A reader from Washington asks: "What can you say about New Testament teaching concerning divorce and remarriage?"
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It is easy, when discussing this sensitive subject, to confuse two very distinct questions. One might inquire, "What is God's will concerning marriage and divorce?" Or one might ask, "May the person who has transgressed God's command and come short of his will, then be forgiven and go forward to do his will in the future?"
To the first inquiry, I think, Christians of all denominations are essentially agreed. God's original plan and permanent ideal is for one man to be joined to one woman in faithful, monogamous, life-long union, patterned after the union of Christ and the church (Matt. 19:2-6; Eph. 5:21-32). God hates divorce, said the last writing prophet of the Old Testament (Mal. 2:16), and Jesus' prohibition of divorce indicates that God thinks no more highly of it today (Matt. 5:32; 19:6, 9).
The so-called "exception clause" in Matthew 19:9 is really no exception to God's ideal at all, as if Jesus were here saying that there is one circumstance under which a person who divorces a spouse does a good thing. The Lord here refers to Deuteronomy 24:1-4, in which the reason given for divorce (literally "an uncleanness") is actually rather unclear, but the fundamental prohibition is absolutely clear -- the woman divorced by a husband and remarried to another man is forbidden to return to the first husband, even if the second husband also divorces her. Jesus cuts through all the rabbinic rationalizations of his day to call his disciples back to God's original purpose for marriage.
Is divorce the "unforgiveable sin"? Certainly not in Scripture. Is a person, once divorced, still married? Obviously not. May unmarried people (whether never-married or formerly married) marry and attempt to live according to God's original and continuing ideal? Of course, and who would dare say otherwise? The Apostle Paul thus advises: "Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be released. Are you released from a wife? Do not seek a wife. But if you should marry, you have not sinned" (1 Cor. 7:27-28).
This is a thorny topic about which godly and well-informed Christian teachers often differ. The believer for whom these are present, practical questions must therefore study the Bible carefully, pray long and hard for divine insight and understanding, then live according to his or her own conscience as taught by the Holy Spirit. Only by such a course may one avoid both the libertine spirit of our age on the one hand, and the legalisms to which even well-meaning religious people are sometimes prone on the other.
A subscriber writes concerning two single Christians, both previously married and divorced, who are considering marriage. The woman's first husband had numerous affairs over a period of years. The man's first wife withheld conjugal rights for more than 20 years of marriage. "Is there a scriptural reason," the inquirer asks, "against this couple marrying?"
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It seems abundantly clear to me, from the whole of Scripture, that God is for marriage and that he is against divorce (Gen. 2:24; Mal. 2:16). No matter what the cause, divorce is a tragic thing which reveals a fall from God's ideal plan for people's happiness and God's glory. Those who have gone through it know best how terrible it really is. They do not need convincing of that point.
Divorce, though wrong, is not unforgiveable. Sometimes evangelical Christians have spoken as though it were -- and sometimes they have been unwilling to forgive, even though God has forgiven and forgotten.
When people are divorced -- for whatever reason -- they are no longer married. It is good, as a general rule, for people to be married rather than to be alone (Gen. 2:18). God empowers some people for celibate singleness, but that is a special gift (1 Cor. 7:7-9). For Christian people, a subsequent marriage is a new beginning -- committed afresh, this time, to conform more nearly to God's ideal. Hopefully, no more divorce.
We all come short of God's perfect standards (Rom. 3:23). That is why Jesus died for sinners. As we repent of past shortcomings, we may move into the future knowing that God has forgiven us and given us a new chance (Psalm 32:5, 8). That is surely as true of divorce as it is concerning any other sin or error (John 4:15-18). I wish your friends God's guidance and strength as they move forward in his grace.
"I have heard it said," writes a gracEmail subscriber from the Southeast USA, "that anyone who divorces a spouse for an 'unscriptural' reason and marries someone else must leave their present mate and remarry the original spouse, or else remain unmarried. It is argued that Matthew 19:9 describes an ongoing action which continues simultaneously with any subsequent marriage following an 'unscriptural' divorce. What are your thoughts?"
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I think this more closely resembles the teaching of the Pharisees and the Scribes than that of the Lord Jesus Christ (compare Matthew 23:4 with Matthew 11:28-30). In Jesus' day, the rabbinic schools of Hillel and Shammai differed on the basis for "lawful" divorces. In Matthew 19, Jesus responds to hypocritical Pharisees who tried to trap him into taking sides with one school or the other. In answer to their trick question, Jesus points to God's original intent for marriage -- which did not include divorce at all. Jesus does not play the "loophole game." He holds up God's ideal, to which no one has perfectly conformed, and he forgives repentant sinners in this area of life as well as in others (Matt. 5:27-28; Mark 10:2-9; John 8:3-11).
People who approach God seeking legalistic loopholes always miss the gospel truths that God loves sinners, that we all fit in that category, and that Jesus' substitutionary death and resurrection enable us to die to any messed-up past and to begin life afresh as new creations in Jesus Christ. (Modern-day Pharisees even err based on the Law, since Deuteronomy 24:1-4, the text to which Jesus refers in Matthew 19:9, explicitly forbids a return to the first spouse following a second divorce.)
To "commit adultery" is to violate the marriage covenant. Although God hates divorce (Malachi 2:16), once a marriage is over it does not exist any longer, and one cannot "adulterate" a covenant which no longer exists. A remarried person does not commit adultery by living faithfully within that marriage. What you have heard distorts Jesus' teaching and contradicts his example in relating to real people. When Jesus encountered a contrite woman taken in adultery, his response was to forgive her first, then to urge an upright life in the future (John 8:3-11). That is very different from the approach of those today who first condemn, then command impossible deeds as proof of repentance.
A preacher asks concerning Deuteronomy 24:1, the text to which Jesus refers in his own teaching about divorce, "Does 'uncleanness' in this passage mean that the woman has been immoral?"
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That has always been open to question, among ancient Jewish rabbis as well as among Christians today. Where English translations say "uncleanness" or "indecency" (NASB) in Deut. 24:1, the Greek Old Testament used by the earliest church and known as the Septuagint has "disgraceful (aschemon) thing (pragma)." A few verses earlier, the same two words refer to excrement which Israelites are to bury and not leave on the ground because God "walks in the midst" of their camp and must not see "anything indecent" (Deut. 23:13-14 / Greek OT 24:14-15).
This adjective describes Shechem's rape of Dinah in Genesis 34:7, and Paul uses it when he speaks of the "unseemly" parts of the human body (1 Cor. 12:23). The verb form of this same word means "to behave unseemly" or "to act indecorously." That might involve an excessive judicial beating (Deut. 25:3), an infant girl abandoned naked and "bare" (Ezek. 16:7, 22, 39), or a naked and "bare" Israel as God's unfaithful wife (Ezek. 23:29). The New Tesament uses this verb in saying that love "does not behave itself unseemly" (1 Cor. 13:5), and in speaking of a father who thinks he is acting "unbecomingly" toward his virgin daughter (1 Cor. 7:36).
What might be most interesting about Deuteronomy 24:1-4, to which our Lord alludes in his own teaching about divorce (Matt. 5:31; 9:7-9; Mk. 10:4-5), is that it explicitly FORBIDS what traditional teaching today often REQUIRES, namely that a woman divorced from one husband and married to a second husband divorce the second husband and remarry the first one. To do that, according to the author of Deuteronomy, would be an "abomination" and would "bring sin on the land."
Jesus calls us to rise above legalistic quibblings on this subject and to seek to fulfill God's original and highest purpose for marriage. The fact that human beings never fully live up to it does not lower the standard. The good news is that, with God, it is never too late to seek divine forgiveness for past failings and to take up the quest anew.
For more on divorce and remarriage, click here.