Divorce: A Result of Hardness of the Heart, part 2

Transcript

GR 711
5/19/1985
Divorce: A Result of Hardness of the Heart (part 2)
Matthew 19:7-9
Gil Rugh

As considered in the previous two studies, the matter of marriage and divorce is the topic of discussion at the beginning of Matthew 19. Jesus explained to the Pharisees what God’s plan was in the context of marriage and He showed that God’s purpose was that a man and a woman be established together in a permanent covenant relationship of oneness by Him for all of life. So marriage is the most permanent, binding relationship between two human beings and it is to be a lifelong relationship and commitment.
Jesus responded to the Pharisees’ question about divorce by taking them back to Genesis 1 and 2. God’s plan was seen in the creation. He created a man and He created a woman. Therefore God’s intention is one man and one woman together. Genesis 2 says that the man is to leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, and the two become one flesh. Jesus concluded by saying, “So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate” (Matt. 19:6). I think it is important to remember, when talking about divorce and all the issues that revolve around divorce today, that it is necessary to begin by a consideration of God’s plan for marriage.
When the man leaves his father and mother and cleaves to his wife, the covenant relationship is established. The two become one before God. God has joined them together. Therefore man is commanded not to separate them, not to divorce them. However, sin has entered the picture and you cannot talk about divorce apart from sin, because if sin had never come into the world, there would be no such thing as divorce. Sin is the cause of all kinds of conflicts with God’s plan. God’s plan was one man and one woman together for all of life. Sin enters the picture, and man rebels against that plan.
Jesus said in Matthew 19:8, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way.” Divorce happens in the context of hearts hardened towards God: one or two people in rebellion against God’s plan. In Matthew 19:9, Jesus continued his explanation to the Pharisees, “And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for immorality, and marries another commits adultery.” Leaving out the exception clause for a moment, the person who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery. Since God has joined them together in a covenant relationship of oneness, a violation of that relationship is adultery as God sees it. This is the case no matter what man says about it; man cannot overrule God.
God can make exceptions, and He made an exception in the case of immorality. The word immorality means fornication. It is a broad word and includes all kinds of sexual unfaithfulness. So where sexual unfaithfulness occurs, then divorce and remarriage is allowed by God. As noted in the last study, this is in the case where there is persistent sexual unfaithfulness with no indication of remorse or willingness to cease the activity. If a spouse commits sexual immorality but seeks forgiveness and indicates a willingness to cease the activity, then the other spouse ought to be ready to forgive. There is no limit to forgiveness and Christ covered that in Matthew 18:21,22. We are to forgive one another as Christ has forgiven us (see Ephesians 4:32). This takes special grace from God in those situations, but forgiveness is to characterize us as believers.
If a spouse persists in immorality, then there is the provision and the allowance for the breaking of the marriage. This fits the Old Testament pattern noted in the last study in Leviticus 18 and 20 where sexual unfaithfulness was punished by death under the Mosaic Law and the marriage was effectively ended freeing the other spouse for remarriage. In Matthew 19 Jesus indicated that sexual immorality still provides for the breaking of that relationship and the establishing of a new marriage. This was also a pattern that God followed in His relationship with Israel. God spiritually was married to Israel, but Israel was immoral in the spiritual realm and God divorced Israel.
The first part of Jeremiah 3 lays out Israel’s unfaithfulness. The context of Jeremiah is that the Northern ten tribes, called Israel, have been carried away into captivity. The Southern two tribes, Judah and Benjamin, are the observers. God speaks about the unfaithfulness of His people and says they have become a harlot in Jeremiah 3:1, “You are a harlot with many lovers.” In Jeremiah 3:2, He asks if there is a place that they have not committed harlotry. They have gone up on all the hills, on all the high places, and worshipped other gods. God says that is spiritual immorality, spiritual harlotry. Then God said He divorced faithless Israel and sent her away. Jeremiah 3:8, “And I saw that for all the adulteries of faithless Israel, I had sent her away and given her a writ of divorce.” What did He do? He sent the Northern tribes into captivity. Assyria came down and carried the Northern kingdom into captivity. God said He sent her away and He gave her a bill of divorce. So for spiritual unfaithfulness, God divorced the nation Israel. In the previous study, God’s pattern of restoring Israel to Himself was noted in Hosea 3, showing His great mercy and grace and forgiveness. But the point in Jeremiah was that God had the right and the prerogative because of unfaithfulness to divorce His wife and put her away.
So in the discussion in Matthew 19, Jesus was simply following the pattern that was already laid out in the Old Testament. Marriage is a binding relationship, and except where there is persistent sexual unfaithfulness, it is a bond that cannot be broken.
Matthew 19 does not contain all the New Testament has to say on the subject of divorce. Paul later elaborated on the matter and gave further insights on situations where divorce could occur. First Corinthians 7 gives a more complete picture of the subject of divorce as it is set down in the New Testament.
In 1 Corinthians 7 Paul was dealing with situations that existed in the church at Corinth. This church had many problems, and one of the problem areas was the marriage relationship. The church had gotten all kinds of distorted ideas about marriage. So Paul wrote about some of the responsibilities that exist between a husband and wife in the sexual area. 1 Corinthians 7:4 says that the wife’s body belongs to the husband and the husband’s body belongs to the wife. The wife is to use her body to fulfill her husband’s needs; and the husband is to use his body to fulfill and meet his wife’s needs. That provides pretty clear Scriptural guidelines and instruction for the marriage relationship. Evidently some of the Corinthians thought to be more spiritual they ought to abstain from sex even in the marriage relationship.
People today still get strange ideas about sex. Sometimes Christians get the idea that there is something dirty or defiling about sex because the world abuses sex and debases sexual activity, but God said in Hebrews 13 that in marriage the bed is undefiled. God intends for the sexual relationship to be meaningful and fulfilling within the marriage relationship. In fact 1 Corinthians 7:5 says, “Stop depriving one another, except by agreement for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer, and come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.” This study is about divorce, not sex, but note that sex is to be a key, major part of the marriage relationship. In fact, it is to be such a regular thing that a husband and wife are to agree that they are going to abstain from sex for awhile to give themselves to prayer. That means that the sexual relationship is to be going on quite regularly.
Note that the end of the verse says, “come together again so that Satan will not tempt you.”
Believers have gotten into trouble in their marriage relationship because they have ignored what God has said in 1 Corinthians 7. Then they wonder what happened. If you do not do what God said, then you are in rebellion against God and you are throwing out a challenge to Satan. You can be sure you will lose that challenge. This indicates that sex is to be a major part of the marriage relationship, not the only part, but an important part.
Paul began his discussion of marriage and divorce in 1Corinthians 7:10: “But to the married I give instructions, not I, but the Lord, that the wife should not leave her husband.” His
discussion breaks down into two areas: believers who are married to other believers and believers who are married to unbelievers. Paul basically set forth two different sets of responsibilities. He also made it clear that what he was going to say was not from him but from the Lord. This did not mean that this was unusual or exceptional, but that Christ already talked about this when He was on earth, referring to Matthew 19 and Mark 10.

Paul was indicating that he was repeating what the Lord Jesus Christ already said when He was on earth: “The wife should not leave her husband.” The word “choridzo” translated as “leave” means to separate. It is also a word for divorce. It is the same word that is used in Matthew 19:6, “What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.” Obviously in Matthew 19:6 it is talking about divorce. That is made clearer in 1 Corinthians 7:11, “(but if she does leave, she must remain unmarried, or else be reconciled to her husband), and that the husband should not divorce his wife.” So “leave” refers to divorce because it results in an unmarried condition humanly speaking. Leaving does not sever the responsibilities that God sets down, but it is important to note that the word “leave” is talking about a divorce. If you interpret “leave” to mean something short of divorce, it will lead you to a different position on this passage.
So Paul’s instructions were: don’t divorce your mate and if divorce has occurred, you either remain in the single state or you are reconciled to your former partner. It was rather simple. With all the issues that revolve around marriage and divorce, you might think that Paul would have more to say about it. If you get a Bible encyclopedia and read about the city of Corinth and the marriage situations at Corinth, you would find they really had a hodge-podge mess, not so different from the kinds of confusion that exist today. The instruction of the Word to us as believers is simple: If you are married, you are in a permanent relationship; and if divorce has entered the picture, you can either remain a single person or you can be reconciled to your partner.
Paul continued with his instructions in 1 Corinthians 7:12, “But to the rest I say, not the Lord, that if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he must not divorce her.” Obviously Paul was not claiming that since God did not speak on this, he would give his opinion. First Corinthians 7 is part of the Scripture, which is inspired by God. Paul meant that when Jesus Christ talked about divorce, He did not address the issue of a believer married to an unbeliever. The situation referred to is where two unbelievers get married and then in time, by the grace of God, one of them comes to trust Christ. This would not refer to a believer in rebellion against God marrying an unbeliever thus creating a problem.
If a person gets saved and his spouse is not saved, what should he do? He has become a believer in Jesus Christ. His body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. He has committed his life to Him. He wants to have a life that honors and exalts God. But he is married to an unbeliever and he is bound in a relationship of oneness to one who is a child of the devil and who does not have as a goal in her life to honor and exalt Jesus Christ. He is joined in oneness, sexually and otherwise, with one whose desires are base and impure. Would it not be better for him, as a believer, to divorce her? Perhaps it would be better to divorce that unbelieving partner. There seems to be certain logic to that.
But Paul says no. He says that if you are a believer and you are married to an unbeliever and the unbeliever consents to live with you, do not divorce him. 1 Corinthians 7:13 addresses this also to a wife, “And a woman who has an unbelieving husband, and he consents to live with her, she must not send her husband away.” The situation is the same. The word for divorce is “send away”. If you have come to trust Jesus Christ as your Savior and your husband has not, the decision regarding the future of your marriage really rests with your husband, the unbelieving spouse.

If that unbelieving spouse is willing to continue the marriage relationship, then you are to remain in that relationship and live in that relationship as a godly husband or a godly wife. By that I mean you are not to be driving that person to distraction by being the kind of husband or kind of wife that should make your spouse want to divorce you. You are to manifest all the character of Christ in that relationship. You are to be the loving and supportive husband that your wife needs or the submissive and encouraging wife that your husband needs.
The reason is in 1 Corinthians 7:14, “For the unbelieving husband is sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified through her believing husband; for otherwise your children are unclean, but now they are holy.” I find this interesting because it is just the reverse of the normal argument of Scripture.
In Haggai 2:11-14 it says that when something holy touches something unholy, that which is holy is defiled: “‘Thus says the Lord of hosts, “Ask now the priests for a ruling: If a man carries holy meat in the fold of his garment, and touches bread with this fold, or cooked food, wine, oil, or any other food, will it become holy!”’ And the priests answered and said, ‘No.’ Then Haggai said, ‘If one who is unclean from a corpse touches any of these, will the latter become unclean?’ And the priests answered and said, ‘It will become unclean.’” If you have something holy and you touch something unholy, you do not make that which is unholy, holy, and that which is holy becomes unholy or unclean. With that background a believer might think that if he is sanctified and holy before God and he maintains a relationship of oneness with an unbeliever who is unclean and unholy before God, he would become defiled. That would be logical from this section, but it is not true. Just the reverse happens in the marriage relationship.
Paul said in 1 Corinthians 7:14 that the unbelieving husband is sanctified through his wife and the unbelieving wife sanctified through her husband. The word “sanctified" and the word “holy" are the same basic words in the Greek. They mean to be set apart. A believer is holy because he is set apart by God for Himself. The word “saint" comes from the same basic word. Believers are saints because they are set apart by God for Himself. Paul said that the unbeliever is sanctified by the believer so the believer does not have to be concerned that he is being defiled in any way by the unbeliever, not even by the physical expression of oneness. In fact, that unbelieving spouse is set apart by God in a special relationship to Him by virtue of the fact he is married to a believer. Be careful: that does not mean the unbelieving spouse is saved any more than the meat referred to in Haggai was saved. It was sanctified. It was holy. But it wasn’t saved. It was set apart to God.
You can only be saved by personal faith in Jesus Christ. You can not be saved by being married to a believer or by being the child of a believer. But when you are married to a believer or you are a child of a believer, you are in a special relationship to God. In 1 Timothy 4:4 it says, “For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with gratitude; for it is sanctified by means of the word of God and prayer.” This refers to things like food. Food is sanctified, it is not saved, but it is set apart in a special situation, in a special relationship.

If I am a child of God, I am the object of His special love and affection, and if I am married to an unbeliever, I am joined in that relationship of oneness with one who is not a child of God. Because of the closeness of that physical bond, the one who is not a child of God is in a special relationship before God because everything that happens to that person affects me. Everything that person does affects me. The tragedies that come into that person’s life, they affect me. The hardships that come into that person’s life, they affect me. So you can see that they are set apart by God with a special relationship. Because He is controlling and directing my life as His child in accomplishing His purposes for good in me, that means that the unbelieving spouse benefits from that relationship and enjoys special blessing that they would not have if they were married to an unbeliever. That is what Paul was saying: the unbelieving spouse is sanctified, set apart.
The end of 1 Corinthians 7:14 says, “for otherwise your children are unclean, but now they are holy.” So, does that mean the children of a believing parent are saved because they are holy? No, that is not what Paul was talking about. You have to keep the context. The reference to the children being unclean is similar to what the Old Testament said in this ceremonial sense of things unclean and things holy. The things holy were set apart to God and they could be utensils, they could be food and they could be people, whatever. But they were set apart in a special relationship to God. So the children of a believing parent, even where only one of the parents is a believer, are set apart in a special relationship to God. Why? Everything that happens to my child affects me, burdens me, and concerns me. I have a responsibility and obligation to that child, so the child of mine enjoys a special relationship before God because God is watching out for him, so to speak, in a way that He would not be watching out for the children of unbelievers. So it is a special benefit, a special blessing, to be married to a believer or to be the child of a believer. One of those benefits is the continual testimony of that life concerning the grace of God. That means then, that even if a believer is married to an unbeliever, the believer is not to seek a divorce. But that is not the end of the matter.

There is an exception in 1 Corinthians 7:15, “Yet if the unbelieving one leaves, let him leave.” You ought to underline “let him leave”. It is given as an imperative in the Greek, meaning that it is a command, not a recommendation but a command. If the unbeliever chooses to divorce, you are to let him divorce. That is God’s indication of what His will is for you as a believer. The word “leave” means the same thing that it has meant throughout this context. It means to separate or to divorce.
So what does an unbeliever have to do to be “leaving”? If he went out at night and did not come home until the next morning, is that “leaving”? If he went out and did not tell me where he went, is that “leaving”? No, this is talking about divorce, and so 1 Corinthians 7:15 could be read to say “if the unbelieving one divorces, let him divorce.”
Paul continued in 1 Corinthians 7:15, “the brother or the sister is not under bondage in such cases, but God has called us to peace.” The use of the phrase “the brother or the sister” is
referring to the spouse who is a believer. Paul wrote that “God has called us to peace.” So as much as is possible, believers are to live peaceably with all men. If you as a believer are married to an unbeliever, you are to do all that you can to live in a relationship of peace with that unbeliever and to manifest the beauty of the character of Christ in that relationship.
If that unbeliever says, “I’m not willing to live with you any longer. You’re a religious fanatic. You’re no fun any more. It was great when we went to the bars together. It was great when we did all that, but this religion stuff is not for me. I’m divorcing you.” Then your response is, “I have attempted to love you and to be the spouse that I ought to be, but if you choose to divorce, so be it.” In light of the Word, your response should not be to fight it. If the unbeliever says he is going to divorce, you let him divorce. Note that the responsibility for the initiative of the divorce is with the unbeliever. If you are married to an unbeliever, the future of your marriage is in the hands of the unbeliever whether you want to continue that relationship or not. Should he decide not to, then you let him divorce. That would be God’s indication to you of His plan for you.
Regarding remarriage, 1 Corinthians 7:15 says, “the brother or the sister is not under bondage in such cases.” Some people say that “not under bondage” means the believer is not bound to try to hold the marriage together, but is not free to get remarried. As far as I can tell, in the context of divorce the issue is always remarriage. When Paul said “not under bondage,” he used a strong word meaning not enslaved. I believe this means that you are free from the obligations of that relationship and therefore you are free to remarry. This is just as it was in Matthew 19 where Christ gave the exception for immorality. Again it is in the context of remarrying another.
In 1 Corinthians 7:39, there is a similar reference to freedom from being bound, “A wife is bound as long as her husband lives; but if her husband is dead, she is free to be married to whom she wishes, only in the Lord.” Each spouse is bound, but when a spouse dies, the other spouse is free from that bondage. The word used for bondage is not the same word as in verse 15. In verse 39 it is not as strong a word. The word in verse 15 means to be enslaved, but the picture is the same in the context. What did Paul say about you when you are free from that bondage? You are free to be married to someone else. So when he said the brother or sister in verse 15 is not enslaved in these cases where the unbeliever has divorced him or her, what does that mean? The brother or sister is freed to marry a believer. It may be in the grace of God that the unbeliever will divorce his spouse and some time later will come to trust Christ. If at that time he comes back and desires to be remarried, then I think the responsibility would be to follow through with that.
However if the unbeliever divorces the believer and comes back at a later time and neither has remarried and the unbeliever wants to get back together, then the believer cannot remarry the unbeliever because he is still an unbeliever and the believer is forbidden to marry an unbeliever. The believer may witness to him, may talk to him, and may explain the situation, but the believer is not free to marry the unbeliever. That would be true of any former spouse because the divorce has broken that marriage before God just as the divorce because of immorality has effectively broken that marriage.
In 1 Corinthians 7:16, Paul came back to the issue of why you stay with an unbeliever because this was the concern of the Corinthians. If you are married to an unbeliever, I am sure you have wondered about the effectiveness of your marriage for Christ. Wouldn’t your life be much more effective for the Lord if you had someone you could share the basics with? Your life is all about Jesus Christ and you are married to an unbeliever who has no interest in spiritual things, no concern about the Word, no concern about matters of eternal significance, no concern about the spiritual life and destiny of your children, and no concern to model a godly marriage. The point is not that you stay together with an unbeliever if he has a godly lifestyle. You stay together with the unbeliever if he is willing to be married to you. The unbeliever is the one who is making the decisions.
Paul said, “For how do you know, O wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know, O husband, whether you will save your wife?” (1 Cor. 7:16). If the unbeliever is willing to stay with you, that may be an indication that God wants to use the impact of your life to bring him to salvation in Christ. Is the eternal destiny of that person worth the inconvenience of your being married to him? It is not going to be easy because the unbeliever is not going to be under the control of the Spirit and is not going to necessarily be doing all the things that you would like a godly biblical husband to do, but your life is to be a testimony to that man or to that woman so that he sees the qualities of Christ in your life and thus is more open and receptive to the Word.
Being married to an unbeliever can be a very trying and difficult circumstance. It can be a tremendous burden and pressure in your life. It may seem that no one understands it. I am privileged to be married to a believing wife. Do I understand the pressures and burdens that someone is going through that is married to an unbelieving spouse? Not from experience-no. But I have to come back to the Word and see what God says. God chooses to do different things with each one of us in the accomplishing of His purposes.
What about an unbelieving mate who brings great pressure to bear on that believer? What about one who makes life miserable, so to speak? The Word speaks about that in 1 Peter 2. It talks about the issue of submission for a believer and it is particularly directed to the wives since those who have the position of submissiveness are usually under the most pressure. An unbelieving husband is usually in a position to bring greater pressure on his believing wife than if the husband is a believer and the wife is not. She can make life miserable, but there is usually a much greater pressure felt when wife is the believer and the husband is not, and the issue is submissiveness.
We as believers are to be submissive to governors, to rulers, and to kings as described in 1 Peter 2:13-17. “Servants, be submissive to your masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and gentle, but also to those who are unreasonable. For this finds favor, if for the sake of conscience toward God a person bears up under sorrows when suffering unjustly. For what credit is there if, when you sin and are harshly treated, you endure it with patience? But if when you do what is right and suffer for it you patiently endure it, this finds favor with God” (1 Peter 2:18-20). This has application to the marriage relationship. If the wife says, “God, I’ve done everything I can to be the kind of wife I ought to be, to manifest the beauty of your love to this person, and all he does is mistreat me. What am I to do?” The answer of the Word is simple: Manifest the beauty of the character of Christ. That is where you really show the character of Christ. Your good conduct is no big thing if your husband treats you like a queen even though he is an unbeliever.

First Peter 2:21 continues, “For you have been called for this purpose, since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps, who committed no sin.” He was unjustly and harshly treated even though He had done everything He should, and He did not sin. That is the pattern for you and me. So if you are in a marriage relationship and you are being treated unjustly and unfairly, what is your response to be? Divorce is not an option with the two exceptions that the Word of God gives.
The same pattern that Christ followed is to characterize the wife in her submissiveness to her husband. “In the same way, you wives, be submissive to your own husbands, so that even if any of them are disobedient to the word, they may be won without a word by the behavior of their wives” (1 Peter 3:1). The godly conduct of the wife may be the instrument that God will use in bringing the husband to salvation.
If a husband is married to an unbelieving wife, he is to be a godly husband. 1 Peter 3:7 says, “You husbands likewise, live with your wives in an understanding way.” It may be that by the beauty of His character seen in her husband, God might work to bring the wife to Himself.
Also remember that may not be God’s plan. It may be when you do all of that, the unbeliever still says, “I’m getting a divorce.” The command of Scripture is to let him divorce. That does not frustrate God’s plan for you. It is important to remember this in such an emotional area where pressure is brought to bear. Even though God will give you the grace and the strength, if you draw upon it, not to sin in this situation, this does not mean that He will make it easier, but it means He gives you the grace to bear up under this situation.
God’s plan for marriage is that it is a permanent covenant relationship. Except where there is persistent immorality or where an unbeliever is unwilling to continue to live with a believer, the marriage cannot be broken. In those two cases the marriage can be broken by divorce and remarriage is permissible because divorce in those cases allows for remarriage.
Remember the forgiveness of God encompasses all. If you are in your second marriage, your third marriage, whatever, and you recognize that you have responded unbiblically in rebellion against God and divorced just because it was not working out or you thought you found someone better, praise God because He forgives you and He picks you up right where you are. That forgiveness is absolute. You are just as clean before God if you are in your sixth marriage as I am in my first marriage because when God forgives, God has forgiven you all your sin and He has forgiven me all my sin. For both of us, all of our sins have been dumped into the depths of the sea and have been put away as far as the east is from the west. It is exciting that we as believers are both clean. Believers need to remember that in their relationships with one another. Praise God for His forgiveness, that it is adequate and sufficient for every sin. He wants to build your marriage and make the relationship you have with your husband or your wife the most fulfilling and satisfying so that it represents and reveals the beauty of the relationship that Christ has with His church.