Selections from Chapter 8: (Click here for full text)

 Four Biblical Grounds for Divorce

Including abuse and neglect

Someone emailed me with the following story:

I was the adult Sunday School teacher in a Baptist church and my pastor invited me to sit with the deacons and himself in a difficult decision. A young lady had been constantly threatened by her alcoholic husband. One afternoon, he came to her with a shotgun while she was visiting her sister. After chasing her out into a field, he pinned her down, put the shotgun to her head and pulled the trigger, but the gun jammed. He served a few months in the county jail. My pastor explained that our church took a hard and fast view that divorce was always sin, so if we followed that we would be advising her to reconcile with her husband once he was released from jail. As I pondered that, I could not believe that God could possibly ask her to do that and I said so. The decision that was eventually made was that she could separate from him, but not divorce and was to live the rest of her life in that state unless he died. I felt this was better for her than reconciliation, but I didn’t have complete peace with that either.

Although this is an extreme example, any Christian counsellor will tell you that abuse within a marriage is very common and there are a huge number of people who live in fear in their own homes. The husband or wife who is the victim of physical abuse or emotional torture by their partner live as if they are imprisoned in a double cell with their worst enemy. As much as we would like to believe otherwise, it happens within Christians marriages as well, although it is difficult to tell exactly how frequently because those involved are often too ashamed or embarrassed to admit it even to a friend or relative.

The church struggles to be just

The church has struggled with its handling of these situations for centuries. Origen, the greatest of the Church Fathers at the start of the third century, faced the issue squarely in his Commentary on Matthew. He asked why Jesus did not allow a husband to divorce a wife who had tried to poison him or who had killed one of their children because, "to endure sins of such heinousness which seem to be worse than adultery or fornication, will appear to be irrational". Even though he did not understand how it could possibly be right or just, Origen concluded that we should nevertheless obey Jesus’ teaching because it would be "impious" to do otherwise.

In modern times most Christian teachers would likewise say: "I know it sounds harsh, but unless your believing partner has committed adultery, the New Testament is clear that you must stay with them and trust God who has bound you together." Andrew Cornes, who wrote an excellent book in support of this traditional church teaching (Divorce and Remarriage: Biblical Principles and Pastoral Practice) gives one concession – he says that if your life is at risk because of the amount of abuse you are suffering, then you are allowed to separate, though you may not divorce. Many others extend this concession to include all abusive marriages. We may well sympathise with this way of solving the problem – it does, after all, seem fairer for a victim of abuse to be allowed to separate even if they cannot divorce – but the solution is not Biblical. A couple should not separate without getting divorced because Paul specifically says that married couples may not separate (1Cor.7.10–11). So, if we take the traditional interpretation of the New Testament seriously, no-one may separate from an abusing partner.

We have already seen that God gave clear and fair laws in the Old Testament to limit the damage caused by the sin of neglect and abuse – the victim was allowed to decide whether or not they wanted the marriage to end. Would God really have abandoned this wise and practical approach in New Testament times or is it a principle for the church today? In this chapter we will find that neither Jesus nor Paul abrogate these Old Testament principles, and that Paul assumes that they are still in force.

More in this chapter...

Why was Jesus silent about the victim's right to divorce?

Didn't Jesus allow only one ground for divorce?

Paul teaches four grounds for divorce

Defining Biblical grounds for divorce

How can one define 'conjugal love'?

So what can we say to the abused?

Behind the façade

To conclude: God knows our secret suffering

Our Lord knows the troubles we face in secret in our own homes, things we never let others see because we are ashamed. People often feel that they have somehow caused their partner to be abusive or commit adultery, and sometime this may be partially true, but it does not excuse them. Often we can do things to heal the situation, but sometimes we cannot, and our Lord knows that too.

God has given us a very realistic law in the Old Testament and he did not throw it away when Jesus came to transform us. We are not all transformed yet, and our world is still sinful until the Kingdom fills the earth, and everyone bends the knee to Jesus. Until then, we still need some of the God-given laws of the Old Testament: laws about murder, about injury, about marital neglect and abuse. The details do not always transfer well from one society to another, but Jesus highlighted the principles and generalised them for us (as we saw in detail in chapter 4).

"God is not a ruler who sits on a high throne in isolation, ignorant of the suffering of his people. He aches with us, even in divorce, which he too has suffered. God loves you, and knows your secret sufferings. He wants to help you, and has given us practical laws to help deal with your hurt." – That is what we say to a person in a neglectful or abusive marriage.


Next chapter...

Chapter 9: Can I Get Married Again?