THE DIVORCE DILEMMA
by Steve Zeisler
I was filling out a form recently, and one line of it asked the question
"Are you married?" followed by boxes to check either yes or no.
Such questions will disappear before long. We live in a world in which "Are
you married?" is less and less an obviously yes-or-no question. I have
heard discussions in recent years on all of the following subjects: common-law
marriages, serial marriages, same-sex marriages, open marriages, bi-coastal
marriages, domestic partnerships, marriages of convenience, arranged marriages,
group marriages, celibate marriages, and many others. All of them claim
equal status and demand to be treated with equal respect.
The question of the nature of marriage is before us in this passage from
the Sermon on the Mount. There is a series of six discussions of the Law
that Jesus enters into in the last part of Matthew 5. The first two concern
anger and adultery, which we studied in the previous message. All of these
discussions follow roughly the same formula. Jesus says, "You have
heard" ...a particular saying, a way in which the rabbis and the ancient
commentators have tried to make the law understood, "...but I say to
you...." Thus he distinguishes his teaching from the common way of
understanding these issues. The third discussion of the Law is now before
us in verses 31-32:
"It has been said, 'Anyone who divorces his wife must give
her a certificate of divorce.' But I tell you that anyone who divorces his
wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, causes her to become an adulteress,
and anyone who marries the divorced woman commits adultery."
This is a cryptic statement, and in a moment we're going to look at Mark
10, which will give us further understanding what Jesus means here. He was
speaking amidst confusion that existed in his own day. There were various
schools of thought in the first century even among Jews as to what marriage
was and whether divorce should easily be granted or not.
Marriage is significant
I'm sure our Lord was aware, as we must be aware, that this is very painful
material to discuss. In every time and place there are people who long to
be married and are not, and that is a source of struggle for them. There
are people who have brokenness in their past that they hate to be reminded
of. There are some now in the midst of marriages that are very difficult,
and thus the whole subject of marriage is one that they would prefer to
avoid.
In the account of the creation of heaven and earth in Genesis 1, there is
a series of statements describing the creative acts of God, separating light
from darkness, separating land from sea, and so on. And in all of these
activities God evaluates what he has done and says, "It is good,"
or "It is very good." Then we come to a statement in chapter 2:
"It is not good for the man to be alone." For the first time,
the witness of Scripture is that something is not good, and God intervenes
to overcome human loneliness by creating marriage. We should not be surprised
to encounter strong feelings in this area. Loneliness is hard, and it is
not God's intention that we live in loneliness. (Of course, marriage is
not the only way to deal with loneliness.)
So before we proceed any further in this discussion I want to acknowledge
that the church needs to be a community of encouragement and understanding,
not self-righteousness. People who suffer in relationships, suffer greatly.
God is merciful, and we must be merciful as well. But it is also important
to say what is true. There is no value in merely acknowledging suffering
and leaving it at that. We must at the same time ask about God's purpose
for us. What does Jesus say to us here?
In the previous paragraph Jesus discovers adultery in people who had let
themselves out from under the searchlight of the word of God. He says, "If
you have a rich fantasy life about sexual liaison with someone you're not
married to, you have committed adultery as surely as your neighbor who has
acted on those thoughts." The word of God drives us to our knees. Folks
who assumed that they had risen above sinful experience find that they are
sinners as well, that they need the grace of God, that they are poor in
spirit.
The same thing happens here. Jesus discovers adultery among people who might
have believed that they were not guilty of it. The man or woman who has
a series of partnerships, punctuated by legal divorce at various stages
along the way, is no different from someone who is married once and has
clandestine relationships with others. Jesus uses the term adultery for
both of those things.
Three concerns
There are three points for us to consider in Matthew 5:31, 32: First, Jesus
is distinguishing himself from people who were teaching a misunderstanding
of what God had in mind when he inspired Moses to write Deuteronomy 24,
which contains instruction about the legal process of divorce. Second, Jesus
says that there is an exception to the general rule that it is wrong for
God's people to divorce and remarry. The exception regards husbands and
wives who find themselves victimized because their partner has chosen unfaithfulness.
Third, the word divorce as Jesus is using it here necessarily implies remarriage
or some kind of re-coupling; divorce hasn't happened from heaven's perspective
until one or the other partner has attached themselves to someone else.
We need to understand what Jesus believed about marriage as the first step
toward trying to make sense of what he is saying here about divorce. Let's
read Mark 10:2-9 and observe some additional points that are important to
Jesus:
Some Pharisees came and tested him by asking, "Is it lawful
for a man to divorce his wife?"
"What did Moses command you?" he replied.
They said, "Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce
and send her away."
"It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law,"
Jesus replied. "But at the beginning of creation God 'made them male
and female.' 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and
be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.' So they are no
longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not
separate."
What Moses really said
The Pharisees' answer to Jesus' question is interesting, because Moses wrote
all five books of the Pentateuch: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and
Deuteronomy. These men come to Jesus wanting to discuss divorce, and he
asks them generally what Moses' commands and teachings are. They immediately
jump to the discussion about how to execute a divorce in Deuteronomy 24.
But Jesus goes back to Moses' account of the creation of marriage in Genesis.
Jesus is adding his authority to the authority of the created order, and
he wants us to understand very clearly what marriage is before we talk about
the legal documentation that goes along with divorce.
Jesus acknowledges that in Deuteronomy 24 there is a discussion about divorce,
but his interpretation of the passage is not that God is advocating divorce.
God's word acknowledges divorce as inevitable in a sin-filled society. And
divorces happen, Jesus says, because hearts are hard. Since they happen,
the word of God provides a safety net, primarily for women. In ancient times
women's lot was worse than it is today. What God forbade was for a man to
grow angry with his wife at a whim, throw her out in the street, and say,
"I'm done with you, the marriage is over---get out of here," leaving
her defenseless, without any explanation of her status. So Moses wrote that
the man had to file a legal document stating his reasoning, and at least
give her the protection of being able to say, "My marriage has ended,
and I can prove it."
A second point made in Deuteronomy 24 forbade a man from divorcing his wife,
seeing her marry another, and then taking her back again. This was to forbid
treating wives as slaves, allowing a man to take a wife, hand her off to
someone else to be used for whatever purpose, and bring her back again.
The law insisted that if you ended your marriage, you had to say good-bye
forever to the relationship. That would, it was to be hoped, have the chilling
effect of making men much less inclined to choose the avenue of divorce.
So the laws that are referred to here are not advocating divorce. They are
in fact a way of limiting it and strengthening the cause of the women who
were involved and who would have been left defenseless otherwise.
In this vein, I read an account of an Albanian gambler who bet his wife
on a World Cup match. He lost the bet, and his wife went off with the man
with whom he had gambled. The words of Deuteronomy that are quoted here
were intended to raise the view of marriage above such behavior.
The God-given life of a marriage
However, instead of discussing at great length the paperwork involved in
divorce, what Jesus does is go back to the creation of marriage itself.
What did God intend? As our Lord tells us, marriage is a creative act of
God. There are two, and then the two are joined together, not ultimately
by their own decision-making and their own creative relationship-building,
but by God himself. The two become one. Something new has entered the created
world that never existed before. The marriage itself has a life of its own,
one that is valued by God.
Consider how human life comes into being. There are two gametes, two sets
of chromosomes that are brought together in a woman's womb. The two become
one, and a new life is established by a creative act of God. God cares about
that life; a human being made in his image means everything to him. In the
Old Testament, both adultery and murder were capital offenses, and it was
for the same reason: When God creates a life that didn't exist before, when
he takes two and makes them one, the new oneness has his stamp on it and
his heart in it. And it is a terrible offense to kill what matters to him.
Adultery is the taking of a life in a sense very similar to that in which
murder of a human being is the taking of a life. Malachi 2:16 records the
words of God: "'I hate divorce,' says the LORD God...."
Marriage, we are told in Ephesians 5:31-32, is a great mystery. It is an
extraordinary thing, and we will never plumb its depth. It involves the
joining of our spirit to someone else's. It involves the intertwining of
our emotional life with theirs. It involves physical intimacy, taking on
life together, and raising a family together (if God allows children to
be born). What God has joined, man cannot separate without having to answer
to God for that choice.
We are very foolish, even if we have good motives, to endorse the trivialization
of marriage; to say that, because people are lonely and frustrated and life
is hard, every sort of relationship---every sort of sexual adventure, partnering,
breaking up and grouping together, coupling and uncoupling---is equally
valid. We are very foolish to say that leaving behind a mate you don't like,
venturing on to someone else, leaving them, and so forth, can be considered
as moral as a man and woman's choosing to grow together for a lifetime.
We don't promote happiness in that. Shallow relationships don't really alleviate
loneliness.
Getting Serious
I came to college as a freshman before most of the freshman class, in order
to play football. In 1967 we had freshman football teams (now they integrate
the freshmen into the varsity team right away). On the first day, our freshman
team had met with our coaches, and ran through a few drills. They put together
a make-shift defense and then we lined up against the varsity. I was a lineman
opposite George Buehler, who later went on to be a Pro Bowl player for the
Raiders. The varsity began to scrimmage against this ragtag defense, and
we were like chaff in the wind, getting blown all over the field. At the
end of practice they had us run wind-sprints. I have never been so tired,
sore, or sick in my life. I had come to school thinking that I was in shape.
I had been a high school player before that, so I had trained all summer,
and I was ready to play---but only at the high school level. I was not at
all ready play at the college level. The demands being made were beyond
my experience.
Observing that, coaches could have said, "You know, we can lower the
standard for these freshmen. More people will come out for football that
way. They won't be so unhappy and sore, and they'll think better of us if
we don't call for as serious an effort from them." But you would never
win a football game. Of course, what actually happened is that the next
year I showed up with much different expectations. I was in much better
shape than I had been the year before. I had learned to take seriously what
the coaches intended for us. I had changed my whole mind-set about what
we were attempting. College-level football is not high-school-level football.
In the same way, what we are hearing in the words of Jesus are the ethical
big leagues, if you will. The Lord is saying that this is the way the Creator
made humanity to function best; this is what male and femaleness are for.
What God has joined, man must not separate. All the human efforts to change
that---endorse temporary sexual coupling, to establish relationships at
something less than this level---are not doing anyone any good in the long
run. Similarly, lowering the standards concerning the destruction of human
life is costing our culture an awful price. We are fools if we sell short
what God has said is very valuable indeed.
How a marriage can be killed
The second point the Lord makes is that there is an exception clause. (He
reiterates this in Matthew 19.) He acknowledges here that there are people
who, having entered a marriage, discover themselves to be a victim of their
partner's choices. Marriages can be killed. The one-flesh which God brought
into being and which matters greatly to him, can be destroyed. There are
two tests mentioned in the New Testament to discover if a marriage has been
killed. One regards marriage to a non-Christian who is stiff-necked and
running from God and wants nothing to do with the Sovereign whom they must
meet every day in the life of a Christian spouse. If that person leaves
and wants nothing more to do with you, don't chase them and attempt to enforce
unity. (See 1 Corinthians 7:12-16.)
The other way to discover that a marriage has been executed, as Jesus says
here, is unfaithfulness. If one partner de-couples themselves from the marriage
and attaches themselves to someone else, they have given evidence that they
have destroyed the oneness that existed. Forgiveness is always possible
and is often the best thing even then. But there are times when a husband
or wife can conclude, just as a widow or widower would, that a death has
taken place. It is a very tragic thing that this death should take place.
There is deep mourning over the loss of the life God created. But remarriage
for the abandoned partner can be honorable and entered into without any
lingering feeling of disobedience or second class citizenship.
Jesus does not, however, say that hardness of heart is a valid reason to
divorce. I remember Ray Stedman once saying that irreconcilable differences
are not a good reason for divorce, they're a good reason for marriage. All
of us have hard hearts. All of us have stubborn areas that are going to
drive us crazy when we attempt real intimacy with our marriage partner.
All of us will discover that there are issues in the life of our beloved
that we resent and find difficult. Hardness of heart should be repented
of when it is discovered. It should be taken to the Lord. Hardness of heart
should be the very thing that we find ourselves on our knees together praying
about with our partner: "Lord, help us with this! Marriage is hard
work. It's difficult and demanding." Difficulties, harsh words spoken
at times, deep wells of bad communication, and not knowing how to get along
in marriage are all the places where the Lord intends to step in and make
us new. Mere difficulty in marriage is not, for Jesus' followers, grounds
for divorce.
Divorce---not just separation but re-coupling
The last point in Matthew 5:32 is that divorce is by definition accomplished
only when remarriage or a re-coupling of some kind takes place. The Lord
in heaven is not particularly interested in the laws of the state we live
in. Whatever legal status exists between marriage partners---whether there
is some legal separation of assets, responsibilities, and liabilities, etc.---do
not matter ultimately to God. The central vow made when a man and woman
get married is, "I will be faithful to you alone." The central
vow is not, "I will be completely, unutterably happy in your presence
at every moment of our married life."
There have been times when I have counseled married couples to therapeutically
separate from one another for awhile. There was so much anger, tension,
threat, and difficulty that they could not survive trying to live under
the same roof. What each of them needed to do, if they cared at all about
what mattered to God, was to spend time separate from one another and deal
with the hardness-of-heart issues in their lives, to be remade by God, and
then to build the bridges back again toward an intimate relationship. But
they also needed to remain faithful to each other, even in the difficult
times.
God assigns couples to be apart from one another because of war, illness,
natural disasters, and economic upheaval, and for other reasons including
deep anguish and struggle in the relationship itself. It may be that though
they long for intimacy, some couples will spend fifty years of married life
aiming at it instead of achieving it with any deep degree of success. But
divorce hasn't happened as long as they adhere to the central vow: "I
will be faithful to you alone." It is only when one or the other decides,
"Enough is enough. I'm going to choose another mate," that the
marriage is broken.
I have a lot of respect for husbands and wives who experience very little
of the warmth, intimacy, laughter, love, and happiness that a healthy marriage
has, for whatever reason, and yet remain faithful to their vows and faithful
to the Lord who has created the marriage. I know of a man who is married
to a woman who has been in a coma for years. There has been no conversation,
friendship, touching, planning, or rejoicing in that marriage; and yet he
is faithful to his wife. I have known of individuals who came to this country
from Southeast Asia, South America, Mexico, and other places, who had to
leave their families behind for economic reasons. They wished they could
be reunited with their families. Months, even years go by as efforts are
made to create a base that would allow for the family to be reunited. Yet
both partners adhere to the central vow: "I will be faithful to you
alone." Those of us who are fortunate enough to have been given the
gift of a happy marriage ought to respect people who get very little emotional
advantage from their marriage and yet obey the Lord in the midst of it.
He is teaching them some very great lessons.
Caring believers making a difference
Let me offer some pastoral advice that flows from the recognition that not
all marriages will be happy marriages. First, I don't see how anyone can
succeed as husband and wife without being in a church, without a community
of people who care for each other. We need the maturity of those who have
gone before us. Recent studies of communication styles say that men and
women communicate with each other as if they were from Mars and Venus; men
speak one kind of language and women another. When they are newly married,
young couples may drive themselves crazy with the differences in communication.
It feels like a trauma that they are the first ones to go through. But,
in a healthy church an older generation can say, "No, it's completely
normal. We've gone through everything that you're going through. God is
in the midst of it. Learning to understand one another and communicate will
happen. Don't panic."
There may be times when the older saints let you know you're pouting when
you thought it was righteous indignation. Or they'll tell you that you're
being a foolish martyr, suffering silently when you need to speak up and
let the person you're living with know what you're going through. The older
saints in the assembly can teach life skills to those who are just beginning,
such as how to raise children at a young age and how to prepare for adolescence
so they don't get blind-sided by that when it comes. They can teach about
the seasons of life.
A second reason marriages ought to be lived out in the context of a church
is that a church allows for honesty, when otherwise there would be lies
and denial. One of the observations that has come out of the recent events
in the O.J. Simpson murder case in Los Angeles is how many families live
with abuse, anger, violence, and hate-filled speech. The police come, but
the one being battered doesn't press charges, so nothing happens. The neighbors
next door hear it all, but never do anything. Everyone pretends that nothing
is going on. A healthy church at least allows for the possibility that we
can be honest and say what is true; denial doesn't have to go on. Denial
exists because of the great fear that if these things come out in the open,
all will be lost. Living in a community of people who really care for each
other is the antidote to fear, because bringing hard realities into the
light does not mean all will be lost. The power of God is available for
forgiveness and renewal. We don't have to lie anymore.
Lastly, accountability is an important part of this. A married couple may
squarely face some difficult problem they have and decide to make changes:
"We will start down another road, we will act in new ways, we will
build new patterns." A week later they want to quit because change
is hard, and they easily fall back into the old and familiar ways of denying,
lying, manipulating, or covering up. But in a community of people who care
about them, someone can say, "Okay, we hear what you say. You're committed
to being different. We're going to come back next week and ask if you are.
Then we'll be back the week after that, and we'll be in this as long as
it takes for you to learn to relate to one another differently." Churches
all fall short of being the kind of community they ought to be. But an awkward
community is much better than none at all as a place for couples to learn
to succeed as husband and wife.
Seek godliness
Since Jesus was questioned about divorce, we can assume that marriages in
his day were as unhappy as modern ones. And marital unhappiness can be extreme
unhappiness. The problem is that most of us don't know what makes us happy.
When we admit that we are miserable, what we would do on our own to make
ourselves happy is likely to make us even more miserable.
The wise course amidst marital unhappiness is not to try to achieve happiness,
but to seek godliness. Happiness comes in surprising places. The Sermon
on the Mount is the clearest expression of this that I know. Blessed, or
happy, are those who mourn, those who are persecuted, those who are poor
in spirit. It is only when we attempt godliness; when we choose to let the
Lord guide us and lead us, to follow the patterns he has built into this
world, to be empowered by his Spirit to live; that we will discover happiness
along the way. There is no denying the existence of pain and struggle in
marriage. But rather than taking the apparently easy and natural paths to
relief, the best choice for us is to let our Maker and Redeemer guide us.
Catalog No. 4408
Steve Zeisler
Matthew 5:31-32
Sixth Message
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