“I just want to say thank you Jesus for the good works you have done for me. I lost my job for a long time for no good reason but I noticed I was manipulated by a woman who pretended to be in love with me who nevertheless was the cause of my problem. I contacted you and got some bottles of your oil, by the grace of God after the prayers, God answered me and I was reinstated back to my job after eight years. I am most grateful to God…” Mr. Jemmy C. Email [email protected]
“Today, I can boldly tell the world that God answered my prayer through the use of the oil Prof Uzorma gave to me. Some of my uncles were after my life due to the lands my father left behind before his death in 1999. After the burial, two of them came and offered money to some elders who in turn supported them to claim my father’s land. As the only son, they started threatening me using spiritual means. They have shared the land with my father when he was alive…When it became obvious that they could not claim my inheritance, they resulted to planting charms and poison on the land. I entered into the land on the 4th of May 2002 and became very sick. My two legs got swollen up to the extent that I lost everything I worked for in life while treating the poison. I went to different places including native doctors and churches all to no avail until I was made to contact you through a friend in Benin City who also assisted me to order two bottles of your oil. When the prayer and the fasting were on, my wife also assisted me to anoint all the plots of land. When I became healed after using your oil, the man who wanted me dead died in a motor accident on the 25th of Dec. 2015. Again, the other of my uncle who joined him to trouble me went to bed and did not wake up again…His first son called to inform me that his late father appeared to him in the dream on the 10th of January 2016 instructing him to tell all his family members to refrain from dragging my lands with me. This is unbelievable but God did it for me…The most important is that I am healed and my lands restored to me as they all got what they wished for me…” (Names and contact withheld).
Jesus say, “But I say unto you that 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 commiteth adultery” {K.J.V}. “But I tell you whoever dismisses and repudiates and divorces his wife, except on the grounds of unfaithfulness {sexual immorality} causes her to commit adultery and whoever marries a woman who has been divorced commits adultery.” {Amplified}. Matthew 5:32.
From the king James version of the Bible and the amplified version, the words of Christ supports divorce only on the ground of “fornication and unfaithfulness” which must have connotation with sexual immorality.
The Greek verb root used here is apoluo which means to loose from, sever by loosening, undo according to Thayer, “it is used in the sence of divorce as apoluo ten gumaika to dismiss from the house, to repudiate, and then he lists all the references. Strong’s Greek Dictionary for the New Testament defines apoluo as, “to free fully i.e, {lit} relieve release, dismiss or let die, pardon, or divorce, let go, set at liberty.”
Another book, The Greek and English Lexicon to the New Testament by Parkhurst, defines apoluo as, “to divorce a wife, discharge or dismiss her by loosing the bond of marriage.” It is very clear on the bassis of my study that the word apoluo refers not just to separate but to divorce completely. Lexical works seems to point this out as other writers, researchers, theologians, philosophers and other Bible readers have all agreed on this issue.
Now let us consider the exception clause for it is very imperactive to enable us understand the teaching of Christ. If you read the four gospels very well, you will understand that the reason why Mark and Luke omitted the exception clause in their writings could be that no Jew, Roman or Greek ever doubted that adultery constituted grounds for divorce.
Let us look next at the original rendering of this phrase. According to the Nestle Greek Text, Matthew 5:32 reads, Parektos Lo’gou Porneias {apart from a matter of fornication} Matt. 9:19 read me epi porneia {not of “for” fornication}. According to Thayer Porneia refers to illicit sexual intercourse in general. This general understanding of the term Porneia supports the use of the Amplified Bible version of “Unfaithfulness” {sexual immorality} it also authenticates the New International version {NIV} term, “Marital unfaithfulness.” Interpreters of the Bible point out that “the word translated “unchastity” is porneia. It also may refer to premarital unchastity or adultery which in the Greek is Moikeia. “Hermas {Mandates IV 1.5} uses the two words indiscrimately to refer to the wife’s sin.
I want to profoundly pay homage to the work of a good Christian scholar in discussing the passage in Mtthew, the Kittle- works points out that: “In both verses porneia refers to extramarital intercourse on the part of the wife, which in practice is adultery… The drift of the clauses, then, is not that the Christian husband should his wife be unfaithful, is permitted to divorce her, but that if he is legally forced to do this he should not be open to criticism if by her conduct his wife has made the continuation of the marriage quite impossible.”
At this juncture, it is clear that the term “sexual impurity” or unchastity” is viewed as an act of adultery since as we have noted in the use of the word porneia which in all totality refers to various kinds of sexual misbehavior, and not just sexual sin before marriage.
The word porneia is used to indicate a variety of sexual immorality such as sexual intercourse with an unmarried person, or even homosexuality or bestiality. Since sexual intercourse results in the partners becoming one flesh, there is something about adultery which dissolves the marriage bond. Thus the saying of Christ, “Again I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for unchastity, and marries another, commits adultery” Matt.19:9. Here Jesus seems to be talking when remarriage would or would not be considered. This verse could read thus, “Whoever shall put way his wife because of unchastity and still marry another doth not commit adultery.” Nothing here suggest that Jesus forbids remarriage of people divorced because of unfaithfulness, fornication, etc he never reflected negatively upon remarriage in such case.
The Hebrew word for fornication is Zanah in Jere. 3:1, it is used when telling about the conduct of a married woman, and in Amos 7:17, a married woman is called a fornicator {Zanah}. Fornication is defined in the International Standard Biblical Encyclopedia with Zanah and means to ‘commit adultery, especially of the female and less frequently of mere fornication, seldom of involuntary ravishment.