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
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.)