Is it okay for a Christian to divorce? Is divorce a sin? If I get divorced, can I remarry?
Just what are the rules about divorce?
That’s what they asked Jesus.
If this was a timely topic in Jesus’ day, it is at least as much now.
I went to Google and typed in “divorce laws.” Google found 18,300,000 sites. There was divorcenet.com, there was www.law.cornell.edu/topics/Table_Divorce.htm, there was divorcelawinfo.com, and on and on….millions of pages.
I typed in “Who can divorce?” a question more in line with what they asked Jesus. This yielded over 36,000,000 sites. Topping the list was “I want a divorce.com, followed by “can divorce have a silver lining, followed by, in third place, “Jewfaq.Com” (frequently asked questions) about whether Jewish law allows divorce, followed by, in fourth place – meaning it has the fourth most visits of all 36 million sites – is a site dealing with how an Islamic man can divorce.
Do you see a theme here?
The popular question is, “How can I get out of this marriage?”
No doubt the men who came to Jesus that day also wanted to know. If not for themselves right now, then for the future when their marriage became a burden to them.
Look how Jesus answers! He asks first for what the law says – the Torah. It allowed for divorce, but then Jesus says that law was only a consolation because of human sin.
Then he stops talking about divorce and starts talking about marriage! And for this he goes all the way back to the story of creation at the very beginning of the Bible. He quotes the second chapter of Genesis where we are told that God created a man but saw that the man was lonely, so God brought him potential helpers – all the animals God had made. But none of them was an apt companion. None was eligible to be a “partner.”
So in the very first anesthetizing in history, God puts Adam into a deep sleep and takes out a rib and makes a woman. Adam is absolutely delighted – and ever since then, men have admired the work God did in creating this female of the species. “Wow!” men say when she walks down the street.
Jesus points out that the Bible says that God put them together – and if God put them together, let no one put it asunder – rip up the marriage.
It is a little known fact that when God created Eve she was a very jealous woman. Adam would be out in the garden longer than he should, planting tomatoes, or talking to the giraffes, and he’d come home and Eve would look at her watch and ask, “Where have you been? You have a girlfriend, don’t you?” Adam would be very hurt because he loved Eve and would say, “No, honey, there is no one but you!”
And you know, Adam was right – she was literally the only woman on the face of the earth.
But Eve was very jealous. One night, after Adam had come VERY late, Eve started jabbing Adam in his sleep. The pain from her jabs woke him up and he asked, “Eve! What are you doing?” “Counting your ribs,” she said.
We need to see something here. This is not as much a passage about marriage as it is about life. It is about how we live.
What are the rules of divorce Jesus?
It isn’t about rules. It is about God.
It takes 36 million web sites to look at rules on who can divorce, and none of them has the answer. To find the answer, you must go to God.
They came to Jesus asking about the rules of divorce.
Notice what they do not ask Jesus!
They do NOT ask Jesus, “How can we have better marriages?” They do not ask Jesus, “How can we put love back into our marriages?” They ask him, “How can a man get out of his vows?”
Jesus knows what is in their hearts.
So Jesus directs them back to God’s plan. God’s plan in creation was for men and women to live together in faithfulness to one another. That is the divine model.
It isn’t about rules at all, it is about relationship.
One of the elders in our church, Fred Butler, said last week, “People are wrong when they think Christianity is a religion. Christianity is not a religion – it is a relationship, a relationship with Jesus Christ,”
Harry Emerson Fosdick told the story of a college student who came to him for counseling. The student asked, “What is the least I must do to be a Christian.”
Ugh! You see the question itself is bad.
To be a Christian means surrendering your life to God in Jesus Christ. It means everything.
People debate about giving to the church. What is the minimum?
Should I give ten percent before taxes or after taxes?
How does Jesus answer questions about giving? He sits by the Temple and watches people making their offerings. Wealthy people of faith put in large sums. Along limps an elderly widow, using her cane and tosses in two pennies. Jesus says, “The others gave out of their abundance. She put in all she had, her whole living.”
What are the rules about divorce?
Wrong question.
What is God’s plan for marriage?
Jesus quotes Genesis where it says, 24Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.
So when do the man and woman STOP being one flesh? When the court says so? When the church says so? When the husband and wife say so?
The Bible is unclear. It is only clear about God’s plan.
Is divorce a sin?
Wrong question. All human beings are sinners. The issue is not whether or not certain behaviors are sins, but how we stand in relation to God and does that govern our lives?
Then as now, some churches condemn divorced people. There are churches where, if you are a minister and get divorced, you must give up your ordination. Others accept divorce as part of human brokenness.
Jesus wants us moving beyond rules to relationships.
Divorce is a part of the fabric of life. It happens. Is it wrong? It is not God’s ideal, but the vast majority of what we do falls short of God’s ideal.
Jesus doesn’t want us appealing to rules as we make life’s decisions, he wants us in communion with God. He died for us to have that.
Jesus wants the basis of our lives to be our relationship with God.
That needs to be at the heart of marriage.
Jesus accused the leaders of the Jews of straining out the gnat and swallowing the camel.
They were trying to nail down the rules and regulations, but missed the whole point of the law which is what?
Which is love!
God’s love is at the heart of it all.
We saw this in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania last week, when the Amish girls were slaughtered in their schoolhouse. One of the hostages, a girl named Marian Fisher, 13 years old (!), told the murderer to shoot her first so that the other girls might have a chance to live. What a Christ-like thing this girl did! She did not look for a way to protect herself, but thought only of a way to save the others – the way of her own death! We think of the Amish as naïve. This thirteen year-old girl, with no weapons and no hope found a doorway to life. I think her actions may easily have been what saved some of the other girls.
How did that girl have the imagination to think of this? Maybe because this community is steeped in faith in God and when a crisis hit, even the children knew the most loving thing to do. These people are conditioned and trained in godliness. It makes a difference.
Then the Amish community surrounded Maria Roberts and her daughters with love. Maria Roberts is the widow of the madman murderer. Instead of vilifying her for what her husband did, these people recognized that she too must be in the depths of the deepest pain. So they are ministering to her.
Richard Gelles, a psychology professor at the University of Pennsylvania said about the actions of Amish community, “Nobody has to accept that behavior. But forgiveness is a whole lot easier than seeking revenge.” This comment comes from a secular school and a secular psychologist, recognizing the power of God’s way in the worst of situations!
Rules didn’t bring out the love and hope in the midst of darkness in Nickel Mines, PA. A relationship did. Love. A community of faith.
The truth is, rules don’t make marriages. Marriage is about love and love is about giving and God gave his only Son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” And Jesus gave us back the relationship of love with God for which we were created.
What were the Pharisees doing that day when they came to Jesus and asked about divorce? They were trying to trap Jesus.
We try to trap Jesus too. We want him caged up so he won’t see our sin. People asked Jesus questions like, “How many times must I forgive someone who wrongs me?” A man came to Jesus and asked him to force his brother to divide his inheritance with him.
We want to pin Jesus down. We want rules so we know how much we can get away with.
Jesus knows how sinful we are. So he dies for us, and says, “Get back with God.”
Get back with God. Then live in love. Live the way God intended in creation.
Help each other live that way.
And when God is our aim. We don’t need thirty-six million websites about the morality of divorce, or narrow rules about how much we should give God, or when we can stop forgiving people who wrong us.
God has another vision for us. Let us embrace that vision. Let’s all get Jesus in our hearts.
“What are the rules about divorce?” Those rules are because of our hardness of heart. Let’s ask God to melt our hearts and renew us, whether we are divorced, or single, or married or widowed. “Jesus, get us back to God.”
Fred D. Mueller
