Selections from Chapter 14: (Click here for full text)

 What Should the Church Do Now?

If you have come straight here without reading the previous chapters, please let me encourage you to go back and do so; otherwise you will find out the book’s conclusions but you will not know about its Scriptural foundations. The purpose of this book has been to give you information that will help you to make up your own mind about the Bible’s teaching and the purpose of this chapter is to remind you what we have found out so that we can put it together as a set of Biblical principles.

Chapter 1 reviewed the church’s traditional teaching on divorce and remarriage which many pastors have found to be unworkable. It also pointed out that sometimes what we think is in the Bible is not actually there.

Chapter 2 showed us that God’s ideal for marriage was for a loving, lifetime relationship and yet we also saw that the Old Testament is very practical with regard to the sin of marriage break-up. In the ancient Near East women could be abandoned by their husbands and then reclaimed by them in the future. This meant they were never free to find another husband to help bring up the children. God dealt with this problem in Israel by commanding that a husband who left his wife must give her a divorce certificate which gave her the right to remarry.

In chapter 3 we found that God himself is a divorcee. The Old Testament prophets described God’s relationship with Israel as if it was a marriage: when Israel worshipped other gods, she was likened to an unfaithful wife; she broke all her marriage vows while God continued to clothe, feed and love her faithfully. We saw that the prophets did not regard divorce itself as an evil act, but considered the breaking of marriage vows as the sin which broke up the marriage. God was the victim in his relationship with Israel and was therefore entitled to decide when the marriage was over. God’s divorce also gave us an insight into the way he felt about divorce: he hates it because it means that promises in the marriage contract have been broken (Mal.2.14–16).

Chapter 4 reminded us that Jesus affirmed the teaching of the Old Testament – so we cannot simply reject the moral principles which we find there – and, in chapter 5, we saw that he criticised the Pharisees for abandoning Old Testament teaching when they introduced the new groundless type of divorce named ‘Any Cause’. Jesus defended the plain meaning of the Old Testament phrase "a cause of sexual immorality" which he (and the Shammaites) said meant "nothing except ‘Sexual Immorality’", i.e. adultery. Jesus also emphasised that divorce was never compulsory (even where adultery had taken place) and that believers should only divorce someone who was "hardhearted" i.e. stubbornly unrepentant, like Israel was.

In chapter 6 we saw that Paul was equally critical of groundless divorces. He told believers that they should not use the Roman divorce-by-separation and if they had separated they should try if possible to reconcile and remarry their partner. On the other hand, if someone had divorced them, Paul recognised that there wasn’t anything they could do about it so in this case he said they were ‘not enslaved’ (which is what any divorce certificate would have told them). He accepted that being divorced against your will could be regarded as a valid Biblical divorce on the grounds of neglect.

Many people believe that marriage lasts till death, whether or not the the couple think they are divorced. Chapter 7 looked at this point of view in the light of the Bible and found that no basis for this interpretation. Many people also teach that a Christian should never divorce, even in cases of abuse, but chapter 8 pointed out that the Old Testament law – which gave the neglected or abused partner the right to a divorce – was not repealed by Jesus and that Paul assumed that it still applied.

What about remarriage after divorce? The New Testament is remarkably vague on this important issue but chapter 9 pointed out that 1^st century believers would have had no uncertainty because the right to remarry was taken for granted. It was a legal right which was recorded in all Jewish divorce certificates and in Roman law remarriage was actually a legal duty. Christians would no doubt have avoided remarriage if they had been told to, but they would have needed a very clear instruction because to do so would mean breaking the law. Neither Paul or Jesus gave this instruction however and although Paul never actually says "A divorcee may remarry", we saw that some of his teaching assumes that remarriage is allowed for Christians.

In chapter 10 we looked at the difficult situation of those who have remarried after an invalid divorce. Jesus said this type of remarriage was like adultery, but we concluded that he did not want these couples to get divorced any more than he wanted us to treat a foul-tempered outburst as if it were literally murder or treat lustful thinking as though this was literally committing adultery. We also found that when Paul told abandoned believers that they could remarry because, "God has called you to peace" he was using legal jargon which meant "this case is decided on pragmatic grounds". Even guilty partners can remarry because God is able to forgive someone who repents of an invalid divorce which cannot be reconciled without breaking up another marriage.

Chapter 11 showed that our modern wedding service still retains the vows which originated from Exodus 21. We were able to trace the wording in the earliest English marriage service back to both Jewish marriage contracts and to Ephesians 5.28–29 where ‘to love, honour and cherish’ (and other variations) originate. I also shared my experience of using a service of repentance before remarrying divorcees.

Why was Jesus’ teaching misunderstood so soon? Chapter 12 showed that the destruction of the Temple in AD 70 marked a huge change in the culture and theology of Judaism as well as sealing the rift between Christians and Jews. This meant that Christians no longer understood the rabbinic legal phrases which Jesus and Paul used like ‘Any Cause’ and ‘God has called you to peace’.

Chapter 13 asked why it has taken so long to realise that this misunderstanding had occurred and concluded that it is due to confusion rather than a conspiracy. The stand which the 2^nd century church took against sexual immorality made their new emphasis against remarriage (a misinterpretation of Jesus’ teaching) seem normal. Once this new interpretation had become church doctrine it was difficult for the church to come to terms with the fact that a misunderstanding had taken place.

More in this chapter...

We can now understand what Jesus and Paul were saying to their listeners about divorce and remarriage, which means that we can now understand what God is saying to us. We have found that the New Testament teaching is both practical and caring. God’s love reaches out to those who are struggling in a broken marriage, to the innocent divorcee, and also to the sinner who has broken their marriage vows and repented.

We have found a set of Biblical principles which some denominations will be able to apply in their church practice and which all churches will find useful in marriage counselling. Applying these principles will not always be easy because principles are not the same as rules and no two marriages are the same. Some of the practical problems which arise are illustrated by the real-life situations in the next chapter.