Can a Christian Remarry After Adultery?

A short reflection on marriage, law, and the union revealed in Christ

By Paul Widdershoven

Jesus’ words in Matthew 19:9 are often treated as a formula:

“Whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another commits adultery.”

From this sentence, many Christians have tried to determine who may remarry:

The spouse who committed adultery may not.

The spouse who was betrayed may.

A person whose divorce occurred for another reason remains married before God.

A later marriage may therefore be an ongoing state of adultery.

These conclusions do not all follow as simply as they appear to. More importantly, the search for a perfectly administered exception can prevent us from hearing the answer Jesus was actually giving.

Jesus was answering a test about divorce

The Pharisees did not ask Jesus how a wounded spouse might heal after betrayal. They asked whether a man could divorce his wife “for any cause.”

The question was centred on the husband’s right to dismiss.

Jesus returned them to Genesis:

“The two shall become one flesh.”

Only after revealing that union did He speak of divorce, remarriage, and adultery. His warning cannot be separated from that movement.

Jesus was not saying that marriage is a contract that remains intact unless one approved violation activates an exit clause. He was exposing the contradiction between “one flesh” and the attempt to dispose of one spouse in order to take another.

The exception does not become the centre.

Union does.

What does porneia mean?

The word translated “sexual immorality” is porneia. It can refer broadly to unlawful sexual relations or sexual immorality. Christians have proposed narrower meanings in Matthew, including an unlawful union, incestuous marriage, or sexual unfaithfulness during betrothal.

Those possibilities matter when interpreting the passage, but the word by itself does not settle every question about divorce and remarriage.

Matthew includes the exception in Matthew 5:32 and 19:9. Mark 10 and Luke 16 record Jesus’ warning without it. That does not require a contradiction, but it should make us cautious about building an entire system from one phrase while ignoring the setting and movement of Jesus’ answer.

At minimum, Matthew recognizes that sexual immorality is not incidental to the question. Adultery contradicts the embodied faithfulness to which marriage bears witness. It brings a third person into the “one flesh” relationship and may devastate trust.

But Jesus did not say:

Find porneia, and you have found the person God will permit you to discard.

He had just exposed the hardness involved in using law that way.

Does adultery automatically end a marriage?

Adultery can rupture a marriage profoundly. It may lead to separation or divorce. It may also be met by confession, repentance, forgiveness, and the slow rebuilding of trust.

Scripture does not require the betrayed spouse to pretend nothing happened. Neither does it make reconciliation a performance that can be demanded before truth has been spoken and safety restored.

Forgiveness and reconciliation are related, but they are not identical.

Forgiveness does not depend upon denying the betrayal. Reconciliation requires a shared return to truth. It cannot be produced by one spouse while the other continues deception, entitlement, or coercion.

The betrayed spouse is not responsible for manufacturing the appearance of union alone.

Is the “innocent spouse” free to remarry?

Many Christian traditions understand Matthew’s exception to mean that the spouse betrayed by sexual immorality may divorce and later remarry without committing adultery. That is a reasonable reading of the exception clause.

Other traditions understand Jesus to permit separation but not remarriage, or to refer to invalid unions rather than ordinary marital unfaithfulness.

The disagreement is real. It should be acknowledged rather than hidden behind certainty.

Yet the phrase “innocent spouse” can also conceal something. It invites the reader to establish their future by proving that they occupy the correct side of a moral division.

Truth may require us to identify who betrayed whom. Responsibility must not be blurred. But innocence is not a spiritual currency with which a person purchases permission to live again.

Our life is not secured by winning the case.

What about the spouse who committed adultery?

This is where religious interpretation can become especially severe.

A person may confess adultery, repent, lose the marriage, and live for years with the belief that remarriage is forever forbidden. If they have already remarried, they may be told that their present marriage remains adulterous every day it continues.

But what would repentance require then? Another divorce? The breaking of another household? The abandonment of vows now being lived faithfully?

Jesus’ warning against using divorce to legitimize adultery should not be converted into a command to multiply separation.

The gospel does not proclaim that Christ forgives every sin except the one whose civil consequences include a later marriage. Nor does it teach that an act of adultery acquires the power to name a person forever.

Paul writes:

“Such were some of you. But you were washed.”

The past is not denied. It is no longer the source of identity.

A Christian who committed adultery should not escape truth through religious language. Repentance may include confession, restitution where possible, acceptance of consequences, and a transformed way of living. But repentance is a turning into truth, not a lifelong performance of self-condemnation.

Is a second marriage continuing adultery?

Adultery is not simply the condition of having a marriage certificate after a previous divorce. Jesus named the betrayal and hardness that legal procedure could disguise.

A later marriage may have begun in deception or at another person’s expense. That beginning should be faced honestly. Yet a present marriage is also a real relationship containing real persons, promises, responsibilities, and possibly children.

Calling it “continuing adultery” can freeze everyone inside the moment of its origin. It can imply that faithfulness now consists of another act of separation.

Scripture does not present repeated destruction as the means by which a person finally becomes clean.

The life of Christ produces different fruit: truth rather than concealment, fidelity rather than betrayal, self-giving rather than possession, peace rather than accusation.

The identity beneath the question

The question “May I remarry?” is understandable. But beneath it there is often another:

What must be true about my past before God will allow me a future?

If the answer depends finally upon proving that we were the innocent party, identifying the correct exception, or achieving the approved marital status, we remain within an identity formed by judgment.

The tree of the knowledge of good and evil can produce harsh doctrine or compassionate doctrine. Either way, it asks us to discover life by establishing who is right and who is wrong.

Christ reveals another beginning.

“If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation.”

This is not permission to call betrayal good. It is the proclamation that sin is not our creator.

The one who committed adultery is not eternally “the adulterer.”

The one who was betrayed is not eternally “the innocent spouse.”

The one who divorced is not eternally “the divorced person.”

In Christ, the old identity that must justify or condemn itself through judgment has died. A new way of seeing becomes possible.

So, can a Christian remarry after adultery?

Matthew 19:9 gives serious scriptural ground for recognizing sexual betrayal as a circumstance in which divorce and remarriage may occur without making the betrayed spouse the adulterer. Christians should be honest that faithful interpreters differ over the precise scope of the exception.

But no verse should be used to reduce a person to a permanent category or to call a present life irredeemable.

The better question is not merely whether remarriage can be defended.

It is:

What would the life of Christ bear as fruit here?

That may require grief, confession, patience, boundaries, reconciliation, divorce, or faithfulness within a present marriage. It cannot be decided responsibly by an article that does not know the persons involved.

But this can be proclaimed:

Your past is not your creator.

Your failure is not your name.

The union of God and humanity revealed in Christ is not undone by adultery, divorce, or remarriage. From that union, truth can finally be faced without fear—and new fruit can grow.

This article introduces the fuller treatment in Paul Widdershoven’s short report, From the Beginning: What Jesus Revealed About Marriage, Divorce, and Remarriage.