It seems to me that most Christians have chosen to ignore Jesus’ teaching on divorce and remarriage. I realize that the Bible’s teaching on divorce and remarriage is not crystal clear, and that even conservative Christians hold to a number of different interpretations of the Biblical teaching. That said, I think it’s abundantly clear that Jesus only permitted divorce and remarriage in a very narrow set of circumstances.
And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?” 4 He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” 7 They said to him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?” 8 He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. 9 And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.” 10 The disciples said to him, “If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry.” (Mt 19:3-10, ESV)
It’s pretty clear that Jesus opposed no-fault divorce, which is tantamount to our modern “irreconcilable differences.” Jesus only provided one justification for divorce, and it has to do with some kind of sexual sin (opinions differ as to what constitutes this sin). Unfortunately, I would venture to say that most confessing Christians get a divorce for irreconcilable differences as opposed to sexual sin.
It’s also pretty clear that if Jesus allowed remarriage for the divorced at all, He only allowed it for those whose divorce was justified. That would limit remarriage to the person who divorced his/her spouse for sexual sin. It does not include the person who committed sexual sin, nor those who divorced for reasons other than sexual sin. And yet, improperly divorced Christians get remarried with the sanction of the church all the time. I am not personally aware of a single case in which an improperly divorced Christian was prohibited from remarriage by church leadership.
What got me thinking about this was an article I read a few months ago regarding a former pastor. His former wife divorced him for infidelity, and he has since remarried. Surely, if Jesus’ teaching against remarriage applies to anyone, it is to a person in this precise situation. If the church will allow an adulterer to remarry, then who would it possibly prohibit? It seems that no one is prohibited from remarrying these days. Jesus’ teaching is simply ignored.
You might be thinking at this point, “Of course he should be allowed to remarry so long as he repented. That’s what forgiveness is all about.” But Jesus didn’t say that those who wrongly divorce can get remarried if they repent of their divorce. He said that those who wrongly divorce are guilty of adultery if they remarry. There is no “unless they repent” clause. If repentance allowed for remarriage, then to whom does Jesus’ teaching apply? It would only apply to the unrepentant. Since genuine Christians will repent, then every genuine Christian could remarry and Jesus’ teaching would be effectively nullified.
I’m not the only one who recognized there was no repentance clause in Jesus’ teaching. So did His disciples. That’s why they reacted to Jesus’ teaching by saying, “If that’s the case, then it’s better to never marry.” The disciples’ understood Jesus to mean that the grounds for divorce and remarriage were very narrow, and few would “qualify.” Jesus didn’t correct their understanding by saying, “Hold your horses, boys. You misunderstood. When I said those who remarry following an unjustified divorce commit adultery, I was only referring to the unrepentant. If you repent regarding your unjustified divorce, you can remarry.” If Jesus’ teaching was conditioned on repentance, He could have said so. He didn’t, because His teaching was not conditioned on one’s repentance. God may forgive the sin of divorce when one repents, but there are still consequences for that sin that remain – one of which is the inability to remarry. While those guilty of unjust divorce do need to repent of their sin, there is no reason to believe that such repentance erases the consequences of their sin. While God may forgive them for what they did, that forgiveness is not grounds for a new marriage.
My purpose for this post is not to shame anyone who has already remarried following an unjustified divorce, or to explore every possible exception and circumstance. Rather, I am speaking to those who seek to be married, the married, and the divorced who have not remarried, encouraging them to be obedient to Jesus. I am also speaking to pastors who have – for too long – been silent on this issue. It’s time we start taking Jesus’ teaching seriously and apply it in the real world. Obedience matters, especially when it hurts.
If you are interested to learn more about this topic, I will be releasing a paper soon that is the culmination of over one year of study on this topic. Stay tuned.
September 14, 2021 at 5:57 pm
I usually take issue on your posts, but I have to say I agree with everything you say here. I do find many Christians who vigorously object to the right to an abortion completely ignore the right to a divorce…even though Jesus said nothing at all against abortion but was very clearly against divorce and remarriage. Yet far more Christians divorce and remarry than have an abortion. I suppose everyone picks and chooses what appeals to them and ignores the rest.
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September 14, 2021 at 8:55 pm
lol ………… poor lost dm. Jesus didn’t have to speak about abortion because nobody disputed the clear biblical teaching against abortion in the circumstances i mentioned earlier.
the problem was not the clear biblical teachings that allowed divorce and the right to re-marry. the problem was the jewish leaders perverted the teaching so much you could divorce your wife for any reason and be free to re-marry again. which is a perversion of the bible just like you and others do.
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September 14, 2021 at 10:44 pm
And there you go: Paul is a perfect example of a Christian picking and choosing what appeals to him and ignoring the rest. He vigorously objects to abortion rights with “creative” interpretation of scripture that doesn’t say a thing against abortion, while studiously ignoring Jesus’ far clearer and unambiguous teachings against divorce and remarriage…all the while doubling down on the claim that he’s not doing exactly that. Watch him do it again.
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September 15, 2021 at 4:57 am
The Post is about Remarriage , not abortion!
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September 15, 2021 at 3:57 pm
One of the arguments i have heard many times of why the conservative view is wrong, is that it is to Harsh , its just not doable, how can you expect healthy, young , vibrant, people to not have companionship, and physical pleasure, or deny some of having children etc. God surely cannot be that cruel, that harsh.
I was thinking of this last week while reading the 10th chapter of Ezra, where the Priests, Levites, and people who had married foreign women, were required to make a covenant with God, and commanded to put their wives and children out.
Talk about harsh, your married , hopefully happy , have children , life is good, and you are told that your wife and children must be put aside.
And i would assume they were free to remarry.
Jason , i am curious of whether or not you think this incident, should be considered in the church age when discussing divorce and remarriage?
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September 15, 2021 at 8:18 pm
J Gefroh, I actually address this in my paper. I speak to it in two separate sections. I will quote both:
The Law of Moses prohibited the Israelites from marrying their pagan neighbors (Deuteronomy 7:1-4), and yet the returning exiles had done so anyway. Shecaniah suggested, and Ezra agreed, that the people should “put away” their wives and children (10:4) and “separate” (10:11) themselves from them. This is the language of divorce. The men of Israel were commanded to divorce their foreign wives by sending them (and their children) away from the family home.
This is a particularly interesting case in that divorce was not merely permitted, but required. One might argue that the command came from Ezra rather than God, but this misses the entire spirit of the passage. Ezra’s command was the result of his reading of the Law of Moses and an example of the people’s repentance toward God. If God had disapproved of Ezra’s interpretation or command, He could have made His will known. He did not. The book of Ezra portrays these divorces as a great act of repentance, not as a moral travesty.
This is not the only example in Scripture where divorce is commanded. John the Baptist told Herod that his marriage was immoral/unlawful (Matthew 14:3-4), implying that it was wrong for them to continue in the “marriage.” Could such scenarios apply today? Could the church demand that certain immoral marriages be broken up? Consider the marriage of a believer to an unbeliever. A Christian who marries an unbeliever – despite the Biblical prohibition against doing so (1 Corinthians 7:39; 9:5; 2 Corinthians 6:14) – would appear to be in the exact same situation faced by the Israelites. If the Israelites’ repentance required them to divorce their unbelieving wives, does the Christian’s repentance require him/her to divorce his/her unbelieving spouse today? Some might point to Paul’s instructions to Christians not to divorce their unbelieving spouses (1 Corinthians 7:12-13) as evidence that the church should not force a separation, but Paul was speaking to a different situation. Paul was addressing new believers who were already married prior to their conversion, and now find themselves in a mixed religious marriage. He was not addressing Christians who chose to marry unbelievers. While I must admit that I am personally averse to demanding divorce in the case of immoral marriages, I could not claim that there is no Biblical precedent for doing so. At best, one might appeal to Biblical examples involving marriages to foreign women where divorce was not required (Nehemiah 13:23-30; Malachi 2:13-16). If divorce was not always required in the Bible, then perhaps divorce is not required today.
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There is good Biblical precedent for requiring people to end immoral marriages. As discussed previously, Ezra commanded that those who had wrongly married foreign women to divorce those women and send away any children produced by those immoral unions (Ezra 10:2-12). John the Baptist told Herod he was morally obliged to divorce his wife because the marriage was immoral (Matthew 14:3-4; see Leviticus 20:21 for the basis of John’s claim). There was even a precedent for this in Jesus’ day. As noted earlier, it was Jewish practice in the time of Jesus to require the spouses in a second marriage to divorce if one’s first divorce was determined to be invalid. There was, then, a social context in which requiring divorce for an adulterous remarriage would be expected.
Despite the Biblical precedent for demanding divorce for immoral marriages, there is nothing in the NT that commands those who have wrongly divorced and remarried to divorce their new “spouse,” or even to cease sexual relations for that matter. This silence would be odd if divorce was the expected form of repentance. After all, a large number of people in the early church would have been impacted. While we cannot know how many marriages ended in divorce in the first century A.D., given the prevalence of “any matter” divorce in Judaism and “no fault” divorce in the Greco-Roman world, it is likely that divorce was just as common for them as it is for us today. Why, then, do we not see Jesus or Paul commanding divorce for those who wrongly remarry? While Jesus considered such relationships to be adulterous, He did not prescribe any particular punishment for those in them, and He gave no command for the original couple to reconcile. Can we require something of people that Jesus did not?
We do not need to rely entirely on negative evidence, however. Paul’s teaching regarding Christians who divorce Christian spouses is also instructive (1 Corinthians 7:10-11). Here was a situation in which believers had clearly disobeyed Jesus’ command not to divorce, and yet Paul did not recommend church discipline. He encouraged them to reconcile, but did not force them to do so. He gave them the option to remain single. If Paul would not command believers who had wrongly divorced to reconcile (he allowed them to remain divorced), why think he would command believers who had wrongly divorced and wrongly remarried to divorce their illegitimate spouse and reconcile with their former spouse? If Paul did not exercise church discipline for Christians who had disobeyed Jesus’ teaching on divorce, why think we have the obligation to “force” Christians who wrongly remarried to divorce?
At the end of the day, I do not think a literal interpretation necessarily requires divorce, although it would seem to be an appropriate response for the repentant if they so choose. While there is Biblical precedent for encouraging divorce as part of one’s repentance, there are also Biblical precedent for allowing the marriage to stand.
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September 16, 2021 at 1:05 am
Is your paper going to be presented at a symposium or online?
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September 16, 2021 at 10:30 pm
It will be posted to this blog.
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September 20, 2021 at 2:10 pm
I’m looking forward to this paper!
I know many conservative Christians who don’t believe in divorce and remarriage for any reason other than the death of one of the spouses. They consider any Christian who has been divorced and remarried to be committing adultery. Unless of course the divorce and remarriage happened before conversion. Apparently that’s “under the blood”. I’ve never thought that to follow logically or to be sound Scriptural reasoning, but I will be curious to see if you address this in your paper.
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September 28, 2021 at 7:57 am
lol ……… poor lost and delusional dm — it’s you not me ignoring things. the bible is clear on these topics —- divorce and re-marriage is allowed under certain circumstances only, same for abortion. but people like you ignore the facts to remain in your delusion. you twist and pervert the bible to support your erroneous position. so, as the bible correctly states — under certain circumstances divorce and re-marriage becomes adultery and abortion becomes murder.
the context of Jesus’ teaching here is clear — marriage was supposed to be 1 man and 1 women until death they do part except for “porenia.” but because of the “hardness of our hearts” He gave Moses other exceptions. and like the rabbis’ did in other instances they perverted the word of God and made it irrelevant because of their traditions. that’s what Jesus was condemning
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