From the Beginning
This gives deeper significance to Jesus' appeal to the beginning.
Genesis records:
"And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…" — Genesis 1:26
Then:
"So God created man in his own image… male and female created he them." — Genesis 1:27
The written record later identifies Christ as:
"the image of the invisible God." — Colossians 1:15
Paul calls Him:
"the last Adam" — 1 Corinthians 15:45
and:
"the second man… the Lord from heaven." — 1 Corinthians 15:47
Then the Genesis language concerning male and female becoming one flesh is taken up in Ephesians and opened into:
Christ and the church.
This allows us to see a mystery within "the beginning" greater than natural marriage alone.
The natural male and female are not meaningless. Adam and Eve are real participants in the Genesis account.
But the later revelation concerning Christ allows the beginning to be viewed through a greater spiritual reality: image, male and female, joining, and oneness ultimately opening into Christ and His church.
Thus when Jesus says:
"from the beginning it was not so,"
the beginning carries more than a historical date.
It reveals an originating principle.
What had entered afterward?
Hardness.
Putting away.
Separation.
The beginning points instead toward joining and oneness.
God's Joining Opens Beyond the Natural Picture
There is another dimension to God's joining that becomes visible as Christ's work unfolds.
Jesus said:
"And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring… and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd." — John 10:16
His hearers could not yet see the full historical manifestation of what He was describing.
Yet after Christ's resurrection, the boundary separating Jew and Gentile was crossed by God's own action.
When Peter was challenged for entering the house of Gentiles, he explained how God had given them the Holy Ghost. His conclusion was:
"Forasmuch then as God gave them the like gift as he did unto us… what was I, that I could withstand God?" — Acts 11:17
Peter's question expresses the principle of divine sovereignty with unusual clarity:
What was I, that I could withstand God?
Paul later describes the work accomplished in Christ:
"For he is our peace, who hath made both one…" — Ephesians 2:14
And:
"for to make in himself of twain one new man…" — Ephesians 2:15
And:
"that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross…" — Ephesians 2:16
The Gentiles are subsequently described as:
"fellowheirs, and of the same body…" — Ephesians 3:6
This should not be presented as though Matthew 19:6 explicitly defines "what God hath joined" as a prophecy concerning Jew and Gentile. The immediate subject in Matthew is marriage.
But the later work of Christ reveals a larger spiritual principle entirely consistent with His words:
God joins according to His own sovereign purpose, and man does not possess authority to withstand His joining.
That principle also protects the sovereignty of God in the opposite direction.
If man cannot forbid what God joins, neither can man establish a joining of his own and then make that joining sovereign over God.
In either direction, the authority remains God's.
Made Perfect in One
The mystery reaches extraordinary expression in Christ's prayer:
"That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee…" — John 17:21
And:
"I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one." — John 17:23
The movement becomes increasingly clear:
male and female → one flesh; Christ and the church → great mystery; other sheep → one fold; Jew and Gentile → both made one; twain → one new man; both → one body; believers in Christ → made perfect in one.
The work of Christ is fundamentally a work of divine joining.
He is bringing man into union with God.
The believer's completeness consequently cannot finally rest in another natural person.
Paul says:
"And ye are complete in him…" — Colossians 2:10
Christ is the believer's completeness.
Natural marriage may have its legitimate place where God is pleased for it to remain.
But it cannot become the source of a spiritual completeness that belongs to Christ.
Resurrection and Natural Marriage
Jesus declared:
"I am the resurrection, and the life." — John 11:25
And concerning those who obtain the resurrection He said:
"they neither marry, nor are given in marriage…" — Luke 20:35
The immediate setting of Luke 20 concerns resurrection from the dead, and that context should remain clear.
Nevertheless, Christ Himself is the resurrection, and resurrection life has already begun operating in those raised with Him:
"like as Christ was raised up from the dead… even so we also should walk in newness of life." — Romans 6:4
Thus the ultimate order toward which resurrection points is not an eternity governed by natural marriage.
It is life in God.
Natural marriage therefore has a legitimate natural place where God is pleased for it to remain, but it cannot become man's eternal or supreme identity.
Born of the Spirit
Jesus said:
"The wind bloweth where it listeth… thou… canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit." — John 3:8
The natural mind cannot write beforehand the complete movement of one governed by God's Spirit.
Paul writes:
"the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God… neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned." — 1 Corinthians 2:14
And:
"he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man." — 1 Corinthians 2:15
This establishes an important boundary.
An action being unexpected does not prove that God commanded it.
But neither does an action violating natural expectation prove that God did not command it.
Natural convention cannot appoint itself judge over God's sovereignty.
The final judgment belongs to God, and genuine spiritual discernment must itself proceed from Spirit.
This becomes particularly important when considering whether Christ could call a person out of a natural marriage.
The natural observer cannot settle the question merely by declaring:
"God could never do that."
If Christ possesses the person, then the ultimate question remains:
Has Christ called?
Joining: The Critical Connection
First Corinthians 6 brings together purchase, ownership, body, joining, fornication, and union with Christ in one argument.
Paul asks:
"Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ?"
Then:
"shall I then take the members of Christ, and make them the members of an harlot? God forbid."
Then:
"he which is joined to an harlot is one body…"
And immediately:
"But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit."
Then comes:
"Flee fornication."
And the argument concludes:
"ye are not your own. For ye are bought with a price…"
The progression is remarkable:
Members of Christ. Joining. One body. One Spirit. Fornication. Ownership. Purchase.
Fornication therefore appears in a discussion larger than physical pleasure.
The body being joined already belongs to someone.
It belongs to Christ.
The deeper question becomes:
To what is something belonging to Christ being joined?
The purchase governs the joining.
"Except It Be for Fornication"
We can now return to the phrase itself.
The Greek word porneia, translated "fornication" in the King James Version, ordinarily carries a broad sense of illicit sexual conduct. Jesus subsequently uses language from the adultery word-family when speaking of putting away and remarriage.
The two concepts overlap, but they should not simply be collapsed into identical terms.
The natural sexual meaning of porneia should not be discarded.
But neither should we assume that the natural definition necessarily exhausts every spiritual dimension from which Christ could speak.
Jesus repeatedly spoke natural words whose spiritual reality exceeded His hearers' understanding.
He told Nicodemus:
"Ye must be born again."
Nicodemus thought of entering his mother's womb.
Jesus spoke to the woman at the well of living water.
She initially understood natural water.
Jesus said:
"Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up."
His hearers understood the physical temple, while the written account explains that He spoke of the temple of His body.
Most dramatically, Jesus said:
"Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you." — John 6:53
Many heard Him according to the natural sense and were offended.
Jesus then declared:
"It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life." — John 6:63
Therefore the natural hearer's immediate understanding of words such as flesh, marriage, adultery, or fornication cannot by itself establish that every spiritual dimension of Christ's words has been exhausted.
This does not require us to deny the natural sexual meaning of fornication.
Rather, it allows us to ask whether Christ's teaching is governed by a spiritual reality larger than the physical act alone.
The Heart: Where Christ Carries the Matter
There is strong reason to ask that question because Christ Himself carries sexual righteousness into the heart.
In the same Sermon on the Mount in which He speaks concerning putting away and fornication, Jesus first says:
"whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart." — Matthew 5:28
Christ does not deny the outward act of adultery.
He penetrates beneath it.
He identifies the spiritual condition from which the act proceeds.
Then only a few verses later He says:
"whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication…" — Matthew 5:32
And in Matthew 19, when the subject again becomes putting away, Christ expressly identifies:
"the hardness of your hearts."
The heart therefore isn't being imported into the divorce discussion from somewhere else.
Christ puts it there.
This means that the teaching cannot be confined entirely to external conduct.
The outward act matters.
But Christ is also examining the spirit from which conduct proceeds.
Fornication and Illicit Joining
The biblical record likewise employs marital and sexual language to describe spiritual unfaithfulness.
Ezekiel 16 describes God's covenant people through the imagery of a woman whom God found, covered, washed, entered covenant with, and adorned—who afterward played the harlot.
Jeremiah 3 describes Israel's departure from God in the language of adultery.
James says:
"Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God?" — James 4:4
Revelation likewise employs fornication imagery for participation in Babylon's corrupt order.
Spiritual fornication therefore involves the principle of illicit allegiance and joining contrary to rightful belonging.
First Corinthians 6 supplies an especially powerful bridge:
joined to an harlot — one body
contrasted with:
joined unto the Lord — one spirit.
The issue is joining.
And because the person has been purchased, joining cannot be considered independently of ownership.
The spiritual interpretation of fornication therefore does not arise from arbitrarily redefining Christ's word. It arises from the larger biblical pattern in which sexual unfaithfulness, illicit joining, spiritual allegiance, and covenant fidelity repeatedly illuminate one another.
Joseph, Mary, and the Limits of Natural Judgment
Joseph and Mary provide an instructive illustration of why natural evidence must not automatically be equated with complete spiritual knowledge.
Mary was found with child before she and Joseph came together.
Joseph naturally faced what appeared to be evidence of sexual involvement elsewhere.
Matthew says:
"Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing to make her a publick example, was minded to put her away privily." — Matthew 1:19
Yet what appeared naturally to have occurred was not what had actually occurred.
The child was:
"of the Holy Ghost."
Joseph required revelation before he could correctly understand the event standing before him.
This does not make Joseph and Mary a direct interpretation of Matthew 19.
It demonstrates a principle relevant to the larger inquiry:
Natural appearance does not always possess sufficient knowledge to judge the performance of God.
Matthew 5 and the Limits of Human Putting Away
Jesus' related teaching in Matthew 5 also deserves attention:
"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." — Matthew 5:32
This shows that the mere human act of putting away does not necessarily settle the spiritual reality.
A legal separation can occur, yet Christ can still speak as though something concerning the prior joining remains morally significant.
Human paperwork therefore does not possess the power to dictate God's judgment.
Again the principle emerges:
Man's action is not sovereign merely because man has performed it.
What God recognizes remains decisive.
Is the Exception Also a Test of Love?
Once Christ has brought hardness of heart into the discussion, another question becomes unavoidable.
Suppose the wife has been unfaithful.
The natural question may become:
Do I now possess permission to discard her?
But Jesus does not command:
If fornication occurs, you must put her away.
The exception is not a commandment to divorce.
Therefore another question remains:
What is in the husband's heart toward the person who has sinned against him?
Peter writes:
"charity shall cover the multitude of sins." — 1 Peter 4:8
The prophetic relationship between God and His people makes this question especially striking.
God repeatedly describes His people as adulterous and unfaithful.
Yet He repeatedly calls:
Return.
Jeremiah records:
"Return, thou backsliding Israel…" — Jeremiah 3:12
And:
"Turn, O backsliding children… for I am married unto you." — Jeremiah 3:14
Thus God's response to unfaithfulness cannot be reduced to the exercise of a right to discard.
It also reveals:
mercy, forgiveness, restoration, and the call to return.
This does not establish that every instance of natural marital unfaithfulness must end in reconciliation.
But it does establish that the presence of unfaithfulness does not eliminate the spiritual question of love.
Christ Shows the Husband How to Love
Paul writes:
"Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it." — Ephesians 5:25
Christ loved a church requiring cleansing.
He gave Himself for it:
"That he might sanctify and cleanse it…"
And ultimately:
"That he might present it to himself a glorious church…"
Therefore the highest question for the husband cannot merely be:
What am I permitted to do?
It must also become:
How does Christ love?
The law can ask what is permitted.
The Spirit searches what governs the heart.
This is why "except it be for fornication" cannot be responsibly separated from Christ's confrontation with hardness of heart.
The physical act may be real.
The injury may be real.
But Christ still sees the heart of the one responding to it.
Completeness and the Desire for Another
This raises another question concerning what governs the person desiring to leave.
If a man seeks release from one wife principally so that he may obtain another object for the same fleshly desire, then changing women does not demonstrate that the governing principle has changed.
The question is deeper than which person occupies the relationship.
What spirit governs the desire?
The believer is:
"complete in him." — Colossians 2:10
Therefore the new creature cannot locate his ultimate completeness in obtaining another fleshly relationship.
Christ is his completeness.
That fact does not itself answer every circumstance of marriage.
It does expose the heart from which the desire to leave may proceed.
The Natural and the Spiritual
We can now see why this inquiry cannot remain exclusively on the natural plane.
The marriage language itself opens into:
Christ and the church.
The language of God's joining opens into the larger work by which:
two are made one.
The Gentile, once outside, is brought into the same body.
Christ's teaching concerning adultery penetrates:
into the heart.
The reason given for Moses' concession is:
hardness of heart.
Fornication elsewhere becomes imagery for:
spiritual unfaithfulness and illicit allegiance.
And the believer's body is described as:
belonging to Christ.
Thus the evidence does not require us to deny the natural sexual meaning of fornication.
Rather, it reveals that Christ's teaching cannot safely be confined to the natural act alone.
It stands within a larger spiritual government concerning:
joining, fidelity, holiness, love, ownership, and the condition of the heart before God.
The natural remains real.
But the natural does not govern the Spirit.
The Spirit governs the natural.
The Radical Question
We can now state plainly the question around which this entire inquiry has revolved:
Does Christ possess jurisdiction to call a person out of a natural marriage?
If the person has truly been purchased by Christ, then concerning Christ's authority the answer must be:
Yes.
To say otherwise would mean that natural marriage possesses a jurisdiction over the believer that Christ Himself cannot cross.
But that conclusion cannot stand beside:
"Ye are not your own."
The answer, however, must immediately be distinguished from another proposition:
Does the individual possess authority to call himself out merely because he wishes to leave?
No.
Those are fundamentally different claims.
The sovereignty belongs to Christ, not to the individual.
Therefore:
If Christ says remain, the believer remains.
If Christ says come out, the believer comes out.
This conclusion does not require us to force "except it be for fornication" to carry the entire argument by itself.
Matthew 19 does not explicitly say:
"Every marriage from which Christ calls someone is therefore fornication."
Nor does it explicitly define porneia as whatever an individual believes God disapproves.
Those claims would go beyond what the passage itself states.
The larger conclusion rests instead upon Christ's ownership and sovereignty:
No natural relationship can acquire jurisdiction superior to Christ over the person Christ purchased.
The fornication statement then stands within the larger spiritual framework of ownership, joining, fidelity, holiness, love, and the heart.
What If Christ Deems the Joining Unacceptable?
We are therefore able to ask the question more precisely.
What if Christ, who owns the body and spirit, determines in an individual circumstance that a particular joining is not what He is pleased to continue?
Can the natural institution answer Him:
"You cannot call this person out because man has already called this marriage"?
If so, man has become sovereign.
If so, the institution possesses authority greater than the Purchaser.
If so, "ye are not your own" has acquired an exception that the text itself does not state.
The conclusion of this inquiry is therefore not that every questionable marriage should be dissolved.
It is not that believers may freely reinterpret their histories.
It is not that personal feelings constitute revelation.
It is something both narrower and more radical:
God has not surrendered His sovereignty over the person He purchased.
If He is pleased for a natural marriage to remain, it remains under His government.
If He calls a person out of what He does not approve, His authority to make that call cannot be denied merely because mankind has given the relationship the title of marriage.
The decisive authority remains Christ.
No Human History Can Bind God
Mankind has had centuries to establish customs, laws, traditions, theological systems, and assumptions concerning marriage.
Their age cannot make them sovereign.
A practice does not become God's will merely because generations have practiced it.
Neither does widespread religious agreement compel God to approve what He has not approved.
Christ confronted traditions that had acquired enormous religious authority and said:
"laying aside the commandment of God, ye hold the tradition of men." — Mark 7:8
Therefore the ultimate question cannot be:
What has mankind historically permitted or prohibited?
It must remain:
What does God require?
God is independent of man's structures.
He does not receive holiness from them.
They receive whatever holiness they possess from Him.
From Hardness to Holiness
The investigation therefore returns to something greater than divorce.
Christ came calling man to holiness.
He calls man from darkness into light.
From flesh into Spirit.
From the old man into the new.
From self-possession into divine possession.
From illicit joining into union with God.
From hardness into love.
From death into resurrection.
The person answering that call discovers:
"Ye are not your own."
He has been purchased.
He has been washed.
He has been sanctified.
His body has become the temple of the Holy Ghost.
His members are members of Christ.
He is joined unto the Lord as one spirit.
And he has entered a mystery greater than natural marriage:
"This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church."
Therefore natural marriage must be respected where God has joined and where God is pleased for it to remain.
But natural marriage cannot become an authority standing above Christ.
At the same time, man cannot take the sovereignty of Christ and convert it into sovereignty for himself.
Both errors put man where God belongs.
The purchased possession belongs to the Purchaser.
And so "except it be for fornication" finally leaves us facing questions considerably greater than:
When may I legally put away another person?
The greater questions are:
To whom do I belong?
What has God joined?
What does God call holy?
What constitutes an illicit joining of something that belongs to Christ?
What Spirit governs my heart?
What does love require?
And what is Christ requiring of the person He purchased with His own blood?
There the authority must finally rest.
Not in man's history.
Not in man's traditions.
Not in man's desires.
Not in natural institutions considered independently of God.
For no joining established in the natural can make the sovereign Lord subject to His own creation.
The final jurisdiction belongs to Christ.
