Marriage and Divorce

Neither is clear. In the case of an adulterous wife, He clearly didn't call divorce to be adultery. He certainly didn't clearly make it a different issue than hardness of hearts. On the other hand, He didn't clearly directly contradict either of these positions.

Unless one can resolve the apparent inequality Christ created between men and women in divorce, very little will be "clear". Thus any statement about divorce which doesn't recognize this difficulty is almost certainly going to fail the test of 'clearly'.

 

Force, no. Christ doesn't even ask (directly at least). At the same time, He never approves it either. He merely fails to call it 'adultery'. More than that is not so clear.

On the other hand, several teachings about forgiving when wronged (w/o limit), suffering wrongs done by other believers, etc. could be taken as applicable to the question of whether to stay with an adulterous spouse. Unless one can demonstrate that don't really apply, then it seems the issue likely comes back to a question of God allowing things to due to people's hard hearts and or weaknesses.

 

We also need to remember the context of Christ's statement. He is responding to a direct question of the Pharisees as to whether it is "lawful" for a man to divorce his wife (end of question in Mark..."for any reason" in Matthew). Jesus responds to a very human-centered question (a popular debate among the Scribes and Pharisees), by asking them what Moses, whom they revered, had to say on them matter. The entire passage hinges on their popular misinterpretation of Deut. 24:1-4 which led to misunderstanding of the will of God.

These so-called religious leaders were arguing that this Old Testament passage allowed for a man to lawfully divorce his wife so long as he provided her divorce papers- i.e. she could legally remarry without facing a death penalty. This liberal divorce policy was allowing men to legally indulge in fleshly desires, by setting aside previous wives with only a piece of paper and then they were free to marry the next young woman that came along. The pharisees were knee-deep in this as well. Shurer once wrote that the pharisees were as vested as anyone in keeping a liberal divorce policy. The entire thing seemed lawful, thus it avoided any claim of sin. Right?

Wrong! Jesus specifically states that divorce was added to the law, specifically because of the hardness of the heart of man. As many commentators will give a better background to the Deut. text than I, I will allow them to do it. All I will say is that, a man abandoning a woman in those days was extremely cruel: there were no safety nets and women and children were left to fend for themselves. Because God knew the evil desires of man to break even the marriage covenant, he allowed for a practice in order to protect the weaker party.

The fact that people then took something that God offered as a protection and used it to justify lustful desires is evil. Christ was calling these people out. They were corrupting the will of God and trying to pervert Scriptures to justify it.

If we are honest about it, much of what goes for exposition on this subject is simply an attempt to justify away the divorces of man. We, today, have a divorce standard very much like that of the Pharisees of old. Yet God is not pleased by our self-serving standards. At marriage, two human beings become one human being in the eyes of God...to divorce (as I believe C.S. Lewis once said) is Biblically akin to a human being being literally ripped in half. How could that ever be pleasing to the God of whom Malachi wrote, "Thus says the Lord God of Israel:I hate divorce."

 

Yes, because it takes two to have a marriage. If one of the partners refuses to repent, or has no desire to fix the marriage or be in the marriage, then the marriage cannot be fixed. The wounded party is obligated to forgive the person who does the wounding, but is not obligated to stay in a marriage that is no marriage at all.

What makes me angry are people who blame the person who was the innocent party by claiming that he or she didn't "work hard enough" or "pray enough" or "forgive enough" or "let God work" when they have no idea how much work, prayer, and forgiving the innocent party did until finally he or she realized that the marriage was irretrievably broken.

Would you stay in a marriage that involved child porn, pedophilia, unrepentant alcoholism, drugs, or serial adultery (to name a few)?

 

Very true.

 

He certain is wrong on this. "In God's sight a marriage exists when a man and a woman consent to, and consummate a sexual encounter with each other."
If that were true then there would be no such thing as fornication. While I applaud his efforts and his desire in reading over his beliefs he seems to rant. While some of his ideals are admirable I am not sure if God is calling a Pastor to set such standards just to try and stem the divorce rates. I think it would be better to teach the truth of the word calling for holiness and teaching what that is which few Pastors are doing today.

 

Most certainly. It relies on the conflation of the concepts of marriage and one-flesh. That marriage leads to being one-flesh, and that sex leads to one-flesh does not mean that they are the same in God's eyes. Christ's teachings on marriage and divorce soundly disprove this doctrine.