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Articles
Negotiable
On the first Friday night while overseas, I traveled with Jhun Bautista to his place arriving there about midnight. The next morning I was looking around outside his nepa-house at the mountains and beautiful green rice fields. An elderly widow, an aunt of Jhun’s, came walking by and spoke to us. After speaking for a couple of minutes, she asked. "Are you negotiable?" I responded no, that I was married and had children. But this raises the question, who is "negotiable" to get married. I find 4 classes of people who are negotiable to get married scripturally in the sight of God.
1.) Those who have never been married have a right to get married. In I Cor.7:2 Paul said, "Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband." Single people, who have never been married, are "negotiable" to get married.
2.) Those who have been married and have lost their spouse to death have a right to be married to another. I Cor.7:39, "The wife is bound by the law as long as her husband liveth; but if her husband be dead, she is at liberty to be married to whom she will; only in the Lord." Paul said in Romans 7:2, "For the woman which hath an husband is bound by the law to her husband so long as he liveth; but if the husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband.." So a widow or widower is "negotiable" to be married again.
3.) The third class of people that have a scriptural right to get married is those who have divorced their spouses for the cause of fornication. "And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery." Matt.19:9. The innocent party has a right to get married again, they are "negotiable."
4.) A forth class of people that have a right to get "married" is 2 people who separated but have "negotiated" their reconciliation to each other [not with someone else]. "But and if she depart, let her remain unmarried, or be reconciled to her husband: and let not the husband put away his wife." I Cor.7:11. These are the only classes who are "negotiable" to get married.
