I have done a lot of research into this subject, because it is one that affects me personally in so many areas, and after several weeks of blogging, I believe I am just now coming to a more clear understanding of how a marriage covenant dies. There is much trial and error and "testing" of our understanding when we study...we don't always proper understanding right off the bat...sometimes we have to get to the end of the study to know what it is we think we now know. And even then, the Lord might bring us back for greater understanding later on.
Which is why a blog, having very limited possibility of real discussion, is not a very valid source for finding the answers to truth. The most a blog can do is cause someone else to turn to scripture to search for themselves. It is one individual at a time by which the church grows in wisdom and obedience.
To gain scriptural knowledge begins with our own individual study; something I am convinced is neglected by many of us because of time issues, others neglect it because they lack the passion for study and find it an arduous task at best. But scriptural studies also require prayer, wisdom, discernment and so much more, in order to rightly divide scripture...which is why we have a church body. It takes all of us within the church, talking together (not just listening to sermons and going about our business for the week), but actually discussing among ourselves everything that the Lord is speaking to us, even challenging one another when necessary, in an attempt to understand the truth and not be led away into convenient and comfortable compromise.
But there again, I have found very few folks (I can count them on one hand!) who are willing to risk the challenges that honest discussion brings. I have found many more folks who will go only so far in the "work" of transformation that scripture study and prayer brings us, but then will sit down in the middle of the road and refuse to go any further when their traditions and the mindset that goes along with those traditions are questioned.
I want to go further than what I have been "told" by others. I want to know why I believe what I believe, and if, as I study, I find that my understanding of what I believe isn't clear, then I want to dig deeper until my understanding is clear. I don't just want to taste of the food of life, I want to fill up on it! God says His Word is "food" to us.
Imagine a family where each member sits down to enjoy a plate of spaghetti. The small child mostly plays with his spaghetti, making a big mess all around his plate and all over his face, but leaves most of the food on the plate. The teenage daughter is so worried about her figure that she hardly touches her plate either. The mom is so pre-occupied serving everyone that she manages to eat only half. But the husband, who has been working outside all day, is starving and not only eats all the spaghetti but wipes the plate sparkling clean with a piece of bread, soaking up every last bit of that which tastes so good!
When it comes to study of God's Word, I have a piece of bread in my hand, and I am soaking up every last detail of the Word that I can get onto that piece of bread! I hope, when I have finished this topical study (and every study that follows after it), that I have not left the tiniest scrap of food on the plate....that's how hungry I am for truth!
There are others who eat lightly of the Word, who, either because of how it looks (i.e., they don't want to be too fanatic), or because of lack of love for the menu choice (they find scripture reading boring), or lack of strong taste buds for the flavor (they aren't even passionate about Christ, how could they be passionate about His Word?), they will not pick up the scrap of bread to get down to the very last morsels on the plate of scriptural study.
So, here is what I have satisfied my appetite with after cleaning my "separation, divorce and remarriage" plate with a scrap of bread (be prepared, this one will be even longer as it is the last day I will spend on this topic):
Rules for Marriage:
"Nevertheless, each individual among you is to love his own wife even as himself, and the wife must see to it that she respects her husband." (Ephesians 5:33)
The first command goes to the husband (just as the command went to Adam in the Garden and not to Eve directly from God), showing that the husband has a greater responsibility as the elder or head of the woman. The husband is told to love his own wife, because a man's tendency is to love himself more than he does his wife. He can get so caught up in "providing" that he neglects his wife (and often even his children as well) becoming self-focused in all that he does, using the excuse of "providing" as the reason why he must neglect her, and at the same time demanding more and more from his wife to meet his own needs, while he neglects hers. His wife, who is caretaker to so many, needs encouragement and nurturing from her husband in order to persevere in the work of the Lord that He has given her to do.
The woman is told to respect her husband because she has a tendency to "direct" her husband in the same way she does her children...it is often difficult for her to not treat the husband as a child, when the biggest part of her life is spent in guiding and directing children. It is important that she remember to treat her husband as a man, and an equal, not as a child. This is just as important at the beginning of married life as it is in the latter years of married life. Folks will know if a woman respects her husband by the manner in which she speaks both to and of him: she will either hold him in high regard, or with some measure of contempt.
Tony Evans says it this way in his book "Divorce and Remarriage":
"In essense, he is to massage her heart, while she is to massage his head. A husband massages his wife's heart by leading in love, spiritually nurturing her, and cherishing his wife. He is to sacrifice whatever is necessary to help her develop into all God has destined her to be. A wife, on the other hand, is to respect her husband and hold him in high esteem, recognizing his position of leadership in the home. This involves a submission that uses all of her gifts, skills, and abilities under the leadership of her husband to promote God's agenda for the members of the family. Only when husbands and wives fulfill their God-ordained roles can they expect to experience God's blessing and power in the covenant of marriage."
Together, when fulfilling each one's roles according to God's will for their marriage, both individuals in the marriage will become faithful servants of the Lord, being encouraged by one another to be such. There will be freedom for each to do their work for the Lord without jealousies or envy for one another; in other words there will be no covetousness or "one-up-manship" in regards to the success of their individual ministries. Neither, when free in the Lord, will be "needy" or jealous of the time the other spends working for the Lord, for all duties as well as nurturing will still be fulfilled even with limited time; the focus will always be on serving the Lord, not on themselves.
Separation and/or Divorce:
In the case of two believing spouses, when either party to a marriage covenant leaves their spouse or sends their spouse out of the home in separation (or divorce), it is only permissible if the church agrees that there are valid reasons to do so, and such separation/divorce would not occur until after much work has been done by all parties involved (including church leadership) to resolve the marital issues that have brought this move about. Sometimes a separation jolts one party or the other into accepting responsibility for their actions, and waking up to the reality of all that will be lost if they continue in their sinful ways. But it is very risky business, as both parties are then in painful and vulnerable positions, making them more susceptible to influences from without that might lead one or the other into sexual immorality (which would actually be adultery as the marriage covenant was not yet scripturally dissolved.) Separation is to be risked mostly in cases where the sin of one party is extreme, such as is seen with physical or sexual abusers (i.e., where wives or children have to leave for their own protection) or when the husband is willfully not providing for his family, and has then abandoned them. But when there are no valid reasons, here is the instruction of the Lord. Even though this scripture begins by addressing the wife (possibly because becing the weaker vessel emotionally she might be the one most susceptible to leaving) still there is no reason to not believe it applies to husbands as well.
"And unto the married I command, yet not I, but the Lord, Let not the wife depart from her husband: but and if she depart, let her remain unmarried, or be reconciled to her husband: and let not the husband put away his wife." (1 Corinthians 7:10-11)
If you choose to leave your spouse for reasons that are not valid in God's eyes, then you are required to remain unmarried or to be reconciled to your spouse. In so many cases, Christians either have not been taught properly (focus often is on "Let not the wife depart from her husband..." while the remainder of the instruction is neglected) or their own unrepentant hearts bring them to a place of even greater rebellion by then entering into other relationships even while the first covenant is still alive. There is often no hope for reconciliation after that.
Separation/divorce from an unbeliever, however, is a different matter:
"But if the unbelieving depart, let him depart. A brother or sister is not under bondage in such cases: but God hath called us to peace." (1 Corinthians 7:15)
BUT, a Christian who refuses to heed warnings from spouse, other brothers and sisters, and the entire church as a whole (according to the instructions God has given us on how to deal with unrepentant sin in a believer) is considered spiritually dead, and the marriage covenant dies along with his or her spitirual rebellion, leaving the spouse free to not only separate and divorce, but if they desire, even to remarry. What are some of the unrepentant sins that lead to spiritual death? Addiction to pornography by either husband or wife, anger that leads to violence or physical or mental abuse by either husband or wife, abandonment by either party, a husband who does not provide (not because of the current economy, but because of laziness and a refusal to work which is another form of abandonment), drunkenness, illegal drug use, criminality (stealing, embezzling, so many other crimes of the state), addictions that destroy the family framework (including addictions to alcohol, illegal drugs, gambling)...what have I left out? Can you see how these sins, when not repented of, prove a man or woman to be spiritually dead, thus making the marriage covenant dead as well?
Remarriage:
Let's go back for a moment to the example given of the elder who had been married twice, and became a Christian in the middle of his second marriage. Was the church lax in appointing him to the position of elder? Or were they only lax in not giving due diligence to researching his history before appointing him to such a position? Or were they diligent in every respect? Both would depend on the facts involved.
Let's assume that his first wife was an unbeliever, as he himself was at the time. Two spiritually dead people do not have a God-ordained marriage covenant between them. God does not recognize either of them as His own and is not a "witness" to their union; thus the first marriage was not valid.
When the man became saved, during the second marriage, God then became a "witness" to his marriage, whether his spouse was a believer or not (for a believing spouse sanctifies the unbelieving spouse making it an acceptable union in God's eyes). If the spouse was a believer, all the better, as it should alleviate the difficulties that arise from a union in which one holds a Christ-centered view and the other holds a world-centered (or self-centered) view. So, yes, the man who has been chosen to be an elder in this case, if he meets all the other qualifications for an elder, is not unrepentant towards God and will most likely be a good protector of the church.
If, however, he had been a Christian at the time of his first marriage; and if his second wife was also a believer, and if both of them had divorced their former spouses wth no scriptural cause (as is prevalent even within the church in this day of casual marriage and divorce) then is he the man for the job? His first marriage covenant has been dissolved, but only because of his sin of adultery with the second wife, who also is guilty of adultery because she married a man who was not divorced according to scripture:
"It was said, Whoever sends his wife away, let him give her a certificate of divorce; but I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except for the reason of unchastity, makes her commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery." (Matthew5:31-32)
If the former situations (divorcing without just cause) have not been repented of, because either the parties are keeping them in the dark or because the church leadership has not been diligent to do the research and require such repentance (and the fruit of it) before making the appointment, then there can be no blessing to come from this appointment. Even if the man divorced his first wife for no valid reason, other than that he was too weak to remain in the marriage, I would hope he was at least obedient enough to not enter into another marriage, as the Word enjoins. In that case, he would indeed be the husband of one wife still (as the marriage union was not officially dissolved in the eyes of God and the church), but if he is not able to order his own household properly, being weak as shown from past history, then perhaps he is not the best choice for an elder, for he has to have the strength and resolution necessary to resolve church matters, and yet was unable to resolve his own personal matters.
In ALL of the above issues, how important is the WORD of GOD to us, both individually, but also as a church body? How much time and effort are we willing to give to rightly dividing the Word of God? Are we willing to let the body of Christ, our brothers and sisters help us in making the right choices? Is the church leadership willing to do the hard work necessary to protect ALL of its own without bias, but simply according to scripture? Are we as individuals, when considering separation to be our only recourse, still willing to separate when the Word commands us to remain unmarried or to reconcile if we do leave our spouses?
Or do we just want what we want?
I might not have it all right here...I am only one voice. But I hope, if you are not in agreement, that you will add your voice to this blog, rather than leave things unsaid and possibly never return because of disagreement.
And, I hope, in any case, that those who have struggled with whether or not their decisions were right in God's eyes concerning their own separation, divorce, or remarriage, have either found that answer here, or are now intent to resolve the matter completely via their own study of scripture and much. much prayer.
Which is why a blog, having very limited possibility of real discussion, is not a very valid source for finding the answers to truth. The most a blog can do is cause someone else to turn to scripture to search for themselves. It is one individual at a time by which the church grows in wisdom and obedience.
To gain scriptural knowledge begins with our own individual study; something I am convinced is neglected by many of us because of time issues, others neglect it because they lack the passion for study and find it an arduous task at best. But scriptural studies also require prayer, wisdom, discernment and so much more, in order to rightly divide scripture...which is why we have a church body. It takes all of us within the church, talking together (not just listening to sermons and going about our business for the week), but actually discussing among ourselves everything that the Lord is speaking to us, even challenging one another when necessary, in an attempt to understand the truth and not be led away into convenient and comfortable compromise.
But there again, I have found very few folks (I can count them on one hand!) who are willing to risk the challenges that honest discussion brings. I have found many more folks who will go only so far in the "work" of transformation that scripture study and prayer brings us, but then will sit down in the middle of the road and refuse to go any further when their traditions and the mindset that goes along with those traditions are questioned.
I want to go further than what I have been "told" by others. I want to know why I believe what I believe, and if, as I study, I find that my understanding of what I believe isn't clear, then I want to dig deeper until my understanding is clear. I don't just want to taste of the food of life, I want to fill up on it! God says His Word is "food" to us.
Imagine a family where each member sits down to enjoy a plate of spaghetti. The small child mostly plays with his spaghetti, making a big mess all around his plate and all over his face, but leaves most of the food on the plate. The teenage daughter is so worried about her figure that she hardly touches her plate either. The mom is so pre-occupied serving everyone that she manages to eat only half. But the husband, who has been working outside all day, is starving and not only eats all the spaghetti but wipes the plate sparkling clean with a piece of bread, soaking up every last bit of that which tastes so good!
When it comes to study of God's Word, I have a piece of bread in my hand, and I am soaking up every last detail of the Word that I can get onto that piece of bread! I hope, when I have finished this topical study (and every study that follows after it), that I have not left the tiniest scrap of food on the plate....that's how hungry I am for truth!
There are others who eat lightly of the Word, who, either because of how it looks (i.e., they don't want to be too fanatic), or because of lack of love for the menu choice (they find scripture reading boring), or lack of strong taste buds for the flavor (they aren't even passionate about Christ, how could they be passionate about His Word?), they will not pick up the scrap of bread to get down to the very last morsels on the plate of scriptural study.
So, here is what I have satisfied my appetite with after cleaning my "separation, divorce and remarriage" plate with a scrap of bread (be prepared, this one will be even longer as it is the last day I will spend on this topic):
Rules for Marriage:
"Nevertheless, each individual among you is to love his own wife even as himself, and the wife must see to it that she respects her husband." (Ephesians 5:33)
The first command goes to the husband (just as the command went to Adam in the Garden and not to Eve directly from God), showing that the husband has a greater responsibility as the elder or head of the woman. The husband is told to love his own wife, because a man's tendency is to love himself more than he does his wife. He can get so caught up in "providing" that he neglects his wife (and often even his children as well) becoming self-focused in all that he does, using the excuse of "providing" as the reason why he must neglect her, and at the same time demanding more and more from his wife to meet his own needs, while he neglects hers. His wife, who is caretaker to so many, needs encouragement and nurturing from her husband in order to persevere in the work of the Lord that He has given her to do.
The woman is told to respect her husband because she has a tendency to "direct" her husband in the same way she does her children...it is often difficult for her to not treat the husband as a child, when the biggest part of her life is spent in guiding and directing children. It is important that she remember to treat her husband as a man, and an equal, not as a child. This is just as important at the beginning of married life as it is in the latter years of married life. Folks will know if a woman respects her husband by the manner in which she speaks both to and of him: she will either hold him in high regard, or with some measure of contempt.
Tony Evans says it this way in his book "Divorce and Remarriage":
"In essense, he is to massage her heart, while she is to massage his head. A husband massages his wife's heart by leading in love, spiritually nurturing her, and cherishing his wife. He is to sacrifice whatever is necessary to help her develop into all God has destined her to be. A wife, on the other hand, is to respect her husband and hold him in high esteem, recognizing his position of leadership in the home. This involves a submission that uses all of her gifts, skills, and abilities under the leadership of her husband to promote God's agenda for the members of the family. Only when husbands and wives fulfill their God-ordained roles can they expect to experience God's blessing and power in the covenant of marriage."
Together, when fulfilling each one's roles according to God's will for their marriage, both individuals in the marriage will become faithful servants of the Lord, being encouraged by one another to be such. There will be freedom for each to do their work for the Lord without jealousies or envy for one another; in other words there will be no covetousness or "one-up-manship" in regards to the success of their individual ministries. Neither, when free in the Lord, will be "needy" or jealous of the time the other spends working for the Lord, for all duties as well as nurturing will still be fulfilled even with limited time; the focus will always be on serving the Lord, not on themselves.
Separation and/or Divorce:
In the case of two believing spouses, when either party to a marriage covenant leaves their spouse or sends their spouse out of the home in separation (or divorce), it is only permissible if the church agrees that there are valid reasons to do so, and such separation/divorce would not occur until after much work has been done by all parties involved (including church leadership) to resolve the marital issues that have brought this move about. Sometimes a separation jolts one party or the other into accepting responsibility for their actions, and waking up to the reality of all that will be lost if they continue in their sinful ways. But it is very risky business, as both parties are then in painful and vulnerable positions, making them more susceptible to influences from without that might lead one or the other into sexual immorality (which would actually be adultery as the marriage covenant was not yet scripturally dissolved.) Separation is to be risked mostly in cases where the sin of one party is extreme, such as is seen with physical or sexual abusers (i.e., where wives or children have to leave for their own protection) or when the husband is willfully not providing for his family, and has then abandoned them. But when there are no valid reasons, here is the instruction of the Lord. Even though this scripture begins by addressing the wife (possibly because becing the weaker vessel emotionally she might be the one most susceptible to leaving) still there is no reason to not believe it applies to husbands as well.
"And unto the married I command, yet not I, but the Lord, Let not the wife depart from her husband: but and if she depart, let her remain unmarried, or be reconciled to her husband: and let not the husband put away his wife." (1 Corinthians 7:10-11)
If you choose to leave your spouse for reasons that are not valid in God's eyes, then you are required to remain unmarried or to be reconciled to your spouse. In so many cases, Christians either have not been taught properly (focus often is on "Let not the wife depart from her husband..." while the remainder of the instruction is neglected) or their own unrepentant hearts bring them to a place of even greater rebellion by then entering into other relationships even while the first covenant is still alive. There is often no hope for reconciliation after that.
Separation/divorce from an unbeliever, however, is a different matter:
"But if the unbelieving depart, let him depart. A brother or sister is not under bondage in such cases: but God hath called us to peace." (1 Corinthians 7:15)
BUT, a Christian who refuses to heed warnings from spouse, other brothers and sisters, and the entire church as a whole (according to the instructions God has given us on how to deal with unrepentant sin in a believer) is considered spiritually dead, and the marriage covenant dies along with his or her spitirual rebellion, leaving the spouse free to not only separate and divorce, but if they desire, even to remarry. What are some of the unrepentant sins that lead to spiritual death? Addiction to pornography by either husband or wife, anger that leads to violence or physical or mental abuse by either husband or wife, abandonment by either party, a husband who does not provide (not because of the current economy, but because of laziness and a refusal to work which is another form of abandonment), drunkenness, illegal drug use, criminality (stealing, embezzling, so many other crimes of the state), addictions that destroy the family framework (including addictions to alcohol, illegal drugs, gambling)...what have I left out? Can you see how these sins, when not repented of, prove a man or woman to be spiritually dead, thus making the marriage covenant dead as well?
Remarriage:
Let's go back for a moment to the example given of the elder who had been married twice, and became a Christian in the middle of his second marriage. Was the church lax in appointing him to the position of elder? Or were they only lax in not giving due diligence to researching his history before appointing him to such a position? Or were they diligent in every respect? Both would depend on the facts involved.
Let's assume that his first wife was an unbeliever, as he himself was at the time. Two spiritually dead people do not have a God-ordained marriage covenant between them. God does not recognize either of them as His own and is not a "witness" to their union; thus the first marriage was not valid.
When the man became saved, during the second marriage, God then became a "witness" to his marriage, whether his spouse was a believer or not (for a believing spouse sanctifies the unbelieving spouse making it an acceptable union in God's eyes). If the spouse was a believer, all the better, as it should alleviate the difficulties that arise from a union in which one holds a Christ-centered view and the other holds a world-centered (or self-centered) view. So, yes, the man who has been chosen to be an elder in this case, if he meets all the other qualifications for an elder, is not unrepentant towards God and will most likely be a good protector of the church.
If, however, he had been a Christian at the time of his first marriage; and if his second wife was also a believer, and if both of them had divorced their former spouses wth no scriptural cause (as is prevalent even within the church in this day of casual marriage and divorce) then is he the man for the job? His first marriage covenant has been dissolved, but only because of his sin of adultery with the second wife, who also is guilty of adultery because she married a man who was not divorced according to scripture:
"It was said, Whoever sends his wife away, let him give her a certificate of divorce; but I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except for the reason of unchastity, makes her commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery." (Matthew5:31-32)
If the former situations (divorcing without just cause) have not been repented of, because either the parties are keeping them in the dark or because the church leadership has not been diligent to do the research and require such repentance (and the fruit of it) before making the appointment, then there can be no blessing to come from this appointment. Even if the man divorced his first wife for no valid reason, other than that he was too weak to remain in the marriage, I would hope he was at least obedient enough to not enter into another marriage, as the Word enjoins. In that case, he would indeed be the husband of one wife still (as the marriage union was not officially dissolved in the eyes of God and the church), but if he is not able to order his own household properly, being weak as shown from past history, then perhaps he is not the best choice for an elder, for he has to have the strength and resolution necessary to resolve church matters, and yet was unable to resolve his own personal matters.
In ALL of the above issues, how important is the WORD of GOD to us, both individually, but also as a church body? How much time and effort are we willing to give to rightly dividing the Word of God? Are we willing to let the body of Christ, our brothers and sisters help us in making the right choices? Is the church leadership willing to do the hard work necessary to protect ALL of its own without bias, but simply according to scripture? Are we as individuals, when considering separation to be our only recourse, still willing to separate when the Word commands us to remain unmarried or to reconcile if we do leave our spouses?
Or do we just want what we want?
I might not have it all right here...I am only one voice. But I hope, if you are not in agreement, that you will add your voice to this blog, rather than leave things unsaid and possibly never return because of disagreement.
And, I hope, in any case, that those who have struggled with whether or not their decisions were right in God's eyes concerning their own separation, divorce, or remarriage, have either found that answer here, or are now intent to resolve the matter completely via their own study of scripture and much. much prayer.
2 comments:
Over the last two postings, you have caused me to review and rethink my attitude towards marriage and divorce. Being one that was married once before, I never thought of some of the items listed before. I always wondered how one would "biblically" be in the right (under God's word) divorcing a man who beat her. Logically, I know it would be the right thing to do, and that God would never require a woman to submit to beatings all in the name of not divorcing. You have raised many good examples to support divorce under circumstances such as you identify. I appreciate your in depth review of God's word. GW
You are not the only one in that situation who has had difficulty reconciling divorce from such a man with God's Word...hence the need for such a study. I am grateful to Christian brothers and sisters who have struggled with these questions, and have shared their concerns with me, as well as being grateful to pastor/teacher Tony Evans for getting me thinking myself about these issues through several of his books. I only wish more Bible teachers were willing to address the really difficult issues. Thanks for reading! And commenting!!
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