A former porn star (or glamour model, depending on where you read your news) has received a 10-month suspended sentence after admitting four counts of bigamy.  Somewhat bizarrely, she is now living in the home of her new boyfriend’s parents. The life of her fifth ‘husband’, who learned that she was already married as they travelled to Scotland for their honeymoon, ‘has been ruined,’ according to his sister.

It would be easy to dismiss what the police have described as Emily Horne’s selfish and cruel actions. And yet, if we took the biblical teaching on marriage more seriously, we might discover that serial bigamy is a problem far more prevalent than we realise. In Matthew 5:31-32 Jesus taught, ‘It has been said, “Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.” But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, causes her to become an adulteress, and anyone who marries the divorced woman commits adultery.’ When it comes to divorce, the legal piece of paper is not the significant issue. Presumably therefore, when it comes to marriage, for which legal pieces of paper as we know them have only existed since the 1753 Marriage Act, the certificate is also not the significant issue. Rather, the significance is located in the sexual union and the couple’s commitment to their relationship. Both the Old and New Testaments equate sex and marriage and indicate that sex has permanent spiritual and physical consequences (see Exodus 22:16 and 1Corinthians 6:16). On this basis, anyone who breaks off a sexual union becomes an adulterer/adulteress and anyone who embarks on a sexual union with someone who has had a previous sexual partner commits adultery. In other words, there is no distinction between pre-marital unfaithfulness and marital unfaithfulness. And pre-marital unfaithfulness would in fact render a pure partner guilty of adultery.

The question is, what consequences should we expect for people apparently ‘guilty of adultery’? By ‘consequences’, I do not mean the lack of forgiveness shown by some churches towards those who have been through a divorce, whose ‘sin’ is judged to disqualify them from service in any kind of Christian leadership – based on a particular understanding of verses such as 1Timothy 3:12. Rather, what is the baggage that we might need to be aware of in the lives of those for whom we share a pastoral responsibility, if we are more effectively to help others lay their burdens at the foot of the Cross and discover that there is no condemnation in Christ? That such spiritual baggage is a reality is captured, for instance, in the testimony of 28-year-old Kate, quoted in our book Just Sex: Is it ever just sex?: ‘Why should my previous private actions between two consenting adults follow me into our marriage, and be able to cast such a dark shadow over it? … I realised that my previous sexual experiences, separated from a holistic committed emotional and spiritual relationship, had created a chasm within me. This division I had transported into our marriage, where it festered, and threatened to destroy my and my husband’s sense of ‘being’, as well as any real chance of intimacy between us.’

Perhaps we can find a clue to a possible answer by considering the circumstances in which remarriage is permitted following divorce. Romans 7 observes, ‘By law a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he is alive, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law of marriage. So then, if she marries another man while her husband is still alive, she is called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is released from that law and is not an adulteress, even though she marries another man.’ Clearly it would be false reasoning to suppose that murdering a former sexual partner would be a way to avoid becoming guilt of adultery. So, if we feel adultery is a more forgivable sin than murder (although both were punishable by death under Mosaic Law), then surely the death of Christ is sufficient to free us from spiritual bondage to all past sins – sexual or otherwise. As Romans 7 goes on, ‘You also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God … By dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.’

So, the reality is our past actions often condemn us before our own consciences and this often affects our subsequent ability to engage in healthy relationships. Yet, Christ does not condemn but offers everyone the chance to start and pursue a new life as a ‘one woman man’ (or ‘one man woman’), to give a better rendering of the qualifications for spiritual leadership found in 1Timothy 3:12. After all, Jesus is the one who spoke words of hope to the woman who, like Emily Horne, Jesus told ‘You have had five husbands and the man you now have is not your husband’ (John 4:18), and encouraged the woman caught in adultery, after her accusers had left, ‘Go now and leave your life of sin.’ (John 8:11)

For more on bigamy, see Professor Gordon Wenham’s article Sex and Violence in Genesis

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