Jesus On Casual Divorce
Part 6 in series Hearing Jesus Again
Wildwind Community Church
David Flowers
June 14, 2008
Dallas Willard writes: “Divorce, if it were rightly done, would be done as an act of love. It would be dictated by love and done for the honest good of the people involved. Such divorce, though rare, remains nonetheless possible and may be necessary. If it were truly done on this basis, it would be rightly done, in spite of the heartbreak and loss it is sure to involve.
This certainly represents a change on my part. I recall with embarrassment sitting around a seminar table at the University of Wisconsin in the early 60’s. the professor had not yet arrived for our seminar in formal logic, and one of the class members was talking about his divorce proceedings. Without being asked for my opinion, I ventured to say, “Divorce is always wrong.”
Looking back on it, the strangest thing of all was that no one objected to what I said or even to my saying it. Everyone seemed accepting of it. Of course that was because my words represented a cultural assumption of those days. But in fact I was vastly ignorant of the things men and women do to one another.
Later I came across the situation of a devout woman whose husband had married her as a cover for his homosexuality. He consummated the marriage so it couldn’t be annulled, and after that he had nothing to do with her. They had no personal relationship at all. He would bring his male friends home and, in her presence, have sex in the living room or wherever else they pleased any time they pleased. Her religious guides continued to tell her that she must stay in the marriage, while she died a further death every day, year after year.
I was simply an ignorant young man, full of self-righteous ideas. This and later episodes of discovery educated me in the hardness of the human heart. But Jesus, of course, always knew.”
As we begin today, let me have you just think on this for a moment. The easiest thing for us to do in religion is to say, “That’s a sin.” Nothing is easier than making up labels calling various things sin. Once we’ve done that, we can go around sticking them to people. It’s especially easy for us to read scripture and then say, “God said it, I believe it, that settles it for me.” The problem there is in automatically assuming we know what God said! There are thousands of Christian denominations in America today, precisely because each one assumes it understands what God said just a little better than the others. And they frequently disagree with one another over a number of things. Worst of all, they all claim to be “following the Bible.” Never mind what this says about the lack of humility we often have when we approach the scriptures, let’s just focus on how confusing it is to discern what Jesus might have been trying to say. One of the reasons I have been so systematic in this series, and tried to show you that Jesus himself was being systematic as he preached through his Sermon on the Mount, is because if we assume one thought follows logically from the one before it, it will help us hear Jesus in context. And context matters even more than the words we say. I may say, “I love you,” but if you can’t see me as I say it, you don’t know if I’m speaking to my wife, reading a poem out loud, or talking to a taco.
Jesus speaks his words on divorce in a certain context. Because this issue is so controversial, I want to take a moment to set up this context for you. What have we learned so far in this series? First, in the Beatitudes, Jesus tells us about the kind of people the kingdom is open to, but he’s not telling us it’s not open to us unless we’re on that list. These are not rules for us to follow. His point is that the Kingdom is open to everybody, provided that they will cultivate kingdom hearts. Then Jesus comes right out and says, “If you want to live in this kingdom, you must be righter than the righest people you know – the teachers of the religious law.” From there he goes on to give a series of contrasts between what had previously been considered the standard of rightness, and a new standard he was laying out – the rightness of the Kingdom Heart. Two weeks ago we covered Jesus’ words on murder (it’s not enough to not kill – you have to deal with the anger in the heart that leads to murder). Last week we looked at what Jesus had to say about lust, or fantasized desire (it’s not enough to avoid illicit sex – you have to deal with the heart that wants to).
And so we come to divorce, and I began with Dallas Willard’s excellent example because it’s an example of the growing process each of us must go through as we attempt to understand and apply scripture to our lives. Does Jesus will a life of misery and slow death for human beings? Is it God’s will that a woman who is being beaten remain in a marriage if her husband refuses to soften his heart? Is it God’s will that a man who is being continually disrespected and belittled in a marriage remain in the marriage if his wife is unwilling to soften her heart? Here’s what Jesus said:
Matthew 5:31-32 (NIV)
31 "It has been said, ’Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.’
32 But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, causes her to become an adulteress, and anyone who marries the divorced woman commits adultery.
Is Jesus saying what some seem to believe he is saying? Is he saying, “Tough crap for you, ma’am, or sir. I guess you chose poorly and you are now doomed to spend your life dying that slow death a little bit every day.” That’s the attitude Dallas Willard says he had in the 60’s. That’s the attitude that woman’s spiritual counselors had when they counseled her to remain with her husband who was bringing men into the house. Now I’m just going to ask you this question. Based on what you have seen in scripture, and based on how you have come to understand Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount, do these attitudes reflect the heart of God? Anytime we interpret scripture in such a way that it does not reflect the heart of God, we had better think again. Jesus himself said, “Out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.” And just as your words reflect your heart, so God’s words reflect God’s heart. If you do not sense and see God’s heart in words that are ascribed to him, there’s a good chance the words don’t mean what you thought they meant.
Jesus’ words on divorce may be some of the most controversial words He ever spoke. They hit us hard. Right here in our congregation there are people who have experienced the pain of divorce – who have felt its sting, its sense of failure and loss – and who, added to that, have borne for years the weight of what these words might mean. Before we dig into this, let’s again get that heart-perspective Jesus is trying to explain to us.
Dads with daughters, I want to ask you something. Let’s say a boy takes your daughter out on a date. When they get home (ten minutes early!), you pull the fella aside and ask how things went. He says, “Oh, really good. I mean, the whole time we were together I kept thinking about how much I wanted to kill her and ways that I could make it happen – and hopefully soon – but I managed to control those thoughts and we ultimately had a nice time. And then when things would start getting really nice, I found it hard to not stare at her chest. That’s a really nice chest she’s got, sir. Anyway, increasingly through the night I kept finding myself thinking about how sweet it would be to take her virginity. Man, I don’t even want to TELL you everything I was dreaming of doing to her, but I’m sure you know what I mean. I mean, you were a teenager once, right? Anyway, I’m proud to say that I am returning her to you completely unharmed both physically and sexually, and I look forward to seeing her again next weekend.” Dads, is this good enough? He avoided killing her, didn’t he? And he didn’t have sex with her, did he? Is this the guy you want dating your daughter? Is this a guy you consider righteous? Of course not. Quite the opposite. Moms, will you be pleased if you have a son who is “righteous” in this way? Of course not, because we know that that kind of righteousness is not really righteous at all. Most of the time this stuff goes unspoken, but it exists in our hearts. It’s just concealed evil, and Jesus knew it. And that’s what he spends a lot of time talking to us about: how concealed evil in the heart can easily pass for righteousness if we do the right external things and avoid the wrong external things.
Matthew 19:7-8 (NLT)
7 “Then why did Moses say in the law that a man could give his wife a written notice of divorce and send her away?” they asked.
8 Jesus replied, “Moses permitted divorce only as a concession to your hard hearts, but it was not what God had originally intended.
The same is true in the case of divorce. The religious law had said that a man could divorce his wife by giving her a written certificate and sending her packing. In the time of Christ, men had every right to divorce a woman for any reason. A man could divorce his wife if she burned the food or oversalted it. He could even divorce her if he saw another woman who he thought was prettier and he wanted to marry her instead. It wasn’t a great time to be a woman. And then, as now, the consequences of divorce for men were negligible, but the divorce was devastating for a woman.
If a woman was not given a certificate of divorce, she was unable to prove she was no longer married. Without being able to prove this, she could not defend herself against the charge of adultery if caught with a man. The penalty at that time for adultery was death. Pretty serious charge, and therefore essential that a woman be given a certificate of divorce. The certificate also made it possible for her to seek marriage to another man if he would have her, or if all else failed, to make her living as a prostitute.
So there were only three realistic options for divorced women in Jesus’ time. Perhaps generous relatives would take her in, but rarely as little more than a servant. She was divorced, so she was damaged goods. She would always be considered someone’s ex-wife whose purity had been permanently lost. Her next choice was to find a man who would marry her, but if she found someone, she was always considered “damaged goods,” and lived her life in a degraded sexual relationship. Or as I said earlier, she could turn to prostitution to make a living. Society simply would not allow her to support herself in any decent fashion.
So when Jesus says that anyone who divorces his wife makes an adulteress out of her, this is what he means. For the rest of her life, she is damaged goods – the sexually used-up, second-hand, former property of another man. The man who has divorced her has forced her into this situation, and she will be considered a dirty adulteress the rest of her life. This will be true of her whatever of these three situations she ends up in. And as for the man who marries her being an adulterer, according to their society at that time, he will be forever sleeping with another man’s wife – a dirty adulteress sleeping with a dirty adulterer. He will recognize this and use her sexually and degrade her all her life
Now Jesus seems to say that divorce in the case of marital unfaithfulness is acceptable.
Matthew 5:32 (NIV)
32 But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, causes her to become an adulteress, and anyone who marries the divorced woman commits adultery.
But Jesus is not at all saying that adultery is completely acceptable in the case of unfaithfulness. Jesus doesn’t say a man SHOULD divorce an adulterous woman -- just that if he does, he has not made an adulteress out of her because she has already done that to herself.
Nowhere in these two verses or anywhere else in the New Testament does Jesus ever say that adultery must end a marriage, that somehow adultery presents challenges to a marriage that are so insurmountable that divorce is the only option. Indeed today we see many marriages that do survive adultery and go on to heal and eventually to flourish.
Wow, now is that a different way of thinking of divorce? Haven’t many of us grown up being told, “Jesus said divorce is always wrong and never acceptable, except in case of adultery”? The fact is Jesus didn’t say either of those things. What Jesus said in this passage was simply that divorce has devastating effects on a woman, and a man who simply writes her a certificate and sends her packing has no reason to think his heart has been right in regard to his wife. She’ll now be considered an adulteress for life, and doomed to a life of sexual degradation.
Now let us combine Jesus’ words in the Sermon the Mount with those from our other text. It will help us understand what Jesus was truly saying about divorce.
Matthew 5:31-32 (NIV)
31 "It has been said, ’Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.’
32 But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, causes her to become an adulteress, and anyone who marries the divorced woman commits adultery.
Matthew 19:7-8 (NLT)
7 “Then why did Moses say in the law that a man could give his wife a written notice of divorce and send her away?” they asked.
8 Jesus replied, “Moses permitted divorce only as a concession to your hard hearts, but it was not what God had originally intended.
So we see that it is not adultery that is the cause of divorce. If so, Jesus would have ordered that divorce always happen in those cases, and he did not order this. Verse 8 of our second passage gives the true reason for divorce.
Matthew 19:8 (NLT)
8 Jesus replied, “Moses permitted divorce only as a concession to your hard hearts, but it was not what God had originally intended.
There’s a t-shirt you’ll occasionally see nowadays that simply says, “I hate mean people.” Jesus here says that hardness of heart is why God permits divorce. In other words, God allows it because people are mean. God knows what men and women can do to each other. I think of the man in Willard’s example. How cruel was that man? He was hard-hearted towards her. He cared nothing for her feelings and was content to allow her to die in that marriage day after day, all along saying, “You can’t divorce me – we have consummated the relationship and you have to stay.” I wonder how many good men and women are having this shoved down their throats every day? “You must stay with me because divorce is sin.” And having said that, they go on their way, sinning against their spouse, killing them emotionally in whatever ways they choose. Even now, probably in this room, women are begging men (or men are begging women) to come with them to counseling, to get some help, to soften their hearts and work to make it better – and many spouses remain hard-hearted.
This is why divorce should not be regarded as a unique and irredeemable form of wickedness. It is not. Under certain circumstances, it is the right thing to do, all things considered. What Jesus stands firmly against is divorce that occurs out of convenience, divorce that is seen as an easy way out, divorce that does not consider the feelings and experience of the other, divorce that stems from a heart that is bitter and angry. Again Jesus words here are that our heart matters and we are responsible for what is happening in our hearts.
Doesn’t it make sense here that, in the final analysis, Jesus is talking about the human heart? God allows divorce because he knows how hard the heart can become. At the same time, Jesus was concerned for what would become of the woman after a divorce. Which leads us back to the first paragraph of my quote from Dallas Willard:
Divorce, if it were rightly done, would be done as an act of love. It would be dictated by love and done for the honest good of the people involved. Such divorce, though rare, remains nonetheless possible and may be necessary. If it were truly done on this basis, it would be rightly done, in spite of the heartbreak and loss it is sure to involve.
Using this as a guide, a divorce rightly done would involve sentiments of, “How can we both get through this in one piece,” not “I’m going to tear you apart.” It would involve, “How can I help you,” not “I’ll demand my rights in court.” Of course if both parties had this attitude, there’s a good chance they could have worked out their marriage! That is why divorces of this kind are rare. But perhaps they would not be so rare if the church were teaching responsibly on this topic and not merely writing it off and saying, “It’s always wrong.” In a sense it is! Certainly Jesus said God intended marriage to last forever. At the same time, divorce acknowledges the reality that human hearts can be hard and when they are hard, relationships cannot survive. In those cases divorce, after all options have been pursued and every effort made, may be the best option. This should not happen without wise counsel, prayer, and adequate time taken to face and deal with the problems in the marriage, where both partners clearly understand how high the stakes are and exactly what the price of failure will be.
I will finish by pointing out again the order in which Jesus proceeds. What if right now I could eliminate from the earth all anger and contempt and the violence that spring from it, as well as all fantasized desire and the deviance and betrayal that often spring from it? How much divorce could be left? Almost none. If we tend our hearts and carefully begin rooting out anger and contempt, and stop entertaining fantasized desire, the result is that we will be better human beings. Better friends, better sons and daughters, better moms and dads, and better spouses. Jesus allowed divorce because he was not naïve enough to think that people are necessarily going to do this, but even here Jesus’ concern, as everywhere, is ultimately with the heart.
So where is your heart with regard to your marriage? Is it hard? Have you been unwilling to find, face, and follow the truth? How are you working to make yourself a better spouse and soften your heart? What have you done, specifically, in the past year that makes you more available and more sensitive to what your spouse needs? Let’s pray for our hearts and for our marriages.
