Have You Not Read S2E1 - Grounds for Divorce

Welcome to Have You Not Read, a podcast seeking to answer questions from the text of scripture for the honor of Christ and the edification of the saints. Before we dig into our topic, we humbly ask you to rate, review, and share the podcast.

Thank you.

Welcome back to Have You Not Read. I'm Dylan Hamilton, and with me are Michael Durham,.

David Kassin, and Andrew Hudson.

We're kicking off season two, episode one, and we're gonna start off with what everybody's been thinking about, what they've been reading, and what they've been meditating on during the break. We'll start with you, Michael.

Well, I've been itching, that's a pining sight boys and I have right now, I've been itching to get back to the podcast. There's been so much happening in the months that we were out, that we would often spend time talking to one another and texting back and forth, and me just wishing that we were doing it in the studio.

But as of late, I've been doing a lot of thinking about covenant theology and baptism, and what does the Bible have to say about the nature of the church, so on and so forth. So I had some holes in my thinking, some lack of clarity, lack of precision, so on and so forth.

So I'm on a process of learning a great deal.

About those subjects.

So it's been fun.

David?

Last couple of months, it was the busy, busy travel season for those of us that work in the travel industry. So I have been very busy myself. I am very thankful to report that I'll be doing a job change to another company, and we are really excited about that.

I've also enjoyed the interaction and the text messaging and the things that we've been doing as a group and pulled more people in. It has been fun to do that level of interaction. But as I have kind of dotted around the country, and just recently I was in Tucson, and I got to talk to a young man about our podcast.

And he was asking questions, and I gave him links and said, send them in. These are interesting questions. We'd love to discuss them. I've sent them to friends of mine that are overseas. So I think I've been advertising a lot for the podcast, so I hope I get kickbacks for that.

And I'm also gonna give a shout out to Jacob for his class on Roman history, just to rave reviews. We have really, really enjoyed that. And it's fun to watch teenagers get excited about ancient history as well.

And he certainly did that. He's a trained teacher. So shout out to you, Jacob. Thank you so much for that.

You know what you're doing. What about you, Andrew?

I've been getting my house in order in the sense that I am retiring from military after 20 years. And with that brings a lot of change. So trying to get, well, praise the Lord that I was actually approved for retirement because there was a time up in the air that medical situation could have prevented me from that.

So praise the Lord for that.

Amen.

Which has led to a scenario that after just needing to wrap up the final bits of retirement, I'm getting involved again with education and finishing my degree. And then we'll move on from that point. So really just focusing on that and being present in the household during this timeframe where I'm in between jobs, if you will, has given me a greater understanding of what it means to be an active member inside the household.

And also another greater level of appreciation for my wife in all of the work that she does, not only in caring for the needs of our family, but also the love that she gives, even though it's not easy, it's sacrificial.

So I have a greater respect and hopefully I haven't been taking that for granted previously, but I feel like I probably have been. So it was a time of learning for sure.

Well, when you came back in, did you feel that you were doing more or less work than you had when you were outside of the house?

It was more in the sense that I'm having to engage my faculties in ways that I didn't previously. Doing homeschool with my children has been a blessing, not only just interacting with them and seeing who they are and how they learn as a person, but also relearning how to educate someone in ways that doesn't take for granted that they already know because I've been trained in adult pedagogy, teaching adults, so they're not peers, they're people that just need more guidance.

That has been something that has not been easy. There have been times where there were tears, but I do appreciate the opportunity to be able to do that.

Amen.

Yeah, so over the break, we had a little bit of a drought and I found myself in the same situation where I was back in the home more often and I was having more work to do, both outside and inside, than I had previously.

So that was a fun little adjustment that we had to go through, but I've been eating up content as always. Recently, I've been focusing and thinking about household economics and applying the Bible to those and also applying that type of thinking when I'm reading through biographies of men of history and how their household economics either prove to be fruitful or unfruitful.

And the ways in which some men specifically, during the times of the Reformation or just after the Reformation and that switch of thinking from what household economics under Catholicism looked like versus a Puritan one, and maybe sometimes how those fought out in a household.

It's definitely an interesting little study, but I'm very eager to start applying a lot of the things that I'm learning in our own household as well. So focusing back on the household at the break sounds like it was a good thing for all of us.

Grounds for Divorce and the Meaning of “One Flesh”

Today, we're going to start out season two with somewhat of a two-part question, but they're very, very related. We have a question that came in. My wife has recently decided that going to church is not worth it anymore.

Just the same old stuff. She wants to expand her horizons and explore other faiths. She says that it is fine if I still want to, to each their own, she says, but she is going to travel and learn about other cultures and traditions.

She is not cheating on me, so I guess I cannot divorce her. Are there any grounds for divorce here since it is like she has abandoned me by traveling around the country worshiping other gods? Michael, we'll start off with you.

Yeah, so it's always a difficult subject to talk about, and I've sat with folks who are in the throes of these types of considerations, and it's interesting that the question is so often just immediately phrased in this way.

What are the grounds for divorce? And in this regard, I think we have to go read what Jesus said and try to go with that. So in Matthew 19, verse one, we read, now it came to pass when Jesus had finished these sayings, he departed from Galilee and came to the region of Judea beyond the Jordan.

And great multitudes followed him and he healed them there. Pharisees also came to him testing him and saying to him, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason? In other words, what are the grounds for divorce?

Two things here, the region he's in is overseen by a politician who is known for his divorces. So maybe we can get the traveling teacher in trouble with the local authorities if he answers the wrong way.

Their question lies along the lines of the rabbinical debate at the time. On one hand, one school of thought was very strict, very strict reasons for divorce only in certain cases and others were very free in their interpretation for any reason that the husband thought of it.

Also important to think about in terms of citizens versus subjects in the Roman Empire, also the subset of the Jews themselves, they're concerned about the law of Moses, but in the Roman Empire, if you were a citizen, even a Roman woman would actually have the right to divorce her husband legally in the courts, but that was uncommon for the non-citizens, just the subjects of the nation, the women would not have the right to divorce their husbands.

So this is why the question is put this way, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason? Because that would be the direction of the legal action. And he answered and said to them, have you not read that he who made them at the beginning made them male and female and said for this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh?

So then they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, let not man separate. There's a period at the end of that sentence because that's the way it reads in Genesis chapter two.

We have to understand that that is Jesus's position. He says it's wrong to get divorced and he stops there. And this is the reason why the Pharisees immediately give this rejoinder in verse seven, they said to him, why then did Moses command to give a certificate of divorce and put her away?

If Jesus had said something where he was like saying, divorce is unfortunate but okay in this circumstance or that circumstance, then the Pharisees would have asked a different question. But they asked this question because he just said no to divorce.

This is the way that Jesus so often works. In fact, the word of God works this way where here's two sides of an issue. Here's the conservative side and the liberal side or here's side A and here's side B.

And then we have Jesus so often, we have the word of God so often just saying no to the whole dichotomy. Like no, you're just totally off. That's not even the options. So then they say, why then did Moses command to give a certificate of divorce and put her away?

Now, Moses didn't command anyone to divorce their wives.

Deuteronomy 24 doesn't command someone to divorce their wife if they found something indecent or unpleasant.

Yeah, so what does it say, Andrew?

Well, I don't know if you wanna use my version.

But here we go. Go for it, go for it.

This is the NET. So Deuteronomy 24 verse one, if a man marries a woman and she does not please him because he has found something indecent in her, then he may draw up a divorce document, give it to her and evict her from his house.

There's no command to do it. There's permission, just like Jesus says that is permitted.

And additionally, the way that the Hebrew is structured is a cascade event. So I'm reading from the New King James. When a man takes a wife and marries her and it happens that she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some uncleanness in her and he writes her a certificate of divorce, puts it in her hand and sends her out of the house, when she has departed from his house and goes and becomes another man's wife, if the latter husband detests her and writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, or if the latter husband dies who took her as his wife, then her former husband who divorced her must not take her back to be his wife after she has been defiled, for that is an abomination before the Lord.

And you shall not bring sin on the land which the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance. Now, that's the full context.

A lot of if statements there.

Wow, yeah, a lot of contingencies here. But what's the point of that? The point of that was that Moses was trying to stem the tide of a growing evil, wherein women were being treated in this particular way, being cast about, shared among men, and Moses is saying, you're bringing evil upon the land because you're treating your wives this way.

And so what do the Pharisees do? They take this description that Moses gives of a terrible situation, and you all need to stop doing these things, and they say, oh, this gives us permission to divorce our wives.

It's twisting the scripture. And Jesus's answer clarifies this. He said to them, Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts permitted you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning, it was not so.

So Moses recognized this was going on, and he was trying to find a way to keep it from getting worse. And so he was saying, you're not gonna be sharing a woman back and forth between men. We're not gonna be doing that, even if you give them little slips of paper and make it all professional.

And so he says, but Jesus is saying, from the beginning, it was not so. So he's pointing to the authority of God's word, and Moses was not contradicting God's word. Moses was recognizing the evil and trying to police that evil.

And so he says in verse nine, I say to you, whoever divorce, and I say to you, so here's something additional now that Jesus wants to say, because the end of verse eight, he says the same thing that he says in verse six.

He said it twice now. In the beginning, it was not so. In the beginning, there was no divorce. This is not what God has decreed, no divorce. And now he has something additional he wants to say in verse nine.

And this is him speaking on his own authority. This is Jesus saying, I am adding this. We're not really adding it, but he's speaking from his authority as God in the flesh.

Yeah, so he's, so are you saying like, we heard from God, if you will, we heard from Moses. Now we're gonna hear from Jesus.

All right, so we've got Genesis, we've got a clarification of Deuteronomy, and now we have Jesus saying this, and I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, which he's already said, don't do, whoever divorces his wife except for sexual immorality and marries another commits adultery.

And whoever marries her who is divorced commits adultery. In other words, and this is the thing where we have to read just carefully, Jesus is not saying that divorce and adultery are the same thing. It's not the same sin, right?

He says, here's how one sin leads to another sin. Well, didn't we just read about that in Deuteronomy 24? Right, doesn't that fit with the context? And so he's saying, if you divorce your wife for a reason other than adultery, and you marry to somebody else, well, you're committing adultery anyway, right?

So you see how the cascade of sin continues. If you divorce your wife because she committed sexual immorality, and you go marry somebody else, you're not committing additional adultery, right? She's the one who committed the adultery.

That's what Jesus is pointing out, okay? Now, this is not the grounds for divorce clause that so many read it as, right? Well, you're not allowed to divorce unless there's sexual immorality. If that happens, then you get to divorce them.

He didn't say that. He was pointing out how one sin begets another sin. And we know that that is what he's saying because just like the Pharisees had an objection to Jesus's strict interpretation of Genesis 2, the disciples also complain after he finishes this statement.

His disciples said to him, if such is the case of the man with his wife, it is better not to marry. And Jesus says, well, you have that option in the following passage. So that's where we kind of go first when we begin thinking about divorce.

Well, you look at the impetus of the question and the guy who's asking it, he's saying, well, she's not committing adultery, so I guess I can't divorce her. He's looking for a reason.

And I think he's looking for a way forward that is positive, that is Christian, that is God-glorifying. Where's the hope here? You know, where's the hope? And for that, we need to think about what Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 7, where Paul is giving his amen to his Lord and giving some pastoral, putting some more pastoral emphasis upon these issues.

And again, think about the situation in Corinth. I mean, the situation in Corinth where it's a port city, two ports on either side, you have so many different pagan influences rolling through there, a city with a very fast-changing situation in the church.

Now, when we go to 1 Corinthians 7, we see some very clear expressions about a man and a woman, the nature of their relationship with one another. And he says in verse 10, now to the married I command, yet not I, but the Lord.

So he's reminding everybody what Jesus said that has been recorded in the Gospels. A wife is not to depart from her husband, but even if she does depart, let her remain unmarried or be reconciled to her husband.

Why is that? Because Jesus said, if there's a divorce and then you get remarried, then we're talking adultery. And Paul doesn't want that either. And so he says in verse 11, and a husband is not to divorce his wife.

So wife do not depart, notice how he says it, do not depart from your husband and a husband is not to divorce his wife. The wife may not have legal standing to actually divorce her husband, whereas the husband will.

But in any case, let's see what's going on here. If you're going to depart, he says, don't get remarried and look to be reconciled to your husband, okay? Now verse 12, but to the rest I say, to the rest I, not the Lord, say, Paul's not putting himself in opposition to Christ, he's just pointing out the fact this was not part of Jesus' original instructions, but Paul is the apostle of Christ, right?

Here under the inspiration of the Spirit, he's bringing forward this instruction. But to the rest I, not the Lord, say, if any brother has a wife, so if a believer, if a brother has a wife who does not believe, in other words, if a brother has a wife who doesn't want to go to church anymore because she wants to try out all the various faiths of the world, for example, okay, and she is willing to live with him, let him not divorce her.

So to me, this is one of those situations where you have a direct passage in the Word of God to say to this man who's undergoing a very difficult trial, what plan A is, right? You have an unbelieving wife, well, here's a question, not the question of what grounds do I have to divorce her or what good is all of this, the question is, is she willing to live with him?

Is she willing to remain his wife? That's the question that needs to be asked, right? So if that is the case, let him not divorce her. And a woman who has a husband who does not believe, if he is willing to live with her, let her not divorce him.

Great passage in Peter as well about how wives can win husbands to the Lord and some wonderful stories that we can share about that. Verse 14, for the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband, otherwise your children will be unclean, but now they are holy.

In other words, when you're, let's say you're the only believing person in your family as let's say a husband, okay, and your wife is interested in paganism and she's trying to indoctrinate the children as well and you feel like this is a hopeless mess, it's pointless, I just need to restart over with something that is fresh and good, the Bible is saying, no, this is good.

God created the family, he ordained the family, this is sanctified, this is holy, this is good, stick with it, okay? And then we have verse 15, but if the unbeliever departs, let him depart, a brother or a sister is not under bondage in such cases.

In other words, if the unbelieving spouse wants to divorce the believing spouse, in that case, let them depart. Now, departing looks different in different situations and we can talk about that, but God has called us to peace.

Now, here's the hope for the man who is going through this trial or anybody else who's in similar situation. Here's the hope, verse 16, for how do you know, oh wife, whether you will save your husband or how do you know, oh husband, whether you will save your wife, right?

It's a beautiful passage about how marriage and family ordained by God is good. There may be one believing member, there may be an unbelieving member, but as it says here, the marriage covenant is sanctified, it is holy, the children are not unclean, the children are not bastard children, they're good children.

This is a good thing, it's a good family. This is not a passage about how children are covenant children and this is why you should baptize your babies. I mean, that is not what this is talking about.

It's talking about this is a legitimate marriage. This is a legal marriage. This is a holy marriage and should remain intact and who knows, maybe the influence of that one person on the other, maybe God will use that.

But I think that's the overall context of this passage, that the marriage is good.

Right. As a husband loves his wife, lays down his life for his bride and modeling after Christ,. Hosea pursuing Gomer. And you have the other side of Peter's counsel to the women, to the wives, concerning their unbelieving husbands, how even without a word they can win them by showing them the love of Christ.

There is so much hope that is embedded in this marriage relationship and in the gift of family that we ought not be looking for good reasons to pull that eject handle.

I'm gonna go a little bit different angle on this and to just talk about the children. After the section in Matthew 19 where he's discussing marriage and divorce, you then have this passage, then little children were brought to him for him to lay his hands on them and pray but the disciples scolded those who brought them but Jesus said, let the little children come to me and do not try to stop them for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.

He placed his hands on them and went on his way. It's a very wonderful reminder that these children that are mentioned in this Corinthian passage are not to be hindered from coming to Christ. That's what should be done if there are children in this situation.

Do not let this unbelieving spouse play a role in dissuading children from coming to him.

I think that's a good angle to come with it.

Yeah, and I would say that the departing may happen because of the fidelity of the believer to Christ. Like, I'm going to, yeah.

Submission is not necessarily going to be an easy situation that this wife is called to.

I mean, if the husband is genuinely following the Lord and he is praying and he is studying the word and he is going to church and he is pursuing Christ and as the head of his family, continually calling and compelling and even wooing and structuring things in his family to be submitted to the Lordship of Christ, it's going to break one way or the other.

In the grace and mercy of God, there's going to be the sowing of the seed brings forth the regeneration of the new life and we see the redemption in the family or there's going to be a departing where those who are in the darkness do not want to be around the light.

They don't want to have their deeds exposed as evil. There's going to be a kind of a breaking point one way or the other, even if there is a separation. The husband may say to the departing wife, please don't go to anyone else.

I am praying for our ultimate reconciliation, right? Still applying this passage to the fullest extent of what it means.

Because even with that departing, there's still a chance of a return, a reconciliation.

Absolutely, absolutely. And we've heard stories of that as well and God's redemptive grace in those situations as well. But again, the departing may look in different ways. I think there was more to the question than just the, what about the wife who wants to taste of all the paganism?

Right? What was the other part of the question?

The other part of the question was, it seems like she's going after other gods and abandoning me. So I think the two words that could be focused on there is idolatry and abandonment.

Yeah, and the question is, does she consent to live with him? Does she consent to be his wife? And that has to be tested.

Which comes with house rules, like your gods don't belong here.

Yeah, like I said, there's gonna be a break at some point. If the man is going to be submitting to Christ, he cannot also at the same time be bowing the knee to Baal.

Yeah, there's no neutrality.

Yeah, it ruins Solomon. So I mean, for the sake of, hey, I wanna keep peace in the home, you can't have those things in the home. And Andrew, I think you brought up a really important point. There's a role of provider and protector that the husband fills, and he has to protect his children from that negative influence as well.

I mean, there's gonna be definitely some conflict there.

Solomon's children turned out great, right?

Nice point, strong point.

Yeah, it's a very strong warning for a good reason, where there are clear parallels to letting your wives convince you to bring in just a little bit of this and a little bit of that.

It bears a certain kind of fruit.

Yeah, Manasseh.

Yeah.

Physical Abuse, Separation, and Church Discipline

Well, they followed up that question with a multiple part question here, and it ramps up the emotion, it ramps up the controversy, and depending upon how you answer it, you could become a pariah. So the second part of the question is, is physical abuse grounds for divorce?

If not, then why should a woman who has been beaten never get to be remarried to a good man? There is no adultery, and both people are still alive. So technically, she has to stay single. But how is that just?

Yeah, so the question is being asked from a position of an assumption of equity, an assumption of what justice is. What is righteousness? And in this case, you can hear in the question that it is understood by the one asking the question that justice and equity would mean for this woman to have every opportunity to have a happy marriage, that that would be justice.

Now, the standard of God's word, however, is not going to make human flourishing and justice one and the same. Okay, that's not how the word of God reads. When we go and we look at God's creation design, what he says is, for this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.

And what God has joined together, let no man separate. So when we go and look at what God says is right, this is righteousness. We gotta begin with that standard. And what's unrighteous is if a husband beats his wife, if he abuses her in any fashion, that is unrighteous.

That is wicked.

Yes.

Right, and in that case, ultimately, even if there's no civil case ever brought against the man, God is going to take full vengeance and hellfire against men who beat their wives and abuse their children and so on and so forth, right?

So vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord. There's also forgiveness for men who beat their wives and their children when they turn to Christ and repent of their sins and find in Christ full forgiveness and atonement, wherein Christ suffers all the hell that they deserve for doing those actions.

And the fact that Jesus has got a hold of abusive men and turned them around to follow him and turned them into good shepherds, we can praise the Lord for that. But what about the woman in the situation, who is in the situation?

She is compelled by scripture to not divorce her husband, but that doesn't mean that she cannot be separated from him for a time.

Right, you don't have to stay under the same roof, right? Like if it's an active health or dangerous issue.

Because we have to understand when it says that if the unbelieving spouse is not willing to live with the other, what we are a people of peace, you let them go. This is where departing looks differently in different situations.

If a man is beating his wife, he is not consenting to live with her, right? He's fighting against her. When you use violence against another human being, you are indicating I do not want to live with you, right?

I am against you. Don't be near me and indicating I want you to depart as well. Now, when we read here that we are a people of peace, God has called us to peace, is staying in a home where there's constant beating and fighting and war, that's not the peace, right?

If she's saying, but I've got to stay for the sake of my kids, I've got to stay for the sake of my marriage, so on and so forth, actually what Paul says is, a brother or a sister is not under bondage in such cases.

The man who's beating his wife and trying to maintain control of the real estate, the property, the finances, so on and so forth, he may be saying, I shall not be moved, but he is still departing from his wife.

Okay, so there has to be an understanding that he is the one separating from his wife. He's not providing for his family. He's worse than an unbeliever. If he is a member of a church somewhere, there ought to be all manner of church discipline going on, and it is the role of a church to provide safety and provision and counseling and comfort to any woman in that situation.

So on the word of two or three witnesses, so I'm thinking about a scenario where this, maybe they're ostensibly believers. What is the way for, well, one, I would hope this woman would feel like they have enough to take it to the authorities, to get relief from the state who is charged by God to punish the evildoer.

So this should be a situation where criminal behavior is treated like criminal behavior. Not only that, these two or three witnesses, how can we establish that in this scenario to take it to the elders for a scenario where if they were believers, if you will, if this arose in the body, how would it be handled?

The situation happens when she calls a friend and then she tells her husband and then he calls an elder, and usually it unfolds in a way that the only person she feels safe going to is another woman, right?

And then that woman has to be brave enough and on the ball enough to say, you know, honey, you're telling me not to tell anybody, but I'm gonna tell my husband.

Right.

And to absolutely not follow through on that woman's wishes of don't tell anyone. It's like, no, no, we're telling somebody. And then again, that woman bringing in her husband and bringing in an elder, if her husband is an elder, then bringing in another elder, and when you have three people sitting in the room with a woman who just got beat up, you have your witnesses, right?

You have your witnesses. You don't know what else is going on. You don't know about the avalanche of bad decisions and sin begetting sin that led to this moment where her husband beat her up, and who knows what she threw at him, and who knows, and it's a big mess and whatever.

But the point is, at this moment, is like, hmm, we need to intervene in a biblical way because we need to aim for peace.

When you ask that question, Andrew, are you saying how is she going to establish the two to three witnesses? Like making sure that it was actually his hand that caused the damage that these elders are seeing, or?

And I don't wanna put this in light of another controversy that's happened in the Southern Baptist Convention, or has come to light more recently, but I don't want it to be like we don't trust women to tell the truth about being beat, but at the same time, you have situations where there are untrustworthy witnesses.

And the Bible has established how you establish trustworthy witnesses to bring charges against a fellow Israelite in the Old Testament or in the New Testament as well, as church members.

Would we say she has a certain amount of responsibility to gather at least as much evidence as she can witnesses-wise? Like I'm thinking when the biblical case law, when a woman is raped outside of the city walls and she doesn't scream, she's considered guilty of that act herself as well.

But if she does scream, if she does make an effort in order to cry out, she is not responsible for that act as well. And in a way, that is trying to gather evidence or trying to alert authorities as to what's happening.

Yeah, because we don't wanna do victim blaming, right? We wanna actually believe victims. We want victims to get relief from their attackers. So how would a way to reach out be? Because I'm sure there are some people who are listening that how do I reach out?

What would be the first steps on that?

Part of these situations get so far down the road because of the breakdown of actual church discipline and good pastoring. I would say that one of the good things about our church is that we have a multitude of elders.

Each elder has a particular flock of families within the church that they have more direct oversight over the help one another. And in these situations, it needs to come from the pulpit. It needs to come from the Sunday school teachers doing thing with these passages.

They say, look, just because you have a argument, just because your husband or your wife says really hurtful things to you, just because you have had six months of really difficult marital struggles, this doesn't mean that you are now an abuse victim, right?

You need to understand what we're actually talking about here. Now, if you isolate, if somehow you've been coached up to think that religion is meant for a covering so that you look good, and you're just, part of the church because it makes you look good, then you're gonna isolate yourself from actually getting help.