Is Remarriage a Continuous State of Adultery?

A careful answer for remarried Christians carrying fear, repentance, and the question of present faithfulness

By Paul Widdershoven · Updated July 31, 2026

Paul Widdershoven is a writer on Pender Island, British Columbia, listening for the union of God and humanity revealed in Jesus Christ.

For many divorced and remarried Christians, this is not an abstract theological question.

They have heard the words of Jesus:

“Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery.”

And they have wondered whether their present marriage remains adulterous every day it continues.

Some have been told that repentance requires leaving their present spouse. Others remain married but live under the fear that their union can never be blessed by God.

But is that what Jesus was revealing?

Why Did Jesus Call Remarriage Adultery?

The Pharisees asked Jesus:

“Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?”

They were asking about permission. Jesus answered by revealing what marriage is.

He directed them back to the beginning:

“The two will become one flesh.”

Then He said:

“Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

The men questioning Jesus treated marriage as a legal arrangement a husband could end by issuing the proper document. Jesus revealed that the certificate did not tell the whole truth.

A man could be legally divorced and still be unfaithful to the union God had joined. He could satisfy the requirements of the law while treating his wife as disposable.

That is why Jesus called the subsequent remarriage adultery. The word exposes what the divorce certificate concealed: the first union had been betrayed so that another could take its place.

Jesus was not creating a new mechanism of condemnation. He was bringing hidden unfaithfulness into the light.

An Act of Adultery or a Permanent State?

Some conclude that because the second marriage continues, the adultery must also continue. Every day of the present marriage - and every act of intimacy within it - is therefore treated as another act of adultery.

But Jesus does not explicitly say this.

He identifies the remarriage arising from wrongful divorce as adultery because it completes the abandonment of the first union. That is not the same as declaring that the people within the new marriage can never become faithful to one another.

There is a difference between recognizing that a relationship began in sin and declaring that it can never become a place of obedience.

A marriage may have begun through selfishness, deception, adultery, or the wrongful destruction of another marriage. Those things should not be minimized. People may have been deeply wounded and families divided.

But the New Testament never instructs remarried Christians to divorce again in order to become obedient to God.

Once another marriage has been formed, there are new promises, responsibilities, and people joined to the story. There may also be children whose lives are bound to that home.

Ending the present marriage cannot restore an untouched beginning. It creates another abandonment.

What Does Repentance Require?

Grace does not require us to rewrite the past.

If a present marriage began through adultery or wrongful divorce, repentance may require acknowledging that:

• A former spouse was treated unjustly.
• A marriage was abandoned for selfish reasons.
• Another relationship contributed to the destruction of a family.
• Children or others were wounded.
• Legal or religious reasoning was used to escape responsibility.

Where appropriate and possible, repentance may lead to apology, restitution, honourable co-parenting, or the acknowledgement of harm.

But reconciliation with a former spouse is not always the same as restoring the former marriage - especially when one or both people have remarried.

Much of the past cannot be undone. Repentance is therefore not simply an attempt to reconstruct the life we would have had if we had never failed.

It is a turning away from the hardness of heart that treated another person as disposable.

That turning must also shape how the present spouse is treated.

If repentance requires abandoning the person to whom one is now married, then the betrayal of one covenant is answered by the betrayal of another. The same disposability Jesus confronted is repeated in the name of obedience.

The more truthful question is: What does faithfulness look like now?

“And Such Were Some of You”

Paul writes to the Corinthians:

“Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers...will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

He does not say, “That is what some of you will always remain.”

He says: “That is what some of you were.”

The movement is not from guilty people to people who have successfully reconstructed a sinless history. It is from an identity ruled by sin to a life received in Christ.

This does not make adultery insignificant. It reveals that adultery is not greater than the One who makes all things new.

The gospel does not say that our past actions were not truly ours. It says they do not possess the authority to name us forever.

The truth is not honoured by denying adultery. But neither is it honoured by refusing the new name God gives:

Washed. Sanctified. Justified.

The past can be confessed without becoming our permanent identity.

Faithfulness in the Present Marriage

The present marriage should now become a place of faithfulness.

That does not mean pretending its beginning was righteous. Forgiveness does not declare that no one was harmed or that the first marriage was meaningless.

The former spouse still matters. The first union was real. Consequences may remain long after forgiveness has been received.

But remembrance is different from condemnation.

A healed wound does not prove that there was never an injury. It reveals that the injury did not have the final word.

The present couple may now learn to embody what marriage was always meant to reveal:

• Love that gives rather than uses
• Truth rather than concealment
• Mercy rather than accusation
• Faithfulness rather than disposability
• Forgiveness that does not deny the wounds of the past

This is especially difficult when the present marriage began as an affair. Such a beginning should not be romanticized or rewritten. “God forgave us” must never become a way of silencing those who were harmed.

Yet even here, Scripture does not prescribe another divorce as the necessary fruit of repentance.

“God can redeem this” is never permission to betray someone. It is hope for those who cannot change the beginning but desire to live truthfully now.

God's redemption is not limited to returning us to the place where we would have stood if we had never sinned. He meets us where we actually stand and calls forth life there.

Remarriage Is Not an Unending Sentence

Jesus' words about adultery are severe because marriage is not disposable and people are not possessions.

He exposed the hardness of heart that allowed a man to discard one woman and take another while remaining legally righteous in his own eyes.

But those words should not be turned into another instrument of hardness.

To declare that remarried Christians can never be anything other than adulterers makes their sin more enduring than the cleansing of Christ. To tell them that repentance requires another divorce answers broken covenant with another broken covenant.

The way forward is neither denial nor endless condemnation.

It is truth, repentance, forgiveness, and present faithfulness.

A remarried couple may carry a history that needs to be confessed. There may be consequences that grace does not erase. But they are not condemned to reenact the circumstances of their beginning forever.

The question is no longer whether they can create a past without failure.

They cannot.

The question is whether the life of Christ can be manifested here - in this marriage, with this history, among these people.

The answer of the gospel is yes.

Not because adultery was unimportant.

Not because covenant can be broken without consequence.

But because Christ is not defeated by the truth about us.

He does not redeem an imaginary version of our lives. He redeems the lives we actually bring Him.

The past can be named without remaining our name.

That is not denial.

That is redemption.

Continue Exploring

For the wider context of Jesus' words, read What Did Jesus Say About Divorce and Remarriage?

For a closer examination of Matthew 19:9 and the porneia exception, read Can a Christian Remarry After Adultery?

For the relationship between Jesus' teaching, safety, and destructive marriages, read Is Divorce Biblical in Cases of Abuse?