Of Marriage (Part 2)

Please turn with me to 1 Corinthians chapter 7. As we pick up where we left off a few weeks ago, Paul is answering questions about marriage. And so in the first part of chapter 7, he addresses marriage in a general way, including singleness, widowhood specifically. In our text tonight, he addresses the matter of divorce.

1 Corinthians 7, verses 10 through 16. When married, I give this charge, not I, but the Lord. The wife should not separate from her husband, but if she does, she should remain unmarried, or else be reconciled to her husband. And the husband should not divorce his wife. To the rest I say, I, not the Lord, that if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her. If any woman has a husband who is an unbeliever, and he consents to live with her, she should not divorce him. For the unbelieving husband is made holy because of his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy because of her husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy. But if the unbelieving partner separates, let it be so.

In such cases, the brother or sister is not enslaved. God has called you to peace. For how do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife? Let's pray. Heavenly Father, there are aspects of our lives in this fallen world that are so deeply broken that at times it seems there's no remedy.

Marriage is oftentimes one of those things, and it's hard to see how that brokenness could be mended. But you, Lord, are the one who has said to us, come to me and find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Would you help us in these moments now to come running to you, even as the prodigal son did, and find rest for our souls? And, Lord, we acknowledge that the way we come running to you is by hearing and believing and obeying what you have revealed to us in your word. So, Lord, with regard to our marriages, our homes, our families, help us tonight to obey your instruction.

Help us to trust your wisdom. We pray that you would fix what is broken, that you would protect what is still intact, that you would repair what we have neglected. And as your Holy Spirit conquers our homes and our relationships, may your grace and your strength prove to be sufficient in our weakness. Lord, help us in both our successes and failures to put Christ on display. We pray these things in his name. Amen.

You can be seated. Well, I'd like for us to walk through our text here in 1 Corinthians 7 and make sure we understand what Paul is saying, but then I'd like to broaden the net a little bit in light of the relevance of this topic and just take a brief look at what some other marriage-related passages in Scripture have to say, oftentimes harmonizing parallel passages that yield some very rich results in terms of understanding the meaning of each passage. So we're going to spend a little bit of time tonight looking at Paul's remarks first and then at what Jesus has to say on the topic of divorce in the Gospel of Matthew. Then after we've walked through these key texts, I'd like to end by just considering some practical implications and applications of the principles that we're going to discover in Scripture tonight concerning marriage and divorce and remarriage.

Now, as we walk through this together tonight, I don't want to pretend that these topics are not heavy and burdensome for some of you to think about. I'm aware that many Christians have experienced divorce or have been the victim of adultery or abuse. Many members here at Grace Church have had to walk the dark path of a broken marriage. And so I want to say at the outset, divorce is not the unpardonable sin. We heard very clearly what that sin is this morning and divorce is not it. So keep that in mind. There can be redemption and restoration and peace and joy and life after divorce.

Why? Because the blood of Christ covers adultery and lust. It covers lies and broken oaths.

It covers both the abuse of the angry as well as the bitterness of the abused. If you have been the victim of divorce, there is restoration for you. If you have been the perpetrator of an unbiblical divorce, there is forgiveness for you. God through Christ extends the Gospel to you. So don't forget tonight the potency, the power of the Gospel. Don't forget that grace is bigger than our sin, isn't it?

And it's bigger than our spouse's sin. But we need to also remember that the way to peace and freedom is to agree with what God says about my sin and about my spouse's sin and to submit myself entirely, without reservation, without qualification, to God's life-giving Word. Our posture toward Scripture needs to be one of unqualified, joyful submission to whatever God says. Regardless of our emotional response to it, regardless of the difficulties it might present with regard to our personal circumstances, can we affirm from the outset that if God says it, it is right, it is just, it is good.

That's always the way to freedom and peace and joy. So let's dive in to what Paul has to say here in 1 Corinthians 7. And first we need to begin by defining Paul's categories. In verse 8, Paul addresses the unmarried. In verse 10, he addresses the married.

Then in verse 12, he addresses the rest. And that seems like an odd third category. It seems you would only need two choices, right?

This is binary. A person is either married or unmarried. That ought to cover everybody. So who is this third group called the rest? Well, I think we have to infer the answer by noticing that in verses 12 through 16, Paul is speaking to Christians who are married to non-Christians. We might call this mixed marriages or unequally yoked marriages. We then deduce that verses 10 and 11 address equally yoked marriages, a Christian who is married to another Christian. Verses 10 and 11 address Christian marriages. Verses 12 through 16 address mixed marriages. Let's consider first then what Paul says to Christians in an equally yoked marriage.

And this is our first point. Verse 10, to the married, a Christian married to another Christian, I give this charge. And then he says, not I, but the Lord.

And that maybe makes us scratch our heads a little bit. We need to understand that by this phrase, not I, but the Lord, Paul is not saying, I don't agree with the Lord here. It's Jesus saying this, not me. No, he's simply acknowledging that what he's about to say has already been said by the Lord, both in the Gospels and in the Old Testament. In other words, this is a new revelation that Paul is about to impart.

It's already been inscripturated. Later on in verse 12, he's going to say the opposite. He's going to say, I, not the Lord, say. And here Paul is indicating that the principles he's about to lay down in verses 12 and following are new revelation. They haven't been spoken before. He doesn't mean verses 12 through 16 aren't inspired by the Lord.

He simply means they haven't been previously revealed. They haven't been inscripturated as of yet, like verses 10 and 11 have been. So don't be thrown off by that little parenthetical statement that Paul keeps bringing up. All right, so what is the principle that Paul, by way of referring to previous scripture, is laying down for Christians who are married to Christians? It's this, verse 10. The wife should not separate from her husband and, verse 11, the husband should not divorce his wife. Now, the words separate and divorce in this passage are, for all intents and purposes, synonymous. We today think of separation as kind of a halfway step towards divorce, but that distinction I don't think would have been a thing when Paul wrote this. He's telling Christian couples not to divorce.

Without explanation, without qualification. Paul says to a Christian who is married to another Christian, do not get divorced. But Paul is not an idealist. He recognizes that although in a perfect world there would be no divorce, we aren't in a perfect world.

We're in a fallen world. And so even though divorce between two professing followers of Christ shouldn't happen, it often does happen. This isn't Paul condoning Christian divorce. He's simply laying out what ought to happen if and when it occurs. So what should happen in the wake of a Christian divorce?

Well, Paul gives an answer in verse 11. But if she does divorce her husband, she should remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband. And this obviously would apply to the husband as well. If he divorces her, he should remain unmarried or else be reconciled to his wife. I don't think it's a coincidence that this forbidding of divorce within a Christian home comes right on the heels of Paul's prohibition in chapter 6 of a Christian taking another Christian to civil court.

He prohibits that a chapter ago. Lawsuits that involve a Christian versus another Christian is a travesty because it's a breaking of the union and communion that ought to characterize the Church of Jesus Christ. How much worse then it would be for a Christian to take another Christian to court in order to secure a divorce, to break apart the covenant of holy matrimony. And so Paul's two options should this sort of thing occur are reconciliation. And if reconciliation doesn't immediately happen, then singleness for both individuals, I think so as to leave the door open for a future reconciliation. You see, the goal here is for the marriage to be restored.

And why is that? Well, because divorce, particularly within a Christian home, mars the whole significance of marriage. Marriage is to be a visible demonstration of the union that exists between Christ and the church. And Paul says, don't mar this picture.

But if you do, don't compound the problem by rendering reconciliation a total impossibility through remarriage. Now before we move on, I want us to pause here long enough to feel the weight of what Paul has just said. Paul is establishing a very high ideal for marriage within a Christian home. He is in essence saying, marriage between Christians is permanent, period.

No qualifications, no gray area, no exception clauses. If two believers are united to each other through the covenant of marriage, that covenant needs to stay intact until death. That's the intent, that's the aim, that's the ideal. It's a permanent bond to the death. And that sense of permanence and persistence in marriage, for better or for worse, is the emphasis throughout Scripture. That's why the Bible says things like, the two shall become one flesh.

And what God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. And God hates divorce. And for this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and shall hold fast to his wife. God intends marriage to be a permanent, unbreakable bond. Now oftentimes when the discussion of marriage comes up, particularly difficult marriage situations, the focus oftentimes is more on what constitutes proper grounds for divorce than on what course of action will be best to restore and maintain the permanence of marriage. In other words, we spend our energy looking for valid reasons to get out of a bad marriage rather than spending that energy, as much energy, looking for ways to preserve it. In 1992, the PCA, our denomination, produced a statement, a position paper, on divorce and remarriage.

You can go online and read the whole thing if you want. But I appreciate how this statement introduces the topic. It points out that our emphasis when dealing with the various ethical questions that come up regarding divorce and remarriage ought to be on the rule, not on the exceptions to the rule. And the biblical rule for marriage, the standard that is consistent in Scripture, is one of permanence of the marriage covenant. The paper says this, It is better to view Scripture not as providing a ground for divorce, but rather an exception to the principle of the permanence of marriage.

Our emphasis needs to be on the permanence, the ideal, not on the exception. John Murray, a reformed theologian from a generation ago, said, Preoccupation with the two exceptions should never be permitted to obscure the force of the negation of all the other exceptions. I mean, isn't this what the serpent did in the Garden of Eden? The Lord said that Adam and Eve could eat any fruit from any tree except one.

And what did the serpent do? He fixated their attention on the one exception. Yes, there are exceptions to the principle of the permanence of marriage, and we're going to look at those exceptions. But brothers and sisters, the exceptions are not the focus of the Bible's teaching regarding the marriage covenant.

They are just that, exceptions to the rule. What we need to come away pursuing and maintaining is the ideal that marriage is to be a permanent bond, an unbroken and unbreakable covenant between a man and a woman, because that is and has always been what God intends for marriage to be. So Paul's word to a Christian who was married to another Christian is don't get divorced, but if you do, do everything within your power to reconcile. But next, Paul addresses mixed marriages, marriages between a believer and an unbeliever, or we might say unequally yoked marriage, and this is in verses 12 through 16.

Here's what Paul says, verse 12, And then verse 13 states the same thing, just with the roles reversed. A Christian wife married to an unbelieving husband, and the application is the same, she should not divorce him. So with regard to a mixed marriage, given the two conditions that Paul sets forth, first, that one of the spouses is an unbeliever, and secondly, that that unbeliever is content to keep the marriage intact, then the Christian spouse ought not to pursue a divorce on the grounds of some sort of religious incompatibility.

They ought to stay married. Now, this is very interesting to me, because Paul is the one who would set forth the principle of not being unequally yoked in the first place. Paul, in his second letter to Corinth, is going to write, Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers, for what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? I mean, surely this principle would apply to the profound yoking together of husband and wife, and yet Paul says, Even if you're caught in an unequally yoked marriage, stay in it if possible. Church, that ought to show us beyond a shadow of a doubt how seriously God takes the marriage covenant. So what is Paul's rationale for instructing a Christian spouse to remain married to their non-Christian spouse? Verse 14, For the unbelieving husband is made holy because of his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy because of her husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy. Well, the million dollar question then is, In what sense does a believing spouse make the unbelieving spouse holy? Years ago, a mentor of mine was trying to convince me of the dangers of negative peer pressure, and he said, Eugene, you can mix ice cream and manure together.

It doesn't really affect the manure, but it sure messes up the ice cream, and that is generally true. It's the danger of being unequally yoked, whether it's in business or friendship or dating. The negative influence of the ungodly person is often stronger and riskier influence than the godly person. Therefore, it's wise for us to temper our attachment to unbelievers. This principle applies, I think, to where you go to school, where you choose to work, who you choose to date, who you call your best friend. Choose people who will increase and reinforce your love for the Lord, not challenge it and make a mockery of it.

That's just wisdom. But Paul is saying here that if you find yourself already united in marriage to an unbeliever, maybe because you weren't converted until after you got married, maybe because your spouse made a false profession of faith just to hook you. But for whatever reason, if you find yourself already in a mixed marriage, stay in it, because in that context, the ice cream actually has a sanctifying effect on the manure. Paul isn't guaranteeing that an unbelieving spouse will get saved, but he is saying the presence of even one believer in the home sets the family apart and may very well lead to God's saving grace being shown to the entire family. He says in verse 16, for how do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband? How do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife? John Calvin said of this reality that the godliness of the one does more to sanctify the marriage than the ungodliness of the other to make it unclean.

Folks, that is beautiful. Mercy triumphs over judgment. Grace triumphs over sin. And so if you find yourself in a yucky, oppressive home living with a person who hates Christ but is willing to put up with your love for Christ, stay in it, Paul says. Be a missionary in your own home, in your own marriage.

Why? Because your presence is itself a grace on that home. You may very well be the means God uses to redeem your husband, to redeem your wife, to redeem your children.

I mean, what an incredible truth. What an encouragement for those who find themselves in this very situation. You are God's conduit of grace into that home.

Now, there's a whole lot more we could unpack here. The bedrock on which verse 14 is sitting is the whole concept of covenant and federal headship. And there are implications with regard to how we view children in the church and how we administer the sacraments and how we approach evangelism in the home and so on.

That will have to be a study for another day because we still have a lot of ground to cover. But don't miss the profound implications of Paul's assertion that your presence in the home, Christian, has a sanctifying and potentially saving effect on your family. The immediate application then that Paul is trying to make here is that religious incompatibility is not grounds for divorce. And I think we need to acknowledge that if religious incompatibility is not grounds for divorce, then certainly incompatibility over lesser issues is not grounds for divorce either. Things like personality or temperament, even in the mixed marriage.

The PCA statement again says it well. It says, here is a woman going to heaven married to a man going to hell. Here is a woman who prizes above all things the word and the ways of the kingdom of God. And here is a man who considers those things to be irrelevant, uninteresting, and unimportant. He cannot satisfy or encourage her in any of those areas. In the dimensions of her life which are most precious to her and are most profoundly important to her, her husband is not only positively no help, but very often is an interference, a frustration.

And yet Paul says she must stay. Those of you who are married to an unbeliever, that road must be excruciatingly painful and hard at times. And I think the only way for you to navigate that hard road is to hold on to Paul's promise that your presence in that marriage is a demonstration of God's presence and God's grace and God's power in that home. And that the unseen sacrifices you make for your family are not unseen by the Lord. They may in fact be the very means God uses to save the unbelievers in your home. But if not, your presence and your faithfulness and your sacrifice are poignant and powerful demonstrations of the same love Jesus Christ showed to his spouse when he suffered and died on the cross.

If you can see your marriage as a means of loving your spouse with that same love that Christ has shown you, then Christian, your marriage will be far more beautiful than any love story that Hollywood or the Hallmark Channel could attempt to tell. Notice, though, Paul's concession in verse 15. Paul says, but if the unbelieving partner separates, let it be so.

In such cases, the brother or sister is not enslaved. God has called you to peace. So briefly, the instruction here is that if the unbelieving spouse initiates divorce, it is not immoral for the Christian spouse to acquiesce to the divorce. The believing spouse ought not to initiate the divorce, but their conscience is not bound to preserving the marriage at all costs if and when the unbelieving spouse deserts the marital union. So very quickly then, let's see what light Jesus' teaching shines on this topic of divorce. The Gospels highlight Christ's teaching on the topic in several places. Let's just look at Matthew 19, three through nine as a representative passage. In Matthew 19, three, the Pharisees asked Jesus point blank, is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause? Jesus' answer is equally direct.

No, it's not. God makes two married people one flesh, and what God joins together, man should not separate. But then the Pharisees press him further in verse seven. Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce? And this is a reference to Deuteronomy 24.

Moses, by the way, did not command the use of divorce certificates. Jesus clarifies in verse eight that Moses allowed it, and he allowed it because of the hardness of your heart, Jesus says. In other words, this was a deviation from God's intent, God's ideal. It was a deviation from what had always been done, and it was a deviation due to a hardness of heart, a stubbornness that insisted on covenant breaking. So it wasn't a good thing.

It wasn't a condoned thing. Requiring certificates of divorce was a necessary deterrent because people were gonna sin anyway. Jesus then gives this summary statement in verse nine. I say to you, whoever divorces his wife except for sexual immorality and marries another commits adultery. So the act of divorcing one's first spouse and marrying someone else is an act of adultery unless adultery has already been committed by the first spouse.

Now, there are three primary interpretations of Matthew 19.9. One view sees it as merely determining who is to blame for the adultery, but it does not see this as Christ condoning divorce ever. This is the permanence view.

This is the view held by Vody Balcom and John Piper and others. The next view sees Jesus' statement as giving permission for the victim of adultery to righteously pursue a divorce, but not to remarry. If somebody commits adultery against you, you can divorce that spouse, but not remarry. If the victimized spouse were to remarry, that would merely compound the adultery.

The victim of adultery must remain single. This is the view of many of the early church fathers. It's the view of Augustine and the view, at least formally, of the Roman Catholic Church.

I think it's recently changed its stance on that. The last view sees this statement as granting biblical grounds for divorce in the case of adultery only and granting biblical grounds for remarriage after the divorce. And this is the view of John Calvin. This is the view of the Westminster Confession of Faith and others. For the sake of time, I'm not going to defend my view. I'm simply going to say my view is the third view.

I agree with Westminster. I believe that Christ does establish by inference that adultery is a biblical ground for divorce and remarriage. The question I want to ask, though, is how does Christ's exception clause, except in the case of adultery, how does that exception clause with regard to adultery harmonize with Paul's lack of an exception clause? I think first we need to remember that Paul is answering specific questions that the Corinthians have raised.

Remember, he's responding to a letter that they wrote to him. He's not trying to give an exhaustive account of every contingency that might come up in difficult marriages. He's content to simply state the overarching principle that marriage is intended by God to be a permanent covenant between a man and a woman. Secondly, I think that we have to recognize that when adultery is committed in a marriage, the marital union is broken at a very deep, deep level, so much so that divorce after adultery is not the breaking of something that is still intact.

Rather, it's simply a recognition that the marriage has already been broken. The principle of the permanence of marriage, you see, is present in both Matthew and 1 Corinthians. The difference is that Jesus' exception clause, I think, is addressing an already broken marriage, while Paul's lack of an exception clause assumes a marriage that hasn't been broken through adultery.

I think we have then here, what we have are different audiences asking different questions, and this results in different points of emphasis between Jesus and Paul, but not in contradictory principles. Marriage is a permanent bond, and it's always a permanent bond in Scripture. Adultery breaks that bond, therefore acknowledging that brokenness through divorce, Matthew 19, is permissible, but initiating that brokenness when the marriage is still intact, 1 Corinthians 7, is not permissible. Well, we are quickly running out of time.

Let me try to put all this together for us. With regard to divorce, here are the principles we see in Scripture. First of all, God intends marriage to be a permanent union between one man and one woman until they're separated by death. In a fallen world, the ideal of permanence in marriage is not always maintained due to the sin of one or both of the marriage partners, and so secondly, concession is made to address some, not all, of the potential problems that come from marital brokenness.

That concession is called divorce. And so thirdly, Scripture infers two very limited grounds for divorce. One is adultery, and the other is desertion by an unbeliever. Divorce is not required, however, even in the case of adultery or desertion by an unbeliever, and in fact, reconciliation is always encouraged, which points back to the first principle, that God's ideal, His intention for the marital relationship is one of permanence and fidelity until death. Chapter 24 of the Westminster Confession has a very helpful summary of these principles. Let me read one paragraph from the Confession.

I'm gonna paraphrase it for the sake of clarity, but the Confession essentially says this. Even though we as sinners are tempted to go looking for reasons to validate ways of getting out of a difficult marriage, the only valid reasons for dissolving the bond of marriage are adultery and such willful desertion as cannot be remedied by the church or the civil magistrate. In such cases, the married persons whose marriage is being dissolved are not to be left to their own wills and discretion in determining the rightness of their divorce, but rather those proceedings are to be overseen by properly designated authorities. Do these principles, as helpful as they are, remove all ambiguity and uncertainty in dealing with marital problems?

No, they don't. The Bible speaks sufficiently to these things, but it doesn't answer every contingency, every possible scenario. There are, for example, questions as to how far a particular sexual sin ought to go before it constitutes sexual immorality sufficient to be a grounds for divorce.

There are questions about the extent of desertion. Could things like physical abuse or alcoholism or gambling or incarceration constitute a form of desertion that might give biblical grounds for divorce? The PCA statement, again, makes the point that Scripture often states an absolute command and then later qualifies or expands the command with examples of case law. So these two grounds for divorce might have broader application in specific situations, but the PCA statement, as does the Confession of Faith, also warns us of our tendency to be too quick to condone divorce on unbiblical grounds just for the sake of expediency. So we need to be wise, church. We need to be judicious.

We need to be wary of our own sinful tendencies. We need to look for objective counsel, the objective counsel of Christian authorities who are outside of our particular marital issue. This brings us to the role of the church. If you're in a difficult marital situation that doesn't seem to have a solution, I would counsel you to work it out to the best of your ability, particularly if both spouses are professing believers.

If you can't work it out on your own, I would counsel you to bring those irreconcilable differences to the elders of the church and let that ecclesiastical court arbitrate until reconciliation can be achieved or render judgment where reconciliation is impossible. You know, I've seen the church court arbitrate in marital situations and bring about beautiful reconciliation within an otherwise ruined marriage, and it's a beautiful, beautiful thing. We need to use the means and processes that God provides in His Word when dealing with difficulties of this magnitude.

But then finally, I wanna close by simply pointing us to the Gospel. If you are among the many people who have had to endure the pain and the agony and the ordeal of a broken marriage, perhaps in a biblical wise manner, perhaps in a most ungodly manner, and you're left wondering, is there any hope for me? Will I forever live in the shadow of that failure?

Brother or sister, there is hope. The good news of Jesus Christ assures us that there is no pit so deep, no stain so black, no failure so irreversible that the blood of Christ cannot save and rescue you from it. You know, divorce is often used in Scripture as an illustrative analogy of how our sin breaks the fellowship that we could have had and should have had with God. One of the most moving occurrences of this analogy is the story of Hosea and Gomer.

You know the story, so I'm not gonna retell it now. I simply wanna point out that it is often our tendency, I think, to put ourselves in a story like the one of Hosea and Gomer and see ourselves as the victim, the one who is wrong, the one who is sinned against. We see ourselves as Hosea and often in marriages that are coming off the rails and headed towards disaster, one of the spouses is like a Hosea, having to absorb all sorts of unjust and hurtful mistreatment and neglect.

I don't wanna belittle that. But even as we navigate the suffering and pain of marital shipwrecks, it's important that we never forget our eternal marriage to Christ. And church, in that far weightier marriage, we are not Hosea, we are Gomer.

Every time, we are Gomer. Christ is our Hosea. He is the perfect bridegroom who never commits adultery, never deserts his bride, always cherishes her and provides for her and protects her. We, on the other hand, have given him any number of grounds for divorce. We have broken our covenant obligations over and over and over again, and yet he takes us back and loves us still. If this is the sort of love that marriage is supposed to portray, then we are never more like Christ than when we are willingly and joyfully absorbing the wrongs of a self-centered, loveless spouse. The husbands, wives, learn to love each other as Jesus Christ, the heavenly Hosea, has loved you. That means you forgive for the millionth time.

It means you sacrifice your preferences and your aspirations and your free time and even your needs to the death if necessary. But this reality also means that when we fail, and we will fail, when we fail to love in our marriages like we ought to love, there is forgiveness and restoration in Christ. So church, go love as Christ has loved you. And when you fail, repent and find hope in the unchangeable truth that where we fall short, Christ goes the distance. He forgives, he restores, he loves us to the death. Let's pray. Lord, you are the perfect bridegroom. We are a most imperfect and impure bride, but you love us, you purify us, you make us your own forever. And all we can do is give you thanks, deep, sincere, awe-filled thanks for your unspeakable gift. Amen.