Marriage
What Constitutes Marriage? Is Marriage for Everyone? What are the Grounds for Annulment, Separation and Divorce? How Should the Church Respond?
The Modern Western World is Complex.
The
United States is a representative democracy that in the past few decades
has been somewhat cut loose from its historical moorings to Classical
and medieval Western civilization, and the result is that a lot of
things are up for grabs in the minds of many people, one of which is
what constitutes marriage.
Authoritative answers about morality were once easier to come by,
because Christianity radically influenced the way that civil authorities
went about initiating and enforcing the law.* However, in the modern
State, separated as it is de jure from the Church, especially
within the realm of the civil laws of the various states of the United
States, generally two things are necessary for a legal marriage: a
legally binding contract and the consummation of that contract. While
questions of intention may weigh heavily on pastors as they seek to
relieve human suffering and help people out of the messes into which
they get themselves as they impulsively careen through life, such things
are probably largely irrelevant in a court of law.
These
two criteria, the lawful contract and its consummation, are ensconced
within Western jurisprudence, and they meet the muster of the most
ancient roots of humankind’s understanding of what constitutes marriage.
Yet the modern State has sometimes distanced itself from these two
ancient requirements for lawful marriage. For example, in Louisiana,
marriage is defined in Article 86 of our Civil Code as “a legal
relationship between a man and a woman that is created by civil
contract. The relationship and the contract are subject to special rules
prescribed by law”
Its
requirements are:
“The absence of legal impediment.
“A marriage ceremony.
“The free consent of the parties to take each other as husband and wife,
expressed at the ceremony”
In the
1987 Revision, we read: “Physical consummation is not necessary” In
other words, instead of being absolutely essential, consummation is
rather seen as a piece of corroborating evidence of “the free consent of
the parties to take each other as husband and wife, expressed at the
ceremony”
What Constitutes a Legal Marriage According to the Bible?
While
this may be a merciful provision for people who choose legally to
cohabit, but who cannot, for one reason or another, commit the “Act of
Marriage,” it is, nevertheless, an inversion of the ancient standard
that is reflected in the biblical data, where the physical act of sexual
intercourse is the fundamental thing and the public covenant is the
legitimizing, corroborating ritual.
Sexual
intercourse does not create the marriage bond; without a wedding
ceremony where promises are made in the presence of witnesses, sexual
intercourse is merely fornication. But sexual intercourse is the “Act of
Marriage,” not the ceremony. For example, Saint Paul refers to the
sexual act as a kind of de facto, vis-a-vis a de jure,
accomplishing of the marriage bond:
‘Do
you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take
the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot? Certainly not!
Or do you not know that he who is joined to a harlot is one body with
her? For “the two,” He says, “shall become one flesh” But he who is
joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him” (1 Corinthians 6:16-17).
But
this does not mean that people are actually married to everyone with
whom they have sex. John 4:17, 18, where the Lord Jesus speaks with the
woman at the well, is very helpful in this regard:
‘The
woman answered and said, “I have no husband”
‘Jesus
said to her, “You have well said, ‘I have no husband,’ for you have had
five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; in
that you spoke truly”’
In
this passage our Lord informs the woman that he knows that she has had
at least six sexual partners, that she has been married to five of them,
divorced from at least four of them and that she is not married to her
current paramour, that they are simply “shacking” While the Lord Jesus
does not give his approval to all of the circumstances surrounding these
multiple divorces and remarriages, he does recognize their reality. And
he teaches us that not all sexual cohabitation constitutes marriage when
he tells her that she is not married to her current partner.
This
passage is very helpful to people who have destroyed their marriages,
gone through unbiblical divorces and are now remarried. What should they
do? Should they divorce their current spouses and attempt to return to
their former ones? No, their new marriages, even were they begun in
adultery, nevertheless constitute binding marriages, and people must
begin to follow the Lord where they are, not where they might like to be
had they not sinned. No situation puts us in a situation where it is
impossible to begin to obey God and seek his blessing on our lives.
The Marriage Contract Is a Public Covenant Between a Man and a Woman.
Let us
consider then in more depth, these two essential elements of marriage.
First, there was the marriage treaty or covenant, the understanding of
which was well established within the ancient communities of the Near
East in the third and second millennia before the coming of Christ. In
the presence of witnesses, comprised of their families and friends, a
man and a woman affirmed that they were going to live together in the
married state, according to a divinely ordained covenant, and they did
so. In some cultures a third party, such as a priest, officiated, in
others, the two people simply did this themselves.
An
example of the latter is seen in the marriage of Isaac and Rebecca.
Isaac, in taking Rebecca as his wife, did not sneak her into his late
mother’s tent for a sexual tête-à-tête. (Genesis 24:67). All this was
done with the full knowledge, consent and blessing of both Rebecca’s
family and Isaac’s. Isaac’s marriage was a public thing, the cutting of
a covenant, where ancient sexual rituals are embedded within the
biblical narrative, as, for example, Abraham’s requiring his servant to
swear by placing his hand under his genitalia (Genesis 24:2).**
The Cutting of the Covenant Involves the Consummation of the Marriage.
Secondly, within Hebrew tradition the verb that was used to describe the
making of a covenant was a word that means “to cut” Among other reasons,
this verb was used because treaties in the ancient Near East usually
involved the shedding of blood. In ancient marriage this cutting of the
covenant involved the consummation of the oral or written contract in an
act where blood normally was shed. This took place after the many
celebrations of the covenant that began with the betrothal contract and
climaxed in the wedding supper, after which the bride and groom retired
for the night. Much was made of this act of shedding the blood of the
covenant, where the groom broke the bride’s maidenhead, the membrane
that occludes the vagina of a virgin. Before that bloody event, strict
guidelines were to have been followed, the father and mother of the
bride having prepared the bridal chamber so as to preserve on cloth the
evidence of the blood of the covenant having been shed.
Insights into the deadly importance of this covenant ritual are found in
Deuteronomy 22:13-21:
‘If a
man marries a woman, has sexual intercourse with her and then, turning
against her, taxes her with misconduct and publicly defames her by
saying, “I married this woman and when I had sexual intercourse with her
I did not find evidence of her virginity,” the girl’s father and mother
must take the evidence of her virginity and produce it before the elders
of the town, at the gate. To the elders, the girl’s father will say, “I
gave this man my daughter for a wife and he has turned against her, and
now he taxes her with misconduct, saying, I have found no evidence of
virginity in your daughter. Here is the evidence of my daughter’s
virginity!” They must then display the cloth to the elders of the town.
The elders of the town in question will have the man arrested and
flogged, and fine him a hundred silver shekels for publicly defaming a
virgin of Israel, and give this money to the girl’s father. She will
remain his wife; as long as he lives, he may not divorce her.
‘But
if the accusation that the girl cannot show evidence of virginity is
substantiated, she must be taken out, and at the door of her father’s
house her fellow-citizens must stone her to death for having committed
an infamy in Israel by bringing disgrace on her father’s family. You
must banish this evil from among you.’
In
bringing out the necessity of bloodshed in the marriage covenant of a
virgin, I do not mean to imply that without the bloodshed of the
breaking of the maidenhead a marriage is not valid. After all, widows
and the lawfully divorced were permitted to remarry, and there would, of
course, never be bloodshed on their wedding nights (Deuteronomy 24:1-4;
25:5-10; Ezekiel 44:22). My point is simply to underscore that the
public covenanting must be followed by the physical act of sexual
intercourse in order for a marriage to take place.
However, the marriage of someone who is no longer a virgin was not the
ideal, even when that person has been lawfully divorced or widowed. Our
Lord Jesus Christ takes us back to the very beginning, when God himself
instituted marriage in Genesis 2:24, and states: “Haven’t you read,” he
replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’
and said, ‘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” (Matthew 19:4-6). The ideal of Genesis 2:24, rooted as it is
in the time of human innocence before sin and death, not only rules out
divorce, it rules out widower and widowhood as well.
This
ideal of virginity at the time of marriage is underscored in the higher
standard set for the high priest as over against that set for regular
priests. If one were to contrast the limitations regarding whom ordinary
priests could marry with those for the high priest, he would note that
the high priest could not even marry the widow of a priest, only a
virgin: “The high priest . . . the woman he marries must be a virgin. He
must not marry a widow, a divorced woman, or a woman defiled by
prostitution, but only a virgin from his own people, so he will not
defile his offspring among his people. I am the LORD, who makes him
holy” (Leviticus 21: 10, 13-15). And so the cutting of the marriage
covenant of the high priest would always be preserved in the bloody
sheet entrusted to the care of the virgin bride’s father.
Whereas, the lower order of priests enjoyed a broader spectrum of
potential partners: “Priests . . . must not marry women defiled by
prostitution or divorced from their husbands, because priests are holy
to their God” “They must not marry widows or divorced women; they may
marry only virgins of Israelite descent or widows of priests” (Leviticus
21:5, 7; Ezekiel 44:22). Thus, this bloody evidence may or may not be
there for a regular priest, and ordinary Israelites could marry anyone,
including any widow or divorcee.
If one
looks at the these classes of people in light of communion with God that
was symbolically depicted within the Tabernacle/Temple system, a clear
picture of God’s ideal is there. Gentiles could only come so far, not as
far as the children of Israel; men could approach the presence of God
more intimately than women, but the priests could come even closer.
However, only the High Priest could actually come into the presence of
God, and he but twice, once a year, on the Day of Atonement. (Leviticus
16).
There Are Covenant Relationships that Do not Involve Marriage.
There
are many covenant relationships that people may enter into for any
number of reasons. Denominations and congregation have sometimes entered
into covenants, particularly those who historically have practiced close
communion such as many Southern Baptist congregations and members of the
Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America. During the English Civil
War, the British Parliament covenanted with the leaders of Scotland and
signed the Solemn League and Covenant on September 25, 1643.
David had a covenant relationship with Jonathan:
“Now when he had finished speaking to Saul, the soul of Jonathan was
knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul. Saul
took him that day, and would not let him go home to his father’s house
anymore. Then Jonathan and David made a covenant, because he loved him
as his own soul. And Jonathan took off the robe that was on him and gave
it to David, with his armor, even to his sword and his bow and his belt”
(1 Samuel 18:1-4).
But in no sense could this or any of these other relationships be
considered biblical marriage, because biblical marriage always involves
sexual intercourse between a male and a female at the outset. Such
non-sexual covenant relationships between men and women may be alluded
to in 1 Corinthians 7:36-38:
“But
if any man thinks he is behaving improperly toward his virgin, if she is
past the flower of youth, and thus it must be, let him do what he
wishes. He does not sin; let them marry. Nevertheless he who stands
steadfast in his heart, having no necessity, but has power over his own
will, and has so determined in his heart that he will keep his virgin,
does well. So then he who gives her in marriage does well, but he who
does not give her in marriage does better”
Or, as Eugene Peterson paraphrases it in the Message:
‘If a man has a woman friend to whom he is loyal but never intended to
marry, having decided to serve God as a “single,” and then changes his
mind, deciding he should marry her, he should go ahead and marry. It’s
no sin; it’s not even a “step down” from celibacy, as some say. On the
other hand, if a man is comfortable in his decision for a single life in
service to God and it’s entirely his own conviction and not imposed on
him by others, he ought to stick with it.’
A
biblical marriage, then, is not God’s ideal for everyone, because those
who have the gift of a single life are able to serve the Lord and others
much more freely than those who are married:
“I
would like you to be free from concern. An unmarried man is concerned
about the Lord’s affairs—how he can please the Lord. But a married man
is concerned about the affairs of this world—how he can please his
wife—and his interests are divided. An unmarried woman or virgin is
concerned about the Lord’s affairs: her aim is to be devoted to the Lord
in both body and spirit. But a married woman is concerned about the
affairs of this world—how she can please her husband. I am saying this
for your own good, not to restrict you, but that you may live in a right
way in undivided devotion to the Lord” (1 Corinthians 7:32-35).
But
all of us need to be in some form of covenant relationship with other
people because of a basic human need, a need that was within us before
our first parents ever sinned: ‘The LORD God said, “It is not good for
the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him”’ (Genesis
2:18). All of us need to belong to a larger group with whom we share the
bond of accountability and love. The God who created us knows our needs:
“Two are better than one because they have a good return for their
labor. For if either of them falls, the one will lift up his companion.
But woe to the one who falls when there is not another to lift him up.
Furthermore, if two lie down together they keep warm, but how can one be
warm alone? And if one can overpower him who is alone, two can resist
him. A cord of three strands is not quickly torn apart” (Ecclesiastes
4:9-12).
Such
intimacy and covenant connectedness can be found outside of marriage in
a closer bond within the extended family, but God has given us the
Church, not the family, as his fundamental institution in this age.
Every believer needs truly to belong to a church, because it is the
primary institution in which God wants us to experience fundamental
accountability and loyalty, even though that loyalty and accountability
do not cancel out what we owe to other institutions, either the state or
especially, the family. Indeed, we are warned: “But if anyone does not
provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has
denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever” (1 Timothy 5:8) So the
Church does not eliminate these other institutions, but God’s ideal
would be Christian families united within Christian churches that
enjoyed the blessing of states that self-consciously reflected a
biblical sense of justice within their legal systems.
Some State Sanctioned Marriages Are not Identical to Biblical Marriages.
In the
modern world, people may choose to enter into a covenant relationship
for lots of reasons and have that relationship sanctioned by the State.
When the State recognizes this covenant relationship under the title of
“marriage,” there are many legal ramifications, including insurance and
survivor benefits, things utterly unknown in the ancient world. In
Louisiana, inasmuch as “physical consummation is not necessary” for a
marriage to be legal, it would be lawful for a man and woman to stand
before a state authorized official, make vows according to established
ceremony and be pronounced “husband and wife” But such a relationship,
while perhaps exemplified in 1 Corinthians 7:36-38, falls short of being
a biblical marriage, because it will never be consummated through the
“Act of Marriage,” sexual intercourse.
In the course of time, either the husband or the wife may become unable
to fulfill the conjugal obligations of marriage, but they are still
legally married. If people have physical problems, they should
experiment with ways to satisfy each other’s needs for intimacy. After
all, according to the Word of God what is permitted sexually between a
man and woman who are married to each other is extremely broad, and in
the understanding of Joseph C. Dillow in his
Solomon on Sex
(Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1977), the Song of Songs
encourages both manual and oral stimulation between married partners.
However, if, prior to marriage, a person is sexually handicapped to the
point of being unable to perform sexual intercourse, this information
must be shared before entering into a marriage contract. Failure to do
so would surely constitute a most egregious kind of defrauding and
certainly be grounds for annulment. However, a person may choose freely
to enter into such a relationship for a variety of reasons. If this is
done with informed consent, such relationships should be supported by
the Church, and such state sanctioned marriages should be regarded as
inviolable, and all the more so should such a couple adopt children.
After all, sexual gratification is not the chief end of relationships,
serving others to the glory of God is. We are never more fulfilled than
when we take our focus off of our own needs and focus on the needs of
others out of gratitude to God for what he has done for us in Jesus
Christ.
What Are the Grounds for Annulment?
These
two things have come down to us, not only within Christian tradition,
but from the time before humans kept written records: marriage is the
cutting of a covenant and involves both the verbal contract and the
physical consummation of that contract in sexual intercourse (which
involved the shedding of blood in the case of virgins). Without both, a
marriage is less than biblical. With both, whether the ceremony takes
place in a church building and is regarded as a sacrament by that church
or not, regardless of whatever mental reservations the parties may have
had at the time and regardless of their ignorance of all that is
entailed in marriage; notwithstanding, if the contract was entered into
without a legal impediment (such as a person still being married to
someone else at the time) and the parties of the contract freely
consented, they are under the obligations of the covenant and liable for
the sanctions imposed on those who break it.
As
regards annulment, if these two criteria have been met, there is no
place for condoning such, where Canon Law can turn the legitimate
children of people who have received the sacrament of marriage, de
jure ecclesiae, into bastards by ecclesiastical fiat, often because
of some technicality, such as the Canon lawyer’s stating that the proper
intention to receive the grace of this sacrament was not present at the
time of the marriage. On the contrary, if the two conditions have been
met: a contract having lawfully been entered into, followed by
consummation, then there can be no annulment.
However, if either part is missing, then there is no marriage, and the
Church and the State in annulling the marriage are simply recognizing
what is actually the case: there never was a true marriage to start
with. These authorities do not make it so by this declaration; they are
simply giving official recognition of the reality that no marriage has
taken place.
Thank
God that he has broken down the dividing wall between Jews and Gentiles,
and ripped the veil from top to bottom (Ephesians 2:11-22; Matthew
27:51; Hebrews 10:16-22), so that now: “There is neither Jew nor Greek,
slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If
you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according
to the promise” (Galatians 3:28). And thank God for the blood of Jesus
that protects his bride from curse and death far better than the bloody
sheet kept by a virgin’s father.
But we
live in a fallen world, and the church must deal with funerals and
divorces. “A woman is bound to her husband as long as he lives. But if
her husband dies, she is free to marry anyone she wishes, but he must
belong to the Lord” (1 Corinthians 7:39).
How Should the Church Respond to Modern Grounds for
Divorce?
What
about divorce? As with a civil court, a decision by a church court sets
a precedent to which others will appeal. Not to be overly Kantian, but
we must be keenly aware that our actions may become a universal
standard, especially in terms of relaxing the standards of the past.
When I was a child back in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, I knew of only
one child whose parents were divorced, and I went to school from
kindergarten through the twelfth grade there. There were probably others
besides this one person’s parents who had divorced, but the social
stigma kept it in the closet. Such is not the case today.
However, the Church, in standing against the quick and easy divorce of
the modern Western world, must be careful to state what the biblical
criteria are that legitimize such a divorce and not err on the left hand
or the right, because it is very easy to blur those standards and end up
justifying almost anything under the aegis of one partner having “broken
the stipulations of the marriage contract” For example, in the marriage
covenant both partners agree to something such as the following:
“Wilt
thou love her/him, comfort her/him, honor, and keep her/him in sickness
and in health; and, forsaking all others, keep thee only unto her/him,
so long as ye both shall live?”
What
are the stipulations spelled out here? Why don’t we look at the first
part of the promise and go to three passages, one of which I normally
read at a wedding, 1 Corinthians 13:4-7; Ephesians 5:18-31; Philippians
2:5-11?
“Love
is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not
proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered,
it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices
with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always
perseveres” (1 Corinthians 13:4-7).
“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave
himself up for her . .” (Ephesians 5:25).
“Let
this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the
form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made
himself nothing, taking the form of a slave, and coming in the likeness
of men” (Philippians 2:5-7).
Well,
guess what? I have broken my marriage vows. Why? Because the Lord Jesus
loved his Bride to the point of the Cross. The King of kings left the
glory of heaven and, without ceasing to be God in any sense whatsoever,
became a real human being, just like you and me save for original sin,
subject to all of the trials and agony of human existence in a fallen
world. Tempted in everyway that the rest of humankind is, he never
sinned, not even in the theater of his mind. Without ceasing to testify
to the truth, he made himself a doormat for the sake of his Bride.
The
Lord Jesus’ life and death raises the benchmark above the Moral Law and
sets the standard of love as a life of self-abdication. His life of
self-denial, exhibited supremely in the surrender of his dignity and
prerogatives, is the goal to which every husband must aspire. Sadly, I
have never reached that goal. Do I love my wife? She is my best friend
on earth, and I have great affection for her. I still desire her. I have
sacrificed a lot of things to make her life easier. We have raised five
children and gone through so many dreadful things together, but judged
by the standard of the Cross—I am a dismal failure. Not only have I
broken the first of the stipulations of the contract, I have never
actually lived up to the first term for a single day!
There Are Guidelines About the Biblical Grounds for Divorce in the Civil
Code of Ancient Israel.
But
not everything that is a breach of the marriage covenant is actual
adultery and, therefore, grounds for divorce. In a biblical divorce the
innocent party may remarry as if the offending partner were dead: “and,
after the divorce, to marry another, as if the offending party were
dead” (This understanding of biblical teaching is found in the
Westminster Confession of Faith,, XXIV, v). We need to be guided,
then, by the principles derived from the penalties of the civil code of
Israel:
“To
them also, as a body politic, he gave sundry judicial laws, which
expired together with the State of that people; not obliging any other
now, further than the general equity thereof may require” (Ibid.,
IX, iv).
Applying the general equity of the judicial laws, we may see that the
our understanding of sexual sin that gives biblical grounds for divorce
should be both narrow enough and broad enough to encompass whatever
sexual sins were capital crimes in the Old Testament. These would
include not only heterosexual adultery, but homosexual and bestial
copulation as well.
Leviticus 20:10-15: “If a man commits adultery with another man’s
wife—with the wife of his neighbor—both the adulterer and the adulteress
must be put to death. If a man sleeps with his father’s wife, he has
dishonored his father. Both the man and the woman must be put to death;
their blood will be on their own heads. If a man sleeps with his
daughter-in-law, both of them must be put to death. What they have done
is a perversion; their blood will be on their own heads. If a man lies
with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is
detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own
heads. If a man marries both a woman and her mother, it is wicked. Both
he and they must be burned in the fire, so that no wickedness will be
among you. If a man has sexual relations with an animal, he must be put
to death, and you must kill the animal”
What I
have cited in Deuteronomy 22:20-24, should be contrasted with
Deuteronomy 22:28, 29, where simple fornication was never a capital
crime: “If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be
married and rapes her and they are discovered, he shall pay the girl’s
father fifty shekels of silver. He must marry the girl, for he has
violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives”
In
other words, a person’s learning about pre-marital fornication, per
se, is not a basis for divorce; it is only where it takes place
during the time of engagement, the biblical covenant of the intention to
marry.
Neither are mental adultery and pornography actual adultery, nor should
detection of a nocturnal emission lead to an interrogation, the
resulting confession, in turn, giving grounds for a lawful divorce. I
have had to counsel somebody over an accusation of lustful thoughts as
the basis of divorce on more than one occasion. One evening a family in
my congregation was watching television, and the star of “Little House
on the Prairie,” Melissa Gilbert, now an adult, was appearing in some
drama. The husband was lost in thought, not even paying attention to
what was on TV, but was nevertheless staring at the set. Suddenly, he
snapped out of his trance when his wife snarled at him in front of their
daughter: “You’re lusting for her. I can see it. You’re an adulterer,
just like Jesus said” As the evening wore on, she told him she was going
to see a lawyer and sue him for divorce, and she was in deadly earnest.
He came to see me most distraught the next day. In the mercy of God, his
wife dropped the issue.
If
entertaining a sinful fantasy were biblical grounds for divorce, then my
wife could have sued me many times. While I have seen great progress
with my thought life over the past almost thirty-five years of marriage,
I still haven’t completely mastered this area, even though I am devoted
to Job’s practice: “I made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully
at a girl” (Job 31:1).
Also,
I have listened to a dirty joke on more than one occasion, and, sadly,
told a few in my time. This, too, is a violation of the Seventh
Commandment, but it is not grounds for divorce. Furthermore, we need to
remember the primary, though not exclusive, use of the Law is to show us
our need of a Savior, not a means to justify ourselves, while attacking
others and destroying families in the process: “Wherefore the law was
our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by
faith. But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a
schoolmaster” (Galatians 3:25, 26). Whenever I slowly ponder the true
meaning of the Law of God, I am driven to the foot of the Cross in the
brokenness of repentance. The right understanding of the Law means that
only a fool would confess that he is justified in any other way but by
grace alone, received through faith alone, in Christ alone.
What Is a Pastoral Response?
First, it is all too easy for
ministers to become jaded by the modern world. My observation is that a
woman can generally manipulate a minister or a session into justifying
her desire to divorce her husband for lots of reasons that would have
never been considered legitimate for the past two millennia of Christian
civilization—it’s that protective male instinct to rescue the “damsel in
distress” I do a lot of counseling, but I never meet with a woman
without my wife present. Often, I have been taken in by specious
excuses, but Sandy sees through them.
That
is why Christians of an earlier era wisely spelled out the biblical
criteria for a lawful divorce, without giving all sorts of hypothetical
Gemara there:
“Although the corruption of man be such as is apt to study arguments
unduly to put asunder those whom God hath joined together in marriage:
yet, nothing but adultery, or such willful desertion as can no way be
remedied by the church, or civil magistrate, is cause sufficient of
dissolving the bond of marriage: wherein, a public and orderly course of
proceeding is to be observed; and the persons concerned in it not left
to their own wills, and discretion, in their own case” (Westminster
Confession of Faith , XXIV, vi).
Secondly, in dealing with
marriage problems, the Church must resist the spirit of our age, which
is to give a quick and painless solution to everybody’s problems. Life
is tough, very tough, and the pain of many people is overwhelming. But
we do not serve others by offering unbiblical solutions—people who would
never recommend that somebody turn to what is in one of Jack Daniel’s
bottles, think nothing of prescribing a bottle of Prosac or Paxel to
numb out life’s pain and anxiety. I recommend people slowly sip from
Thomas Watson’s
Divine Cordial
instead. Furthermore, we do not help people by short-circuiting what God
is doing through his good Providence. While we don’t want to be guilty
of Saint James indictment,* we must reject the notion of the modern
American Zeitgeist that if we can remove all social ills and simply make
people feel better about themselves they will be happy and fulfilled.
God’s
people are not left disarmed and alone, as poor
Bertrand Russell
thought: “The world seems to me quite dreadful; the unhappiness of many
people is very great, and I often wonder how they endure it. To know
people well is to know their tragedy; it is usually the central thing
about which their lives are built. And I suppose if they did not live
most of the time in the things of the moment, they would not be able to
go on”
On the
contrary, we do not live in a universe where simply anything can happen.
“This is my Father’s world, O let me ne’er forget that though the wrong
seems oft so strong, God is the Ruler yet” (Maltbie D. Babcock). We live
in a world where not even a sparrow can fall to the ground apart from
him. (Matthew 10:29-31). As Ursinus and Olevianus wrote regarding our
only comfort:
“That
I, with body and soul, both in life and in death, am not my own, but
belong to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ, who with his precious blood
has fully satisfied for all my sins, and redeemed me from all the power
of the devil; and so preserves me that without the will of my Father in
heaven not a hair can fall from my head; indeed, that all things must
work together for my salvation. Wherefore, by his Holy Spirit, he also
assures me of eternal life, and makes me heartily willing and ready from
now on to live unto him” (The Heidelberg Catechism, Lord’s Day
1).
Thirdly, while we believe in
the absolute sovereignty of God, that does not mean that we recommend to
others a life of stoical resignation in the face of a severe Providence
but joyful, believing prayer. We are the Church of the Lord Jesus
Christ, and we are the titleholders to all the promises of God. (Hebrews
11:1; 2 Corinthians 1:20). We want to encourage people to rely on the
Lord and his promises, not only to get through life, but also to
overcome it overwhelmingly. Our Lord confronted Satan’s temptations by
quoting Deuteronomy: “It is written: ‘Man does not live on bread alone,
but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” (Matthew 4:4). We
need to encourage those in “impossible situations,” such as the myriad
of difficulties brought about by a bad choice in ones life’s partner, to
make their needs known to the Father—after all, he has promised:
“No
temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is
faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able,
but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may
be able to bear it” (1 Corinthians 10:13).
“For
the scepter of wickedness shall not rest on the land allotted to the
righteous, lest the righteous reach out their hands to iniquity” (Psalm
125:3).
“. . .
I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content: I know how to be
abased, and I know how to abound. Everywhere and in all things I have
learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer
need. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me”
(Philippians 4:11-13).
“And
my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by
Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:19).
God’s
promises are as valid and pragmatically useful today as they were before
the closing of the canon of Scripture.
About
fifteen years ago, my transmission went out in our only vehicle; it was
going to cost $900, and I simply did not have the money. I told no one
about it, but cried out to God on my knees, and several days later I
found an envelope that had been pushed under my door. Inside were nine,
one hundred dollar bills. I certainly praised the Lord, but it was years
later that I came to understood just how special this gift was. When I
received the anonymous gift, I had assumed that some brother had learned
about my transmission from the mechanic and had chosen to bless me in
this way. However, some years later a young man came to see me. He was a
Baptist from another parish (county) and hardly knew me. He asked me,
“Several years ago did you find an envelope with nine, one hundred
dollar bills in it?”
“Yes,”
I replied. Then he told me that he had been praying, and the Lord had
told him to go to Alexandria and give this amount of money to me.
Needless to say, I was stunned at such an example of one of God’s
providentia extraordinaria.
I
could go on and on about the strange and wonderful ways that God answers
prayer, from couples conceiving children after having failed at
fertility clinics to people on occasion being instantly healed of
diseases, but I will add only one more:
On
September 15, 1996, as I put a check in the morning offering for $110,
God quickened me with what had happened to Isaac in Genesis 26:12. By
faith—I had never been able to do this before, nor have I ever had the
liberty to pray this way since—I prayed for a hundredfold blessing—we
were really hurting financially at the time. I continued to press this
home to my Father for weeks on end, and then, on November 16, 1996, out
of the blue, I received 200 shares of Wachovia Bank stock from a
relative on the East Coast. I got on the Internet and discovered that
the stock had closed at $55.00 per share. Do the math; it comes out to
the penny. Through God hearing our prayers, instead of living in a
church owned parsonage, we now have a beautiful home of our own, on top
of a hill overlooking a lake, and have been able to give away many
thousands of dollars.
When I
counsel others, I encourage them to view their lives as totally under
the eternal, immutable, and most of all, benevolent, decree of our
heavenly Father, who has given us an absolute standard of truth only in
the Holy Scriptures and who promises: “Many are the afflictions of the
righteous: but the Lord delivers him out of them ALL” (Psalm 34:19).
Lastly, while holding firmly
to biblical absolutes without wavering, the Church of Jesus Christ must
welcome all who repent of their sins and look to him for forgiveness,
healing and the power to change. Because of sin, people get themselves
into the devil’s own snarls, and sometimes it is very difficult, and
even impossible, to unravel the twisted entanglements into which they
have worked themselves—children from several previous marriages blended
together and then having to deal with bitter former spouses and their
angry, new partners who resent every minute or penny spent on their
step-children and who go out of their way to sabotage these
relationships to the great destruction of God’s little ones. But the
grace of the Cross cuts the Gordian knot that Satan has manipulated them
into weaving. Thank God that Jesus not only bore the guilt but also the
consequences of all our sins with the result that we are never under
condemnation or outside the good Providence of God who turns everything
ultimately into a blessing.
“Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God
through our Lord Jesus Christ . . “ (Romans 5:1).
“There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ
Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the
Spirit” (Romans 8:1).
“And we know that all things work together for good to those who love
God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. For whom He
foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son,
that He might be the firstborn among many brethren” (Romans 8:28, 29).
This means that the divorced person can affirm, along with everyone
else, that when we come to Jesus, the slate is wiped clean. We are new
people in him. Our sins are forgiven; they will not be remembered
against us any longer. That does not mean that all the temporal
obligations and commitments into which we entered before we became
Christians we are now free to break:
‘But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now
I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody
out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount” Jesus said to
him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is
a son of Abraham”’ (Luke 19:8, 9).
In other words, if I owe someone something, it is still my obligation to
endeavor to repay him. And that includes alimony and child support
payments as well. But I am no longer under this as a curse, but as a
blessing. My debts belong to Jesus, even as I do. Whether I am able to
repay or not is Jesus’ problem—his burden not mine. And my repayments
are not made to embittered, ungrateful people; they are offerings made
to Jesus because I love him and want to glorify his name by a good
testimony.
So I am a new person: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new
creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17). God
always deals with me where I am not where I was. God never wrings his
hands and says, “Well, if only you had not divorced” God is free to
bless me today, regardless of what has happened in the past.
Divorce is a sin; God even says that he hates it: ‘“I hate divorce,”
says the Lord God of Israel, “and I hate a man’s covering himself with
violence as well as with his garment,” says the Lord Almighty. So guard
yourself in your spirit, and do not break faith’ (Malachi 2:16). But
divorce is not the unpardonable sin. God forgives us, and he puts our
past behind us.
To the divorced, the Church must extend an open hand of welcome, help
and forgiveness, even as we should those who struggle with
homosexuality, alcohol and substance abuse, gossip, pride and greed. The
Church is the only “club” whose membership requirement is that people
are more sinful than they want to be.
* Within the Roman Empire from the time of
Constantine I on, the State in the East was profoundly guided by the
teachings of the Church, even though the State was over the Church, and
this remained the case even after Constantine XI was killed by Osama bin
Laden’s predecessors, the Ottoman Turks, in A.D. 1453. In the western
part of the old Roman empire, the Church came significantly to function
in the role of the State after the implosion of Roman civil authority
near the end of the fifth century, and the Holy See began to function
not unlike the Secretary General of the modern United Nations, mediating
the grievances of petty kingdoms under the aegis of Christian Tradition.
**
“It is no ordinary request that Abraham is making, so he couches it with
some delicacy. By putting his hand under Abraham’s thigh, the servant
was touching his genitals and thus giving the oath a special solemnity.
In the ancient Orient, solemn oaths could be taken holding some sacred
object in one’s hand, as it is still customary to take an oath on the
Bible before giving evidence in court. Since the OT particularly
associates God with life (see the symbolism of the sacrificial law) and
Abraham had been circumcised as a mark of the covenant, placing his hand
under Abraham’s thigh made an intimate association with some fundamental
religious ideas. An oath by the seat of procreation is particularly apt
in this instance, when it concerns the finding of a wife for Isaac”
(Gordon J. Wenham, Word Biblical Commentary: Genesis 16-50
(Dallas: Word, Incorporated, 1998) in loc).