Up to this point in our study, we have been examining passages of Scripture that prohibit divorce. These have been what I will call, negative commands. That is, they are commands that say you should not do this. Now I want to examine a couple of commands of Scripture that I will call positive commands. That is, they are commands that say you need to be doing these things. And my contention is that if the believer in Christ is doing these things, it is impossible for him or her to divorce their spouse.
The first command that the believer needs to be obedient to is the command to love. As I noted earlier, often times the reason couples divorce each other is because they say they don't love each other any more, or that they have fallen out of love. But it must be asked if the believer can do this in the will of God. I believe the Bible does not allow the Child of God to ever stop loving. A number of New Testament passages will bear this out. First there is the command for the wife to love her husband and the husband to love his wife. Ephesians 5:21-33 instructs the husband to love his wife in the same way that Christ loved the Church and gave Himself for it. In a few paragraphs I will deal with the quality of that love, but for now I want to consider the longevity of it. The love of Jesus Christ for His church is infinite, just as the love of the Father for Israel is (Jeremiah 31:3). Think of the dilemma we would be in, if for some reason Jesus stopped loving us! The Bible tells us that He who has begun a good work in us will continue to perform it unto the day of Jesus Christ. God loved us enough to save us by sending Christ to die for our sins. He also loved us enough to transform us day by day into the image of His Son. And He will love us until that transformation be perfectly completed. But that will not be until Jesus returns and therefore it is impossible for Him to stop loving us now. The same commandment for a husband to love their wife is found in Titus 2:4 in regards to the wife loving her husband. Therefore, in the will of God there is always a positive command for each marital partner to love the other.
The question must then be asked, How can a child of God love their spouse and seek to divorce them? Some might say that it is possible. It is not possible to love your spouse and then seek to divorce them if you define love biblically. One of the greatest, or most well-known passages in all the Bible concerning love is 1 Corinthians 13, what is called the Love Chapter. In context, it really is a chapter dealing with the exercise of spiritual gifts, but Paul exhorts the believer not to be self-promoting by exercising their gifts but other edifying, motivated by love. Consequently, Passages Relevant To Marriage & Divorce we receive one of the best descriptions of the qualities of real love. My friend, Bob Shelton, outlined this great chapter this way: verses 1-3 Love Missing; verses 4-8 Love Measured; verses 8-13 Love Maturing. We need to look at how love is measured. In these verses, Paul gives us 14 different measurements of genuine Biblical love.
When teaching this subject in my Sunday School class, I asked the class to think of some very specific ways in which these measurements could be applied to marriage. What follows is some of their responses. The first measurement is that love suffers long. Responses included: love is not saying a word when she is learning to cook, and love is not getting upset when he leaves the seat up, continually. The word that is translated suffer comes from two Greek words combined together. The first is makro and means large, and the second is thumia and means heat, it is the word we get "thermal"from. Together they literally mean to be able to take much heat, or to persevere.
The second quality of love is that it is kind. Those who love will do kind things for the one they love. Love buys their sweetie's favorite candy bar for them. Love makes sure there is Pop Tarts for breakfast. I like this one: love relinquishes the remote control. In Ephesians 4:30 we find the command to be kind and since kindness is a quality of love we have another command then to love.
The third quality of Biblical love is that it does not envy. In the marriage situation, love is measured this way when one partner receives all the attention and the other is seemingly ignored. One partner receives advancement at work or accolades for accomplishment, while the other seems unappreciated. Love does not become envious of the other. The fourth and fifth qualities of love go together. Vaunting one's self is the action that proceeds from the attitude of being puffed up. It is the attitude of, "I deserve better than this," which produces, "I am not going to do that". It might manifest itself with the words, "Who does he think he is, " or, "What am I, chopped liver?" The next quality of love is that it does not behave itself in an unseemly fashion. That is, the person who loves does not throw temper tantrums when they don't get their own way, or make ultimatums in order to get what they want. Love does not seek its own. That is, love does not show off or make a spectacle of self. This quality of love does not dress to gain attention or dominate conversations by always having the last word to show just how intelligent one is.
The eighth quality of love is that it is not easily provoked or irritated. I received an email some time ago with ways to irritate others. Here are some of the good ones:
*Specify that your drive-thru order is "to go".
*Decline to be seated at a restaurant and simply eat the complimentary mints by the cash register.
*Try playing the William Tell Overture by tapping on the bottom of your chin. When nearly done, announce, "No, wait, I messed up" and repeat.
*Sing along at the opera.
*Go to a poetry recital and ask why each poem doesn't rhyme.
*Tell your friends 5 days prior, that you can't attend their party because you're not in the mood.
*Sit in your front yard pointing a hair dryer at passing cars to see if they will slow down.
Now those things are irritating but not usually problems in the marriage relationship. It is amazing, though, to hear how some seemingly minor things can become terrifically irritating. Squeezing the toothpaste in the middle of the tube rather than from the bottom, putting the toilet paper on so that the end is at the back of the roll rather than the front, or leaving your socks in front of the clothes hamper instead of in the clothes hamper. Love does not ignore problems but does not get irritated by problems.
Next, love thinks no evil. Love never plots revenge for someone's wrongdoing towards you or seeks ways of keeping another from blessing. The next two qualities also go together. Love does not rejoice in iniquity but rejoices in the truth. Love never does wrong in order to produce good or responds to failure by saying, "See, I told you so". Rather love contemplates whether an action is Biblical or according to the will of God and sets truth as the ultimate standard of all behavior. Love bears all things. Love supports the loved one even when they don't personally care about an activity. Love watches a football game or a Lifetime movie just so you can have some time together. Or in the negative, love misses a football game or a Lifetime movie in order to meet the needs of the spouse. Love never says, "I'm not going to do that for you," simply because you don't feel like it. Love believes all things. That is all things found in the will of God. Love hopes all things. Love looks to see what God can do through a man rather than what a man can do on his own. Love endures all things. Love never says, "I don't know how much more I can stand." Love never fails. Love never says, "I quit, I don't love you any more." Since a husband is commanded to continually love his wife, and since a wife is commanded to continually love her husband, and since genuine love is measured by these qualities in 1 Corinthians 13, we conclude that for a couple to divorce each other is to violate the commandments of God.
A second positive command concerning the marriage relationship is found in Ephesians 4:32. Love is not that hard when the one we are to love is lovely. But what do we do when they become unlovely (notice, not unlovable) by sinful activity, when their conduct is disruptive to the peace of the home? According to this passage, in order for the child of God, to be in the will of God, they must be ready at all times to forgive all things. Unwillingness to forgive is ultimately unwillingness to love. It was because God so loved the world that He sent His son to die for our sins. And God commended that love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. In other words, God loved us when we were unlovely.
Some will object that since God is infinitely perfect and we are only human, then it is unreasonable to expect imperfect humans to forgive like a perfect God. However, that reasoning actually runs counter to the argument for a limited forgiveness rather than support it. Since God is infinitely perfect, any sin against Him is infinitely greater than any sin against man. For an infinitely holy God to forgive the least of sins is a remarkable thing. Therefore, if the infinite holiness of God can provide for the forgiveness of all sins, how much more can the "holiness" of man do the same? There is no biblical reason that any Christian can not forgive any sin of another. The only reason the offer of forgiveness is not extended, is because a Christian is disobedient to the divine command to forgive.
Paul writes that we are to forgive others, "even as God, for Christ's sake hath forgiven you." The key phrase to this command to forgive is found in this last part of the command- to forgive as God has forgiven. Two significant aspects of God's forgiveness apply to the marriage relationship and divorce. First, there is not one sin that God can not forgive us. When Jesus Christ came to earth, He came to seek and to save that which was lost. That includes every one of us. We all have sinned and we all commit various sins. Some have committed sins with greater temporal consequence than others, some have committed more sins than others, but all have sinned. And no matter how few or how many, how great or how small our sins may be, all were forgiven when we came to faith in Jesus Christ. Some will interject that there is a sin that God will not forgive and that is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit (Mark 3:29), and therefore, since there is an exception to the rule of eternal forgiveness, there can be an exception to the rule of marital forgiveness. Specifically, if the spouse commits adultery, that is the one sin that the offended spouse "just can't forgive." The argument has a serious flaw though. The nature of the "unpardonable sin" is debated by theologians of greater mind than I. As I understand it, it is not a sin that can be committed by a saved person and therefore would not apply as an argument to the marital situation. Regardless, though, of the exact nature of the understanding of the unpardonable sin, it is a sin that is committed against God, and not against man. A husband can not commit the unpardonable sin against the wife, or vice versa, the sin can only be committed against God. Since we are to forgive in the way that we have been forgiven by God, we must then forgive any and all sins that have been committed against us. Since God has made provision for the forgiveness of all sins that man commits against man, without exception, then man must also make provision for the forgiveness of all sins committed against him. To say that any act of a spouse is unforgivable and a cause for the division of the marriage relationship is to violate the command to forgive as stated here in Ephesians 4:32.
Some might ask, "What about the person who does not repent of their sin?" "Can they be forgiven?" Since forgiveness is based on the repentance of the offender, forgiveness can not be transacted until repentance takes place. Because of unconfessed sin there will be an interruption of the fellowship that should exist in the relationship. But while sin in the life of a believer may cause the disruption of fellowship, it never causes a break in relationship. To illustrate this I only need to look at times when I had to discipline my children when they misbehaved. When any of my children were unwilling to confess their sin, my discipline would include being sent to their bedroom to think about it. Spending time in their room meant the removal from the enjoyable things of life and it was not meant to be comfortable for them. In time, the punishment usually accomplished its purpose and the child repented of their sin and fellowship was restored with privileges. But while they were in their room there was no fellowship between us. However, even in their sin they were still my children- nothing ever changed that relationship. So too with the child of God. When we sin, fellowship is disrupted with our God, but we never cease to be His child. When we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us and fellowship with privilege is restored. While our sins are unconfessed, God waits patiently for us to come to Him. So the child of God must wait patiently for the spouse to "fess up".
But now the question must be asked, how long? Scripture tells us that God is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. God gives sinners, both saved and unsaved, the entirety of their lifetime to repent. While man lives, he always has opportunity to repent and be right with God. If we are to forgive as we have been forgiven, then we must wait, as long as the offender lives, for them to come to repentance. To divorce is to say to the offender, "I can't wait any longer, you've run out of time." which is contrary to the will of God.
Another problem that needs to be addressed is the problem of forgiving and forgetting. Many will say that they are able to forgive, but unable to live with the memories of an offense. Since they will never be able to forget the sin, then they can no longer live in the marriage relationship. But do we need to forget and can we live with the memories? One of the most instructive passages of Scripture concerning this is found in Hebrews 10:17, where we read, "...and their sins and iniquities will I (God) remember no more." It is interesting to note that God does not say that He will forget our sins, but that He will not remember them. There is a significant difference between the two. Forgetfulness is a mental deficiency. It is the inability to bring to recall a thought. There are no deficiencies with God, there is nothing that God can not do. God can remember everything. God chooses not to recall that which is forgiven. It is not that He can't recall it, but that He won't recall it.
David, in Psalm 51, stated that his sin was ever before him. Even with his genuine repentance there was no erasing the sin from his memory. But when God forgives us our sins, He chooses not to recall them. If we are to forgive as God has forgiven us, then we will not necessarily forget the sins against us, but we will choose not to hold them against the person who has sinned. When the thought of the sin comes to mind, we will remove it to the farthest degree from our thoughts.
Someone might say, "Well that sounds fine in theory, but how do you accomplish it practically?" or, "I've tried to do that, but the thought just keeps coming to mind." The problem here is usually that the offended is too passive in not remembering. Scripture tells us that God was not passive in not recalling our sins. The Bible tells us in picturesque language that God is active in preventing our sins from coming to memory. Psalm 103:12 tells us that God has removed our transgressions from us as far as the east is from the west. We first note that David chose as far as the east is from the west, not the north from the south. The earth has a north pole and a south pole, and the distance between the two can be measured. However, there is no east pole or west pole and the distance between the two is immeasurable, it is infinite. Secondly we note that He has removed our transgressions from us. Sometimes in a marriage relationship, it is the constant remorse of the offender that continually reminds the offended of the offense, who might have otherwise put the offense "out of mind". What can be done to prevent this? In the story of the prodigal son, which G. Campbell Morgan has rightly titled, The Parable Of The Father's Heart, we have a good example of what God has done in forgiving us.
When the son returned and confessed his sin, he spoke to his father that he was no longer worthy to be called his son and wanted to be made a servant. Instead, the father clothed him in the finest of clothes, and prepared a feast for him. These things were not appropriate for servants, but only for sons which the father quickly identified him as. In marriage, it is important for the offended to affirm the forgiven offender to prevent the offender from being consumed by their guilt and then to allow the marriage relationship to become all that it can be. (2 Cor. 2:7-8). Not only did God remove our iniquities from us, but He removed them from Himself also. In Isaiah 38:17 we read that God cast our sins behind His back and in Micah 7:19 we find that He cast them into the depths of the Passages Relevant To Marriage & Divorce sea. Without the aid of a mirror, it is impossible to see what is behind you. Every time you turn around, your back moves. That which is in the depths of the sea is likewise inaccessible to man. Sometimes the surroundings or the people you must deal with everyday are a constant reminder of past offenses. In situations like this, where you want "to forget" but are constantly reminded by your environment, it may be necessary to change environments. When a sinner comes to faith in Jesus Christ to be saved from and forgiven of their sins, they are delivered out of the power of darkness and translated into the kingdom of God's dear Son (Col. 1:13). Now that's a change of environments!
So we see that it was God, the offended, Who actively took the initiative in removing our sins from us and Himself, that enables Him not to remember our sins. So must the offended in a marriage relationship do, if they are not to remember the sins of the offender. One other objection must also be addressed concerning forgiveness. Some might say that they are willing to forgive but find it hard, if not impossible, to trust the offender again. Since the marriage relationship is based on trust, how then can the relationship ever exist again? Theoretically, if the guilty person has genuinely repented of their sin, trust is not a problem. By definition, repentance includes the ideas of a recognition of the error of their act and the desire not to repeat it. The problem is ascertaining the genuineness of the repentance. Since only God can see the heart, and know the genuineness of a confession, how can we be sure if repentance has genuinely occurred?
The answer is, we can't, at least in absolute terms. But that should not deter us from forgiving. Peter asked Jesus how many times he should forgive his brother and suggested 7 as a noble number. After all, if someone commits a sin against us 7 times, isn't it reasonable to believe that they don't really mean business when it comes to repentance? But Jesus responded that 490 times was the righteous number of times to forgive1. To me, forgiving after 7 times being offended is magnanimous. It seems reasonable that if a person sins more than 7 times, they can't really be serious about repentance. But Jesus tells us to forgive and to keep on forgiving. In detailing the meaning of seventy times seven, Jesus tells a parable of a king and his servant. The servant was indebted to the king to the tune of 10,000 talents. When the king took account of the indebtedness, he commanded that the servant and his family be sold for whatever they could get for them in order to salvage the debt. Not wanting this, the servant pleaded with the king, saying that if had a chance, he would repay the king in full. This was a physical impossibility. A talent is worth 6,000 denari, therefore he was in debt 60,000,000 denari. A denari is the daily wage of the common laborer. In order to pay his debt then, the servant would need to work for 60,000,000 days, applying his total earnings to the debt, with nothing for personal sustenance. Working six days out of seven, the servant would work 313 days per year. In order to pay the debt, the servant would then need to work over 191,693 years. With 70 years of life expectancy (Psalm 90:10), the servant would need to live about 2,738 lifetimes, just to pay the debt he owed. Talk about bad karma for reincarnation! Nonetheless, the king being compassionate, forgave the debt totally. Later we find that the servant had a friend who owed him 100 denari. When the friend couldn't pay immediately, the servant had the friend thrown in prison. Upon hearing of this, the king became very angry with the servant and committed him to the tormentors until the debt was paid. The forgiving attitude of the king should have characterized the attitude of the servant towards his friend. The servant though, was unwilling to forgive. Consequently the same justice that the servant sought for his friend, the king sought for the servant. Jesus concludes the lesson of the parable with these words, "So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses." Notice that there is no number associated with "their trespasses". We must understand this to mean all of their trespasses, even the ones they might commit again.
Trusting the offender may not necessarily be a good thing. If I repeatedly commit a sin, it should be obvious that I am untrustworthy in that area of my life. I may truly repent of the sin, repeatedly, but struggle to overcome its temptations and fall into it again... and again... and again. What I need is not trust, but help. With good Biblical counsel, in time I can learn to resist its temptations and live victoriously. Then I might be worthy of trust but not until then. But just because I may be untrustworthy until that point in my life does not disqualify me from being forgiven. How many times do each of us come to God and say in our prayers, "Lord, I blew it again." And yet He forgives, even knowing that tomorrow we will be back on our knees again. If we are to forgive as we have been forgiven, we can not make trustworthiness an issue. Ultimately, the trust of the one who is to be forgiving is to be in God. In forgiving an offender I may be hurt again by a repeated offense, but I must trust God that He will provide that which I need and see me through the struggle. If my faith is in man, I will be hurt. But if my faith is in God, I will not fear what man may do to me.
The third positive command that relates to the divorce issue is found in 1 Corinthians 6:1-8. The issue in Corinth was that believers were suing each other over everyday matters and seeking the unrighteous legal system to settle their disputes. Paul's complaint about the legal system was not so much that they could not render a "fair" verdict (although many could be bribed to render whatever verdict money could buy) but that the standards of the world that judged righteousness were far below the standards of God. By going to court, Christians were in effect saying that the grace of God found in His salvation is not sufficient to settle the dispute between me and my brother. What an insult to God! Instead of taking matters to civil authorities who do not have an answer to the problem, believers should be bringing their problems to the church, where the Word of God provides a solution to every problem in life. In order to obtain a divorce, believers must go to court and one must sue the other. Our legal system makes it fairly easy to get a divorce today with the invention of "no-fault" divorces. But if no one is to fault for the division of the marriage relationship, then why is the relationship being ended? Someone is to be faulted.
In my experience as a pastor and as a counselor, I have never encountered a marriage relationship with problems where someone was completely innocent. We often hear of the "innocent party" in a divorce case, usually where the "guilty" has committed adultery, and it may be that the greatest percentage of blame might fall only on one. But I have never encountered one who was 100% innocent of any wrongdoing towards the other. So off to court we go, because God and His Word are unable to produce a solution to our problems. And by doing so we appeal to a "higher authority", the law of the land to get us out of our problems. What kind of testimony then do we have when we want to witness of the saving power of the gospel to the unsaved world? But there is also another element of Paul's rebuke of using the legal system. In verse 7 he asks why one brother will not suffer loss to another. The reason is that we count the things we are suing for of greater value that what we surrender (loss of testimony). We often hear someone say something to the effect of, "Well I don't think that I should have to suffer..." My response is, "Are you greater than God?"
In Hebrews 12 we read of Jesus who for the joy that was set before Him, endured the cross, He suffered. If anyone was above suffering it was Jesus, but in order to fulfill the will of the Father, he became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Now I am not advocating some sort of masochism to prove oneself righteous, but Jesus, Himself, said, "Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come;..." (Matt. 18:7). Certainly we should avoid unnecessary suffering, but some suffering is actually beneficial to the Christian life. For example, Paul sought the Lord three times to remove a thorn in the flesh. But the answer of God was that Paul was to endure its suffering for it would keep him from glorying in the abundance of revelations he would receive and in his weakness, God's power would be made perfect in Paul.
When we seek to end the marriage relationship in order to avoid or end suffering, what we are really doing is seeking to disobey the directive of 1 Corinthians 6:1-8 and missing the opportunity of seeing God work in a wonderful way through our suffering. We see, then, in these three "positive" commands that there is simply no way a believer in Jesus Christ can be obedient to these commnds and seek to divorce their spouse. The two are simply incompatible. There is no other conclusion to draw from the teachings of the Old and New Testaments that there is no provision made in the will of God for the child of God to divorce their spouse.