Chapter 7: The Kingdom Laws on Marriage and Divorce. "Blessed is he who is not offended because of me." Jesus said those words because he knew that the majority of people who heard his teachings would be offended by them. When people stumble over Jesus' teachings, they usually respond in one of two ways. Some simply decide they don't want to have anything more to do with Jesus, and they disappear back into the world. However, others who are offended by Jesus' teachings join a church with worldly values.
They simply shop around until they find a church that teaches that Jesus really didn't mean what he said. And it's not hard to find such a church these days. In fact, it's quite difficult to find a church that doesn't negate Jesus' teachings. Among the two teachings of Christ that cause the most offense today are his standards on wealth and divorce. We've already discussed Jesus' teachings on wealth, so now let's see what he said about divorce.
It has been said, "Whoever divorces his wife, let him give a certificate of divorce. But I say to you that whoever divorces his wife for any reason except sexual immorality causes her to commit adultery, and whoever marries a woman who is divorced commits adultery." That's fairly straightforward, isn't it? Whoever divorces his wife except for sexual immorality will be held accountable for being the cause of her committing adultery if she remarries. For if she remarries, both she and her new husband commit adultery.
To fully grasp the significance of Jesus' Kingdom Law on divorce, we first need to understand the practice of divorce under the Mosaic Law.
Jesus began his statement on divorce by saying, "It has been said, 'Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.'" Jesus was referring to Deuteronomy, which says, "When a man takes a wife and marries her, and it happens that she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some uncleanness in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends her out of his house.
When she has departed from his house and goes and becomes another man's wife, if the latter husband detests her and writes her a certificate of divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends her out of his house, or if the latter husband dies who took her as his wife, then her former husband who divorced her must not take her back to be his wife after she has been defiled, for that is an abomination before the Lord." So under the Mosaic Law, God allowed a man to divorce his wife if he found some uncleanness in her.
But what did God mean by "some uncleanness in her"? Some teachers of the law said that it meant almost anything, but Jesus allowed a man to divorce his wife only for sexual immorality. But what about a wife divorcing her husband? The truth is that God never allowed a wife to divorce her husband. If that is a new thought to you, please get out Strong's or some other unabridged concordance and look up divorce. You will find that every reference to divorce in the Old Testament concerns a husband divorcing his wife.
There is no exception. The Jewish professor, Israel Abrahams, of Cambridge University, said this about Jewish divorce in the Old Testament: "Divorce was always from first to last in Jewish law the husband's act." The common term used in the Bible for divorce is shilluach ishshah, the sending away of a wife. We never read of the sending away of a husband. The feminine participle gerushah, the woman thrust out, is the term applied to a divorced woman. The masculine form is not found.
Now, let me ask you a question, and it's not a trick question. In saying what he did to the Pharisees, was Jesus expanding the law on divorce, or was he narrowing it? I think we all can see that he was narrowing it, can't we? Instead of allowing a man to divorce his wife because of some uncleanness in her, Jesus allowed a man to divorce his wife only for sexual immorality.
Furthermore, whereas the Mosaic Law permitted a divorced woman to remarry, Jesus forbade it completely, saying, "Whoever marries a woman who is divorced commits adultery." So Jesus in no sense broadened what Moses had allowed. He narrowed it considerably. So one of the things I find so incredibly strange is that today's church teaches that Jesus expanded the law on divorce. Really? How is that, you might ask?
Because virtually every conventional church I know of teaches that a man can divorce his wife for sexual immorality and that a woman can divorce her husband for sexual immorality. But is that what Jesus said? Did he expand the Mosaic Law so that now wives could divorce their husbands? No, he did nothing of the sorts. He didn't open the door for divorce wider. No, he almost completely shut it, leaving a narrow exception for only the husbands.
But, you may be thinking, maybe Jesus would have permitted a wife to divorce her husband if he had lived in another culture that allowed women to divorce their husbands. Well, we don't have to speculate about that. That's because under both Greek and Roman law, a wife could divorce her husband. And there were plenty of Romans and Greeks living in Judea and Galilee, some of whom were Jewish proselytes. For that reason, on another occasion, Jesus addressed the issue of a woman divorcing her husband.
He said, "If a woman divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery." Jesus makes no exception. Why is this important? Because the vast majority of divorces filed today are filed by wives, not by husbands. In the United States, 67% to 75%, varying by state, of all divorces are filed by females. In England, 70% of all divorces are filed by wives. However, those statistics apply to all divorces, whether or not there are minor children involved.
When we consider only divorces involving minor children, the percentage of female-filed divorces is considerably greater. I have practiced title law for the past 22 years. In the course of examining land titles, I've read the legal filings on several thousand divorce cases. I've observed that easily 9 out of 10 of these divorce cases were initiated by the wives. Why is the percentage of these wife-filed divorces so high compared to the national average?
The reason is that I only review divorce filings for those persons who own real property. These property owners are typically past their mid-20s, and most of them have minor children. In the article, "These boots are made for walking: Why Most Divorce Filers Are Women," Margaret Brinig writes, "Children are the most important asset in a marriage, and the partner who expects to get sole custody is by far the most likely to file for divorce.
Women are much more willing to divorce because they rarely fear losing custody of their children." And yet, the institutional church has closed its eyes to this wrong. Several years ago, I received a form letter from a Texas minister speaking out against our no-fault divorce laws in Texas. I was pleased to see a minister say something against divorce, as most so-called Bible-believing churches have been quite silent on this issue.
But then the letter went on to say that our easy divorce laws discriminate against women and children. Against women and children? This modern-day Don Quixote was imagining that all of the thousands of divorced women in our churches were in their situation because their husbands had divorced them. Without doing any research, he treated the whole subject as though men were dumping their wives by the thousands and going on their merry way. Yet, that seems to be the general attitude of most churches toward divorce.
They completely ignore the reality of today's divorces. I've heard pastors berate fathers who "dump their wives and children" as though it were fathers who typically initiate divorce. In contrast, they treat single moms as martyrs, heroic victims, and spiritual widows, when typically it was they who divorced their husbands. Divorce is not a victimless sin, and the sin is no different when it is husbands who take the children from their wives.
There are millions of fathers and mothers today who grieve deeply over their children who have been taken from them. Yet, very few churches have the courage to speak out against this evil fruit of divorce. Some modern Bible commentators claim that contrary to Jesus, Paul did allow divorce. In fact, they contend that Paul expanded divorce even beyond the Mosaic Law, allowing wives to divorce their husbands.
They base their claims on the passage at 1 Corinthians 7:10-15: "Unto the married I command, yet not I, but the Lord: Let not the wife depart from her husband; but if she departs, let her remain unmarried, or be reconciled to her husband; and let not the husband put away his wife.
But to the rest I speak, not the Lord: If any brother has a wife who does not believe, and she is pleased to dwell with him, let him not put her away; and if a woman has a husband who does not believe, and if he is pleased to dwell with her, let her not leave him." Does Paul say anything there that contradicts Jesus? Does Paul in any way authorize divorce? No, he does not. And please notice the distinction the King James Version makes between husbands and wives.
It speaks of a husband putting away his wife, but it speaks of a wife leaving or departing from her husband. I realize that there are a few modern Bible translations that give the reader the impression that Paul is talking here about divorce. However, most present-day translations, together with the King James Version, make it clear that Paul is talking about leaving a spouse, not divorcing one. But even then, he says that Christians shouldn't even leave their spouses.
The Greek word Paul uses is aphiemi, which is usually translated as "leave" in other passages, but never as "divorce." It is an entirely different word from apoluo, the term Jesus used in Matthew 5:32 when he spoke about divorce. There is no biblical or historical warrant for translating aphiemi as "divorce" in Paul's passage. In the final verse of this passage, Paul says, "But if the unbeliever departs, let him depart; a brother or a sister is not under bondage in such cases.
But God has called us to peace." In this final verse, does Paul authorize Christians to divorce their unbelieving spouses? No, he says nothing about divorce. Throughout this passage, Paul has been talking about leaving a spouse while remaining unmarried. He says the believing spouse should not be the one to leave. He concludes the passage by saying, "If the unbeliever departs, let him depart." The believer does not have to follow after the unbelieving spouse. In God's kingdom, Jesus is the King and Lawgiver.
His apostles never contradict the commandments their King has handed down. Jesus allowed only one very narrow exception for husbands, and his apostles taught accordingly. When Jesus gives us laws, he is under no obligation to explain why the commandment is being given. However, in one of his discussions on divorce, Jesus does give us an explanation of his strict teaching on this matter.
"Have you not read that he who made them at the beginning made them male and female, and said, 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'? So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, let not man separate." Today, I see so many Christian books on marriage that talk about the marriage partnership. But Jesus never referred to marriage as a partnership.
He referred to it as one flesh, and that is quite different. In law, when two persons form a partnership, their separate identities still exist. If someone is negligently injured on partnership property, the injured person can sue each of the partners individually. The law sees the partnership as two individuals who happen to work together. However, if two individuals create a corporation, that's different. As far as the law is concerned, when two persons incorporate, their individual identities are dissolved.
If someone is injured on corporate property, he cannot normally sue the two persons who form the corporation. He can sue only the corporation itself. The law sees the corporation as a new person. The corporation can sue or be sued as an entity of its own. Similarly, marriage is like a corporation, not a partnership. A new entity is formed when a man and woman marry. They aren't partners. They have merged into one flesh. The world may treat a husband and wife as partners, but Jesus doesn't.
Who did Jesus say joins a man and woman together in marriage? God. So in marriage, a man and woman pass into the realm of eternity. I don't mean that marriage is eternal, but that there are eternal realities that attach to marriage. Marriage is not a human institution. It's a heavenly institution. It is God who does the joining, but it is man who tries to do the separating. What I'm sharing with you is nothing new. This is historic Christianity.
It's how the early Christians understood Jesus' teachings, and it's how virtually all Christians understood Jesus' commandments until the time of the Reformation. Unfortunately, some of the reformers worked to take marriage and divorce outside the jurisdiction of the church and put them in the hands of the civil magistrates. Yet, even after the Reformation, divorce among Bible-believing Christians was still quite rare until the 1950s and 1960s. And then everything changed. What happened in the 50s and 60s?
The world changed its attitude and laws on divorce. Various states changed their laws to make divorces easier to obtain. Divorce no longer carried a social stigma. And when the world changed, the institutional church changed as well. In other words, if Caesar says divorce is wrong and forbids it, then divorce is wrong. But if Jesus says divorce is wrong and forbids it, well, maybe it's not so bad after all. The churches have shown quite clearly who their real master is, and it's not Jesus.
In 1999, George Barna, president and founder of the renowned Barna Research Group, researched the incidence of divorce among various religious groups. He found that the divorce rate among born-again American Christians was higher than the divorce rate among Americans as a whole. To be sure, many non-Christian couples lived together without marrying. And so the divorce statistics would not take into account any breakups of such cohabitation relationships.
Nevertheless, once worldly couples vow "until death do we part," they are as likely, or even more so, to keep that vow as are Bible-believing Christians. Although the Barna Research Group is a Christian organization, its findings drew protests and criticisms from other Christians. However, Mr. Barna has stood behind his data. He responded to his critics.
While it may be alarming to discover that born-again Christians are more likely than others to experience a divorce, that pattern has been in place for quite some time. Barna Project Director Meg Flammang noted, "We would love to be able to report that Christians are living very distinct lives and impacting the community, but in the area of divorce rates, they continue to be the same." The findings of the Barna Research Group are corroborated by the statistics of government agencies.
For example, the rate of divorce in the Bible Belt is higher than any other part of America, except for the state of Nevada. In fact, the divorce rate in the Bible Belt is significantly higher than it is in New England, where there are noticeably fewer fundamentalist Christians. What should really make evangelical American Christians blush is the fact that the divorce rate among so-called born-again Christians is significantly higher than it is among those Americans who categorize themselves as atheists.
Ironically, although the divorce rate among evangelical Christians is essentially the same or higher than that of American society, the divorce rate among Asian Americans, whether Christian or not, is significantly lower than that of American society in general. And Asian American couples rarely live together without marriage. So somehow the Asian culture can do what the indwelling of the Holy Spirit can't.
Or maybe the problem is that the Holy Spirit is not dwelling in most people who claim to be born-again Christians. Even more shameful is that the divorce rate among evangelical Christians in the United States is over twice as high as the divorce rate of the whole nation of Canada, which is not exactly a stronghold of biblical Christianity.
What's worse is that the divorce rate among American evangelicals is over six times as high as the divorce rate of China, over 18.5 times the divorce rate of Italy, and over 33 times as high as the divorce rate in Sri Lanka. Divorce is so acceptable among evangelical Christians here in the South that divorce lawyers will sometimes place the Christian fish logo by their advertisements in the Yellow Pages. That's the equivalent of a Jew running a ham shop and putting the Star of David on his advertisements.
So often when I speak on the subject of divorce, Christians ask me, "But what about a situation where..." Yes, there are many difficult situations that can make marriage a real cross to bear. But the situation was no different in the first century, or the tenth, or the nineteenth. Why do so many twenty-first-century Christians feel they are entitled to a special exception when Christians of other centuries live by Jesus' teachings on marriage and divorce?
I realize that the things I have been saying in this chapter are very politically incorrect. I don't doubt that many of you are so mad at me right now that you're ready to throw this book away. But before you toss out this book, please do your own honest investigation of what I've said. By that, I don't mean going out and finding a book that says divorce is okay. That will be easy enough. No, I mean do some honest research. Verify what I've said about divorce in the Old Testament.
Then read all of the passages where Jesus discusses divorce. Did he expand God's law on divorce, or did he narrow it considerably? If what I've said is true, then it's not really me you're offended at. It's Jesus Christ. Perhaps the Jesus you thought you were in love with is not the real Jesus. But if we don't serve the real Jesus, we won't inherit real eternal life. As he said, "Blessed is he who is not offended because of me."