Have you heard the one about Adam and his “spare rib”? As you know, in the beginning God made Adam and put him in paradise. Adam was allowed to enjoy all the many wonders of the Garden of Eden and was given the job of naming all the animals. But after he had named them-rather a long task – there was something missing. He wanted some company, someone he could talk to and impress. God understood the situation perfectly “I can see that you're lonely,” he said to Adam. “Let me make a woman for you.” “What's a woman?" asked Adam. "A woman will love and adore you. She'll cook perfect meals and always ways look nice. She'll laugh at all your jokes and she'll never complain.” “That’s wonderful!” said Adam with enthusiasm, “But-she sounds very expensive. What will she cost me?” “Ah,” replied God, “a woman like that will cost you an arm and a leg.” Adam considered this carefully for a moment, then turned back to his Maker. “What will I get for one rib?”
Had God designed marriage with a free-agent clause in it… Had He designed it to be a series of one-year contracts renewable by mutual agreement where both husband and wife, then you could hit the escape clause. That’s just the kind of thing Paul Rampell, an attorney in Palm Beach is proposing. Rampell wants the institution of marriage to adapt to increasing difficulties of staying married for a lifetime. His reasoning goes like this… we don’t buy homes for a lifetime, why should we sign a contract for marriage for lifetime? This Palm Beach attorney proposes marriage leases. A marriage lease would allow two people to commit themselves to marriage for a period of years – five years or ten years – and the lease could be renewed for as many times as the couple wants. But the lease could end the marriage if it goes bad and avoid a messy divorce.
My wife has been married to at least five different men since we were wed – and each one of the five has been me.
Three Questions Before Tying the Knot
1. Do You Have the Maturity for the Responsibility of Marriage?
2. Have You Gone through the Best Premarital Counseling Available?
3. Do You Two Have the Skills for Conflict Resolution?
1. Three Facts on Marriage
Most of us recognize these words by memory: “I, ___, take thee, ___, to be my wedded husband/wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part, according to God’s holy ordinance; and thereto I pledge thee my life to you.”
1.1 The US Divorce Rate is Nearly Twice What It Was in 1960
While the high point for the divorce rate was the early 1980s, the average couple marrying for the first time now has a forty to fifty percent probability of divorce or separation. Indeed, today about 45 percent of all marriages end in separation or divorce. Because of this tremendous increase in divorce, we have an entire generation of people who have developed negative views. Many young adults have developed a perception that marriage is miserable and it kills your freedom. Perhaps the thinking is this: if 50% of marriages end in divorce, then surely the other 50% are miserable. More surprising to me was this: studies demonstrate that two-thirds of those unhappy marriages out there will become happy within five years if people stay married and do not get divorced. Indeed, a University of Chicago sociologist said, “the benefits of divorce have been oversold.”
1.2 Cohabitation is Crazy Popular among Young Adults
In 1970, 89 percent of all births were to married parents, but today only 60 percent are. Nearly half of all people live together before marriage. One-quarter of all unmarried women between the ages of 35 and 39 are currently living with a partner, and by their late thirties, over 60 percent will have done so. As USA Today put it, “cohabitation has emerged as a precursor and a competitor to marriage.” They embody the stereotype of a younger generation that sees nothing wrong with “hooking up” or cohabiting before marriage. Skeptical about the possibility of lifelong love, they readily list the downsides to marriage. A few admit that they would like to marry — for friendship, to ward off loneliness, and for support —but even they see marriage as constricting, depriving them of freedom and the ability to focus on their careers. Yet, studies by the National Center for Health Statistics suggests important findings for living together: Cohabiting makes divorce more likely after eventual marriage. Indeed, study upon study shows that cohabitation weakens marriage.
1.3 The Decline of Marriage
We Are Marrying Less. In 1960, 75% of US adults were married. Today, less than 50% of US adults are married. Again, Americans view marriage with a strong amount of pessimism. Here the words of comedian Chris Rock, “Do you want to be single and lonely or married and bored?”
Men and Marriage
The NY Times reports that fewer men are getting married, especially those without a college degree. 18% of men ages 40-44 with less than 4 years of college have never been married. This was about 6% about 25 years ago. And for men between 35-39, the portion of men who haven’t been married jumped from 8% to 22% in the same about of time. Even college-educated men are marrying less often down around 9% since 1980. Among the things being discussed as to possible reasons for this “marriage strike” is men feel that the family court is hopelessly stacked against them.
1.4 The Ethos of Our Day
In the nineteenth century, you had the Victorian approach to divorce, and that is never do it. We have swung the other direction, haven’t we? Two books note just this, The Divorce Revolution and a book called The Equality Trap, both written by, what they call themselves, second-stage feminists. What they’re saying is we went to the other extreme. We said the most important thing is not to deny yourself ever, not to ever deny yourself. When you have a need, you gratify it, We never tell anybody, “Deny yourself. Subordinate your needs to the higher good.” We never tell anybody that.
A man was once paralyzed in Great Britain some years ago after an accident and he was confined to a wheelchair. His wife left him and he committed suicide. Afterwards, somebody interviewed her and she said, “Well, don’t make me feel guilty. I had a right to happiness. I’ve married a man who I’m happy with. You only go around once in life. You have to grab for all the gusto you can.” We’ve gone to the other side. Divorce is something God allows in circumstances He outlines. Yet, if the main problem is self-centeredness. Don’t you think all that emphasis on self-development can actually play into the hands of it?
2. The Essence of Marriage
“Now when Jesus had finished these sayings, he went away from Galilee and entered the region of Judea beyond the Jordan. And large crowds followed him, and he healed them there. And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?” He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” They said to him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?” He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.” The disciples said to him, “If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry.” But he said to them, “Not everyone can receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let the one who is able to receive this receive it”” (Matthew 19:1–12).
There are three factors identified in verses 4-6 to making your marriage work – Jesus is quoting Genesis 2:24.
‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate” (Matthew 19:5-6). Here are the three factors: leaving, uniting, and a publication declaration of the marriage. I want to concentrate on the second of these three factors: uniting. The words “hold fast” literally mean to be glued to something. Marriage here is portrayed as a covenant. A covenant is a kind of bond that is rare today. A covenant is a durable, binding, and unconditional commitment. It’s not based on feeling or emotion. A marriage is based on a covenant; it’s not about being a consumer anymore. A covenant is how God relates to His children, His church. The heart of the biblical idea of marriage is a covenant. “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her…” (Ephesians 5:25).
Think how different a parent’s relationship is with a child. If you have a child, you will find that the biblical pattern of love is forced on you. Your new child is the neediest human being you have ever met. She needs your care every second of the day, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. You make enormous sacrifices in your life, and yet the child, for a very long time, gives you nothing in return. And, while later the child can give you love and respect, never does she give you anything like what you have given her. Often older children go through long stretches during which they rebel and fall apart and need enormous investment from you and again give you nothing in return. But at every turn, whether or not they are giving to you, you give to them. After eighteen years of this, even if your child is an unattractive person to everyone else, you can’t help but love her dearly. Why? Because you’ve been forced to operate on the Biblical pattern. You have had to do the actions of love regardless of your feelings and therefore now you have deep feelings of love for your child, however loveable she is or not.
Love is at its essence fundamentally more than an emotion. Love is an emotion but also an action, a commitment.
William Doherty offers a powerful illustration for your marriage. His office is located in St. Paul, Minnesota, not far from the farthest point north on the Mississippi River. “Everything on the water that is not powered by wind, gasoline, or human muscle” heads south. Then he adds these words: “I have thought that getting married is like launching a canoe into the Mississippi at St. Paul. If you don’t paddle, you go south. No matter how much you love each other, no matter how full of hope and promise and good intentions, if you stay on the Mississippi without a good deal of paddling—occasional paddling is not enough—you end up in New Orleans. Which is a problem if you want to stay north.”
“Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). The Promise of Future Love. Wedding vows are the promise of future love. The playwright Thornton Wilder said it well: “I didn’t marry you because you were perfect. I didn’t even marry you because I loved you. I married you because you gave me a promise. That promise made up for your faults. And the promise I gave you made up for mine. Two imperfect people got married and it was the promise that made the marriage. And when our children were growing up, it wasn’t a house that protected them; and it wasn’t our love that protected them — it was that promise.”
It’s the promise, the covenant that holds a couple together.
3. Divorce is Painful
We live in a time in which divorce is considered a normal and natural thing and which we believe should be as easy as possible. Jesus Christ says if you understand marriage as this deep unity, this deep oneness, then you will discover that divorce cannot be like taking off your clothes. Instead, divorce is more like taking off your arm. Any doctor would be run out of the practice if he was constantly and quickly saying, “Well, we’ll probably have to amputate.” It’s the last thing you do. It’s the most drastic thing you do. It’s an absolutely life-threatening thing you do. It’s not something you enter into very lightly at all. Any society who recommends it lightly should be run out of town just like a doctor would be, and that’s what Jesus says.
3.1 Divorce is Permitted
Marriage needs to be permanent. Yet because of sin, there are conditions in which divorce is sometimes the only way to survive. Jesus lists one of the grounds right here. That is the ground porneia, in which case he’s talking about adultery. He says on the basis of adultery, when your spouse has committed adultery against you, you can be divorced and free to remarry.
“To the 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?” (1 Corinthians 7:10–16)
Paul gives the other biblical grounds to divorce, and that is what he calls desertion. If your spouse deserts you and will not return and so on, then you are free to remarry, Paul says. There’s a sense in which, in the Old Testament, if you would break your marriage covenant through adultery or through willful desertion, you were stoned. In the New Testament, that is not the way it is, and yet, the New Testament recognizes there’s a sense in which the partner has died. You know how you say, “Till death do you part?” The New Testament recognizes that under those two conditions, there is a death and that you then are able to marry and remarry. Yes, divorce is sometimes necessary.
3.2 How Do I Know if I Should Divorce?
There’s a conversation I have with some regularity that I hate. A Christian husband or wife comes to see me as their pastor. They’ve discovered their spouse has been unfaithful to them. They’ve had an affair or multiple affairs, and they sit down before me and say, “What does the law of God say? Should I leave my spouse? Should I divorce my spouse or should I stay?” What do I have to say to them? When I look at them, I have to say, “You have a right to stay or to leave. The Bible doesn’t say you have to stay. It doesn’t say you must stay. You have to decide for yourself whether you’re going to restore the marriage or whether you’re going to leave.” There’s a wise response there’s a foolish response. Instead of relying on the rules, you’re going to have to rely on your competence with regard to the realities of life.
Do you know your own heart? Do you know your spouse’s heart? Have you wrestled with forgiveness?
4. The Hope for Marriage
Self-centeredness is the main problem for marriages. If you’re married, it’s the main problem in your marriage. If you’re not married, it will be the main problem if you ever get married. If you’re divorced, it probably was the main problem in the marriage you left. On the way out of a divorce, usually at least one, if not both of you, has hurt the other one terribly. When you’re married to somebody, you know what the other person’s greatest nightmare is. You know what words set them off. So on the way out of a marriage through a divorce, you usually use them. If you’ve been wronged like that, if you’ve been robbed of dignity, robbed of self-respect, and you’ve been doubting yourself ever since, there’s resentment there. There’s a lot of anger there and use this in a self-centered way.
The hope for any marriage is the gospel. For the gospel creates a spirit of unselfishness.
“And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.” (Ezekiel 36:26–27)
