Red Letters 20 - "On Divorce"
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Deuteronomy 5:1-6 English Standard Version (ESV)
1 And Moses summoned all Israel and said to them, “Hear, O Israel, the statutes and the rules that I speak in your hearing today, and you shall learn them and be careful to do them. 2 The Lord our God made a covenant with us in Horeb. 3 Not with our fathers did the Lord make this covenant, but with us, who are all of us here alive today.
4 The Lord spoke with you face to face at the mountain, out of the midst of the fire, 5 while I stood between the Lord and you at that time, to declare to you the word of the Lord. For you were afraid because of the fire, and you did not go up into the mountain. He said:
6 “‘I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
1 Corinthians 7:10-16 English Standard Version (ESV)
10 To the married I give this charge (not I, but the Lord): the wife should not separate from her husband 11 (but if she does, she should remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband), and the husband should not divorce his wife. 12 To the rest I say (I, not the Lord) that if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her.13 If any woman has a husband who is an unbeliever, and he consents to live with her, she should not divorce him. 14 For the unbelieving husband is made holy because of his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy because of her husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy. 15 But if the unbelieving partner separates, let it be so. In such cases the brother or sister is not enslaved. God has called you to peace. 16 For how do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife?
Matthew 5:31-32 English Standard Version (ESV)
31 “It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ 32 But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the grounds of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.
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I will be honest… This is the sermon that has so far scared me the most. This is because I know the realities of our society these days where, unfortunately, divorce happens. Yet it is something that I do not have much experience with and so this is not an easy topic for me. But I trust that the Lord will guide our hearts as we look at these passages together.
Last week as we explored what Jesus had to say about lust. We touched briefly on how God created man and woman to be in a union a covenant relationship which is meant to echo and symbolize the relationship between Christ and the Church. And so Biblically we know that this was God’s design and intention for marriage and that in it’s healthiest place a marriage was supposed to be a God glorifying union of self-giving and self-sacrifice… of love and generosity… of respect and protection… A bond that was to point to God in it’s holiness and in it’s beauty.
However, we know that when the curse of sin entered into humanity it distorted and tainted everything that was meant to be good and beautiful became… not so. We must, however, be reminded that this is precisely why Jesus came. Jesus came to redeem us from the curse of sin because we were (and are) incapable of doing it on our own. And so as Jesus preaches, we recognize that though He is elevating the standard of holy, righteous living, He does so with the added promise that it is in Him that all things would be fulfilled. So we remember that while He preached on anger, and lust, and adultery, and on divorce… He also sat with the sinners, tax collectors and prostitutes. He sat with the very people who should have no place amongst the righteous because He was the one who would be their gateway to holiness.
Last week we examined what Jesus said about looking at a person with lust and how it was the same as committing adultery in ones heart. Jesus says that to anyone who divorces their wife, except on the ground of adultery, causes His wife to commit adultery, and that whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery. These two statements from Christ on adultery are often linked together, because they both address the sinners tendency to be unfaithful. On the surface it seems like Jesus has it out for anyone who divorces. But we must remember that Jesus’ concerns are always deeper than the surface level concerns that we have. He was looking at the heart of the matter rather than the ink on the pages so to speak. He was looking at how divorce was being manipulated for personal benefit and elevated it to a higher standard.
For the ancient Israelites, the law of divorce was used and abused for the benefit of the man. And you’ll notice that Jesus is particular in speaking primarily to men here because in those days it was a patriarchal society, where the men would take the law of Deuteronomy that states that a man could write a certificate of divorce for a woman and took advantage of that for that for any number of reasons. Ultimately benefiting the man rather than the woman. However, the law was never meant to be of more benefit for the man over the woman. In fact the law was never meant to benefit anyone over the other! But that was how the law was being used, for personal benefit. Which is something we continue to do even today.
From the beginning the Bible says that God created both men and women to live in a union, a marriage, that honoured one another. And in doing so, pointing to the mystery of Christ as the groom and the Church as His bride. This is Jesus’ problem with divorce. Perhaps then it is not so much that Jesus has a problem with divorce itself, but Jesus has a problem with the sin of unfaithfulness.
Jesus says don’t divorce because His concern is beyond an ethical question of what is permissible or not. Jesus says don’t divorce because divorce was never meant to be an option. In fact, God’s design, if untainted by sin, would have led to a world where every marriage was created and ordained by God to be the beautiful God glorifying relationship He intended.
And so Jesus is saying that that was the goal.
That was the standard.
That God’s good design was a design of faithfulness.
Faithfulness to God.
Which would flow out into a faithfulness to one another.
But then sin came in and introduced selfishness, jealousy, anger, resentment, sadness, anxiety, shame, abuse and violence. It introduced adultery. All of which would destroy faithfulness. All of which would make a joke out of the God-centred holy covenant relationship of marriage.
I think at this point it would be important to say that we can not make a broad general statement about divorce. It would be difficult to say that no matter what kind of situation a person is in, divorce is never the right thing to do. I believe to say such a thing would be unloving and ungracious to many who have had to endure the pain that divorce causes.
Wayne Grudem, a leading complementarian theologian wrote an article on why, though he once defended the traditional protestant view of “no divorce on any grounds other than adultery or desertion” has since changed his mind. And his writing is an example of why it is so vital that we learn to interpret Scripture through the Scripture. As Christians, we must learn to look, never myopically at just a single page or passage, but to always look at how they fit in the grand picture of God’s whole word.
Grudem does this for us and points to what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 7:10-16 as an argument that there are grounds that may legitimize divorce…
1 Corinthians 7:15 But if the unbelieving partner separates, let it be so. In such cases the brother or sister is not enslaved. God has called you to peace.
Grudem’s focus is on the words “In such cases” which he discovered in the greek to appear nowhere else in the Bible, but looking at other contemporary Greek literature was used to signify similar situations. So the words “in such cases” could be then understood to mean “and in any cases that similarly destroy a marriage” as adultery or desertion. So if every attempt to restore an abusive marriage has not helped to bring reconciliation in the marriage from violence, harm and humiliation, and the damage and ongoing threat is incorrigible… whatever it the circumstances remain that could potentially destroy a marriage as much as adultery or desertion… May in fact be grounds for divorce.
We look at Jesus, who though condemning the sin of adultery, sat with sinners, and dined with tax collectors and prostitutes. Then we know that His graciousness… would understand if one had to make the difficult, but prayerful choice, to pursue separation. And we trust in Paul’s words here, for they are just as inspired by God as the words of Jesus. His apostolic authority is given to him not through other men…But rather from the revelation of Christ himself as it says in Gal 1:1. And in him saying: “in such cases” he continues to say then
“Let them separate… so that they are not “enslaved” to the marriage.”
As we read in Deut… we know that the Lord is a God of freedom. He is the very God who freed the Israelites from generations of slavery. And so the Lord’s heart for His people is never one of slavery.
God does not want us to live enslaved… Not enslaved to the laws of man… Not enslaved to the abuse of people… Not enslaved even to a marriage that results in the torture of His beloved… But we must also know… That divorce was not meant to exist as a back up plan for when a marriage gets tough.
Much like our journey with Christ, marriage is not something we should be thinking has a getaway door when things get difficult. When things get rough, we as people often become unfaithful. We become adulterous and we turn our backs on God. Last week we read, that we must guard our hearts with all vigilance. So that we may not be unfaithful!
Faithfulness is wholly what God desires… Not only us to Him, but us to one another…. Us to our spouses.
Because faithfulness to one another is a symbol and picture of what kingdom living is all about. It is an image of God’s relationship to His Church… Christ and His bride. It is the self-giving covenant relationship that God yearns for us to experience where all that we are is His… And all that is His is ours.
This is God’s design for marriage. This is God’s design for faithfulness.
The problem with adultery is that it is an unfaithfulness that breaks the covenantal promises made between two parties. God gave humanity His covenant and the Israelites promised to uphold that covenant. Yet while God has always been faithful… We have not. We are an adulterous people, because we, like the Israelites have been unfaithful to God.
And so we praise the Lord for His grace, for it is sufficient to cover all our sin, even our adultery. Though His people were unfaithful to Him, He loves His people. And so… Though divorce pains the heart of the Lord and though it should cause us great sadness… We know that that there is no greater divorce than when humanity was separated from it’s Creator by sin. For the heart of Christ is beyond the black & white ethical implications of whether divorce is okay or not… His heart is for the Kingdom of God, and our belonging there.
If this was not so, then Christ would not have given Himself to the Cross. He would not have been the final sacrifice to reconcile an adulterous people to Him. He would not have given His final breath to reconcile the divorce of humanity and heaven.
So let us praise the Lord Jesus Christ and rejoice in the grace of God who frees the slave and redeems the adulterer. Praise the Lord who came to redeem us and reconcile us to Him!
To set free the slave, to liberate the oppressed, to mend the broken and divided, to gather His people, and to make whole in Him the requirements of the law so that our covenant with God may be upheld and fulfilled through, not our own but, His faithfulness. And present for Himself His perfect bride the Church to which we now belong not by our own works or efforts but by the free gift of His grace who welcomes us as without spot or wrinkle or any other blemish but holy and blameless.
It is in this that our assurance is sure because He is our good, faithful and perfect father. And while today we celebrate our earthly fathers and father figures… And as we pray for them and their faithfulness to the Lord… Let us give thanks to our Heavenly Father who’s love and grace knows no bounds
Amen.