with a right respect for marriage. His legal remarriage still holds good before the law of the land and must have proper legal grounds in order to be dissolved in court. Even if his former, unscripturally divorced wife should die or remarry after he did, he is not thereby automatically reinstated. He must still repent, confess, make application for reinstatement and submit to the probation period. If the repentance bears the required fruitage of a proper fulfillment of his obligations in the new legal marriage and if then he is fully readmitted to the congregation, he is ever after disqualified from holding any official, exemplary, responsible office or privilege in the congregation. His private past in the truth is not a good example.

42. Why are those who uphold the divinely imposed obligations of marriage happy?

⁴² Marriage true and clean is a privilege from Jehovah God. He himself arranged it, and “there is no unrighteousness in him.” (Ps. 92:15, AS) Happy are the Christians that are faithful to the divinely imposed obligations of their marriage. They uphold the true dignity and honorableness of this divine institution. They take to heart the Christian commandment: “Let marriage be honorable among all, and the marriage bed be without defilement, for God will judge fornicators and adulterers.” (Heb. 13:4, NW) They enjoy not primarily the pleasures of the fleshly relationship but chiefly the spiritual opportunities that this close union of the two sexes affords them. This fulfills the idealness of marriage and earns God’s approval and blessing. It makes wedlock a help toward gaining salvation and serving the Most High God. It vindicates Jehovah God in lovingly instituting this provision for man’s joy and for fulfilling the divine purpose.

‘He That Marries Not Does Better’

1. (a) What proves that an unmarried man is not half a man? (b) What is the only kind of bride Jesus Christ will ever have?

MARRIAGE has joys and blessings that God purposed it to have. By the attraction that he put into play between the sexes it is normal for man and woman to marry, not even leaving out Christians who are in the flesh. However, for Christians God’s Word does not take the view of some tribes or peoples that a man has not reached his full estate unless he is married, so that if he is not married he is only half a man. To take this view means to downgrade Jesus Christ, for he died a virgin, a single man, at the age of thirty-three and a half years. He died unmarried according to his heavenly Father’s will. But by this course of self-control and obedience he wins a spiritual “bride,” a congregation of 144,000 faithful followers who love him with a love surpassing that of a man for a woman, of a husband for a wife. This spiritual bride whom the Father