Jesus, Divorce and Remarriage by Gordon Wenham
Jesus, Divorce and Remarriage by Gordon Wenham is a nice very summarized look at this controversial topic. A concise, examination at what God's Word teaches us about how we Christians are to look on divorce, remarriage, and of course, marriage itself. It doesn't really deal with modern Christian views on divorce, as the goal of this little book is to focus on what Jesus taught about divorce and remarriage and what the popular views were at that time.
Now, though informative background information regarding the contemporary views of the people Jesus is talking to is interesting, the most interesting parts to me were where the Biblical texts are focused on. Jesus' teachings in particular (In Matthew 5, 19, and in the other Gospels).Wenham makes you really look at what Jesus is saying, getting past the clutter of our preconceived notions of what He must, in our view, be saying. We see that Jesus goes after terms like "murder" and "adultery" reveals what these concepts really entail; what really amounts to "murder" or "adultery" before God. The people, even the scholars of the day didn't really understand. The book points out that, in defending the life-long union of marriage, Jesus doesn't say that the term "divorce" should be removed from the vocabulary, or that it doesn't exist, what He basically does is say to the religious leaders that 'divorce' doesn't mean what they thought it meant, and that the act of the divorce itself can be considered an act of adultery by God. By pointing the religious leaders back to the beginning of Creation, the original design, ("In the beginning God created them male and female…what God has joined together let not man separate") He reminds them that Marriage was to be lifelong, the man and woman really are no longer two, but one flesh in God's eyes.
The religious leaders seem to take Jesus' pointing back to the beginning as an attack on the validity/concept of "divorce" altogether. They bring up the law, that Moses allowed them to write a certificate of divorce. But as Wenham says, "Jesus is not fazed by their appeal to the law. He argues that the need for a law on divorce proved their sinfulness, not their piety." And then Jesus tells them that marriage to a divorced person is adultery. It is noted that He essentially tells these people that their thought that the one flesh union is ended by legal divorce and/or physical separation is completely wrong. "…The divorced couple, though separated from each other, are still related to each other in the one-flesh union".
Apparently, though marital adultery is the 'adultery' of 'marriage', it is not the ending of a marriage; adultery doesn't put the man and wife asunder before God, rather it introduces someone else into the marriage who should not be included. Jesus didn't say that Moses permitted divorce because the marriage had been ended, before God, by whatever the wife did, rather He said that divorce was permitted because their hearts were hard. By implication, the marriage before God was actually still intact, but men didn't want live with that reality. So divorce was allowed, but Jesus clarifies that the only time divorce isn't considered adultery (before God) is if there has been sexual infidelity (which clarification is the so-called 'exception clause' that takes place in divorce/remarriage discussions). But Jesus does not give an "exception clause" to anyone marrying any divorced person. Thus, though it is not always adultery to divorce/deliberately leave your spouse, it is always adultery to marry a divorcee (divorced for whatever reason).
Now, as with, pretty much, any book I read, there were some statements made in the book that I wasn't sure about. I'll just bring up one: Wenham brings up a question, which I'll paraphrase here: how many times should one forgive one's spouse? What if they keep lying about their repentance? Should one separate/legally divorce from them? What apparently some early Christians thought that one ought to divorce one's spouse (though not remarry) if they committed adultery, but if they repented they should accept them back. "…if the guilty party repents, the other party must welcome the restoration of the marriage. But there should be a limit on the number of times the innocent party is expected to forgive the unfaithful spouse; while Jesus spoke of seventy-times seven, Hermes(an early church leader) reckoned once should be the limit." Wenham seems to agree with Hermes that there should be a limit of some sort. And I understand the practical dilemma. But (I'm just going to think 'out-loud' here. not take a definitive stance) if forgiving once, or even ten times, is the limit for forgiveness of a person for a specific sin, then wasn't Jesus statement about forgiving seventy-times seven nonsensicall? At least seventy-times seven, though it is shocking to us, makes mathematical sense in one's mind; but if Jesus didn’t mean what He clearly said then that makes His statement irrelevant in the long run, merely a shocking statement without substance. God demonstrates forgiveness Himself to believers: How many sins do we think that has God forgiven us? One? One BIG one? Several? I would think much more than 70 times seven. So perhaps He even redefined the common view of 'forgiveness'? Clarified what it really looks like. Shocking us even there!
Now, as Wenham rightly brings out, there is the BIG point that as Christians we are told in God's Word that we are to disassociate from professing Christians who are living ungodly lives and refusing repentance (1 Cor 5, and I understand that a whole church body should do that in such a case, but I kind of wonder if it would be absolutely imperative, say for a wife, to divorce her professing Christian husband who is living in sin. But I think that one might presume, based on how connected the couple is before God in marriage (pretty much becoming one person), that a spouse might be treated somewhat differently. Yes, if a professing Christian husband is committing adultery, and refuses to repent, then the church body should exercise church discipline/separation from that him as a body. Yes, apparently, Biblically, the offended wife may choose to separate as well, as that seems to be allowed based on Jesus' clarification that separation from a sexually unfaithful spouse would not be adultery. But I'm wondering if it obligatory on the faithful spouse's part to divorce? You have a few texts from the Bible we might take hints from: one is the person who is married to an unbeliever (1 Cor 7). Now, how much more 'spiritually' separated can you be from your marriage partner than having a spouse who is spiritually lost? But interestingly, if the unbeliever consents to live with the believer that apparently allowed. And then, perhaps more specifically to the point, you have Paul (apparently speaking for the Lord - "not I but the Lord") saying that couples should not divorce, but if they do, they are to remain unmarried or else be reconciled (Still 1 Cor 7).
And then you have 1 Peter 3 which talks about how a wife is to respond if her husband is "disobedient to the Word", so he is apparently a professing Christian (it would seem strange to designate an unbeliever by that description as his being 'disobedient' would seem like a given). It doesn't say how he is disobedient to the Word. That statement is probably deliberately vague: 'disobedient to the Word'. That covers quite a lot of sins, and kind of seem like, "just fill in the blank", and yet Peter says that the wife is supposed to win him over without a word by her submissive behavior (1 Pet 3), not by separating from him, or even lecturing him from the Word. And then, husbands are supposed to love their wives like Christ loved the church (Eph 5:25), so would there ever be a point where Christ would refuse the church coming back to Him in repentance? So how should a husband act toward his wife who commits adultery many times and yet comes back sorrowful and repentant? Because of verses like those, I'm not so sure that divorce is obligatory on the part of the offended/faithful spouse, though church discipline may need to be administered by the church body.
Things like the above may be practical things we'll have to work through (perhaps, we should just cross that bridge when we come to it?). But we need to get down to what the text actually says and work from there, regardless of our practical difficulties. And Wenham does a good job at just looking at what Jesus says, not letting fears of what He might be saying cloud our vision. Wenham states: "it is clear that Jesus is putting forward a more demanding ethic than his hearers had ever known previously. Their righteousness must exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees…." What Jesus is saying truly is initially shocking. Jesus is essentially telling both contemporary 'sides' (Wenham explains those) of the divorce remarriage issue that they didn't understand marriage at all. Just as His clarification that what amounts to 'lust' and 'murder' before God is truly startling and beyond self-righteous mankind's expectations, His clarification of "marriage" is just as startling. I'll end with one more quote from the book that pretty much sums all up: "At no point does he (Jesus) concede that they may have a point. Marriage is permanent, full stop. So Jesus challenges all who want to follow him to embrace the principle of no remarriage after divorce. 'Let the one who is able to receive this receive it.'(Matt 19:12)".
Many thanks to the folks at Lexham Press for sending me a free review copy of this book! My review did not have to be favorable.
My rating: 5 out of 5 Stars
*****
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