Ep 1227 ｜ These Lies About Divorce Are Fooling Christian Women
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 4 minutes
Words per Minute
157.24452
Summary
A Christian woman in a viral video claims that she is divorcing her perfect husband. This has caused a debate about marriage and divorce. So we re going to take a look at what does the Bible actually say about divorce? When is it justified? Is it ever justified?
Transcript
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A Christian woman in a viral video claims that she is divorcing her perfect husband.
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This has caused a debate about marriage and divorce, so we are going to take a look.
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What does the Bible actually say about divorce?
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Hope everyone is having a wonderful week so far.
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Okay, watch this viral video from a TikTok influencer talking about her potential divorce, and tell me if you can spot the problems.
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I don't know if I'm going to actually post this because this is super vulnerable for me, and I'm a pretty open person.
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But earlier this year, I told my husband I wanted a divorce.
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I feel like I have been searching for something in my relationship that we don't have for the whole time we've been married, which has been 10 years.
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There is not a single thing about my husband in and of himself that I do not love.
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He is the most self-disciplined, loyal, hardworking, good person that you could meet on this planet.
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And that is probably the reason, that is the reason why I have not left.
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Our relationship and what my expectations are for my marriage and what they always happen are not met, right?
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The reason that pushed me to even bring up divorce and talk about it was the fact that I feel like I don't, I can't be myself with my husband.
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And it's really confusing because I'm 32 years old.
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This video started a firestorm on social media with all different kinds of people debating whether her reasons were legitimate.
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What is the real purpose of divorce and marriage?
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Today we are going to analyze this video, but in a broader conversation, talk about what does the Bible really say about divorce?
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There's a lot of disagreement about this, even among Christians.
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And so we are going to try to get as much clarity as possible.
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Okay, let's get into this viral confession that we just walked.
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So it won't come as a surprise to you that I have a lot of problems with this,
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that God has a lot of problems with this person's reasoning and what she is articulating here.
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And before we get into that response, I've got a few specific points to make on that.
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She's a content creator and she puts out TikTok videos of her and her family.
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I think she's got maybe 60,000 followers on TikTok from posting pro-Trump, pro-God, pro-family content.
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And so when she posted this, a lot of her audience felt betrayed and other people started circulating this video to show this is emblematic of the problem with our culture.
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Some people also used it to show the problem with the flippancy that feminism has encouraged among women, that if something isn't right for you, if it's hard for you, then you can just leave it in accordance with your feelings.
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So in other parts of this video, it's like a five and a half minute video that we couldn't play the entire thing.
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She talks about telling her husband that she wants a divorce, working out the logistics, like where she would live.
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She goes through, as you heard, all of these wonderful characteristics that her husband has.
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But as they're approaching their 10-year anniversary, she's just not sure if this is the place for her, if she is getting all of her needs met.
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And as you heard her say, if she's really finding herself.
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Now, she does say she wants to work on their relationship, but she also said that the easier option would be to get a divorce and try to go find the love that I'm craving.
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So she's couching this confession in kind of asking for advice.
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She's saying that she's being vulnerable here and that she just wants to know how she can salvage her marriage.
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And because of that, there are a lot of people that are showing her sympathy.
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But as you can understand, there are a lot of people who are expressing their ire as well.
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For example, you've got Matt Walsh saying this is horrific, narcissistic, sociopathic.
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You've got Michael Knoll saying this is self-sabotage.
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Posting a video confessing your soured feelings about your husband, talking negatively about your spouse, talking negatively about your marriage indicates a lot of very profound spiritual and mental issues going on here.
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You've got to honor your husband more than this.
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You've got to cherish your marriage more than this.
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You've got to protect your privacy better than this.
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This creator publicly claims the name of Christ.
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Except in rare circumstances, divorce is not allowed.
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Jesus says what God has joined together, let not man separate.
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It's about denying yourself as Jesus calls us to do.
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And self-fulfillment is a very heavy burden to bear.
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Number three, your kid's well-being matters more than your wants.
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Your kid's emotional, psychological, and spiritual need for an intact home will not.
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And number four, marriage is not primarily about happiness.
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You learn to love this person through various seasons, various versions of themselves, various
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spots in their road of sanctification, all for the glory of God.
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And then finally, number five, feelings are real.
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And it is so tempting to follow our feelings, but it is a trap.
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So go to people at your church and your life that won't just affirm how you feel, but will
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actually point you as uncomfortable as it may be to the unchanging truth of God's word.
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That is your responsibility to God as a Christian, to your husband, who you made a vow to, and
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your children who need their mom and dad to stay together.
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And also, as an aside, before we get into the bigger conversation about the biblical explanation
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for what marriage is and the justification of divorce, here's what I would ask.
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And I think this is a question for all of us to consider from time to time.
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This is a question not just for this creator, but also to all of you women out there.
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Are you reading unrealistic depictions of what romance looks like?
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Are you looking for that unhealthy codependence that you read about?
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Are you listening to music that glorifies really destructive relationships?
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Are you watching movies that is painting this picture of this hot and heavy sinful romance
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and that has rewired your desires to want something like that instead of the biblical marriage
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That's why we read in the book of Ephesians to be filled with the Holy Spirit, not to be
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drunk with wine, because whatever fills us, our bodies and our minds will control us.
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We might think, oh, these desires are telling me something, but we mistake our sinful desires
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Conviction comes from the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit is God.
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Therefore, the Holy Spirit will never convict you to do something that is against God's
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What does God actually say about marriage and divorce?
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So first, before we get into what the Bible says about divorce, I think it's probably a
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good setup to give us some good context to talk about what the world has to say and what
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In 2022, the divorce rate was 14.56 per 1,000 married women aged 15 and older, a slight increase
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from 14 in 2020 and 2021, but still below the pre-pandemic level of 15.5 in 2019.
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The popular idea that 50% of marriages end in divorce comes from kind of a flawed calculation,
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so you've probably heard that before, that 50% of marriages end in divorce, but that's
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That divides the annual divorce rate by the annual marriage rate.
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But this number compares two different groups, those getting divorced and those getting married
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in any given year and tells you nothing about the long-term trends and the overall pool of
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Now, when you break down the demographics that are most likely to get a divorce, Asian Americans
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It's so interesting to look at statistics around just Asian Americans and their low divorce rates,
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their low fatherlessness rates, so very rare for them to have a child out of wedlock, high
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graduation rates, high test scores, low poverty rates, and welfare dependence rates.
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It really all goes back to the cohesion of the family.
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Black Americans have the highest divorce rate, 30.8 per 1,000.
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And then you've got Hispanic Americans and then at 18.5% and white Americans at 15.1%.
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First marriages last eight to nine years on average, second marriages seven to 10 years,
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and third marriages five to eight years, which is very unfortunate.
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So even if that number isn't 50%, you can see that in general, the culture does not see
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I would also like, Bree, if you could look up when no-fault divorce was allowed, and if
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you could find a graph that we can put up that shows the divorce rate increasing at least
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over time as we'll get into it, it has gone down a little bit in recent years, but it
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Now, what does the world actually think about marriage?
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According to what they say, there are all kinds of op-eds, especially in recent years
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post-COVID, of usually women talking about how hard it is to be married and the unfair
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disproportionate load that women carry in marriage and how liberating it is to get a divorce.
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There's a New York Times op-ed titled, A 50-50 Custody Arrangement That Could Save Your Marriage.
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She argued that her life was easier as a divorcee than it was during her marriage because of
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her 50-50 custody agreement with her ex-husband.
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She said that divorced dads were forced to do their fair share of managing the household
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and caring for the children and for themselves.
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She implied that even married couples should try a 50-50 arrangement.
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But there are different seasons of life where people have different responsibilities and things
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There was a time when Chief Relatedbro, he was having to go into an office from like he
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And I was doing almost all of the load of the parenting and the cooking and all of the
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And there have been so many different seasons where we just help each other out.
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That doesn't mean you change the biblical dynamic of the husband being in the lead and the wife
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But there are different kinds of responsibilities that are shared in different seasons of life.
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And it comes down to not understanding, I think, sacrificial love.
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She said, every divorced woman I know is happier post-marriage, even the ones who didn't instigate
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And if your goal in life primarily is happiness, then having fewer responsibilities that demand
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your time, energy, and sacrifice will make sense to you.
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But if it's something deeper, if your purpose is more than just your fleeting happiness and
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doing things that are convenient for you, then this is not the route to take, which indicates
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So there is a note from Brie about no-fault divorce.
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So no-fault divorce began in the United States with California's adoption of the Family Law
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This law, signed by Governor Ronald Reagan, allowed couples to divorce without proving faults,
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Prior to this, at-fault divorce was the only option in most states.
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So I'm sure that the change in this law that then spread across the nation over the subsequent
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years probably had an effect on that peak that we talked about in 1979 with the divorce
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Ronald Reagan, I love you, but there were a lot of bad things that he did when he was in
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But a couple bad things like no-fault divorce and then also mass amnesty.
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It's just true that history is very complicated.
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There's another example that conveys the message of what the world thinks about divorce.
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Atlantic senior editor Honor Jones wrote in a 2022 op-ed that her ex-husband was a good
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man and only vaguely explained why she ended up leaving the marriage.
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She said, children are supposed to be the death of freedom, but that hasn't been my experience.
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But she said, it was my marriage that took these things from me, free time and free thought.
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I got divorced because I could not be myself and be a wife.
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This is the Glennon Doyle-ification of women and the culture.
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In another article, she explains, I loved my husband.
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It's not that I didn't, but I felt that he was standing between me and the world, between
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Everything I experienced, relationships, reality, my understanding of my own identity and desires
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were filtered through him before I could access them.
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I, I, I, me, me, me, my feelings, my identity, what I want.
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And the Guardian talked about, an anonymous writer in the Guardian did a week-long series
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talking about the ending of marriage and that it doesn't have to be that big of a deal when
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She said, there doesn't have to be dramatic infidelity or plate-smashing argument.
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Sometimes a handful of tiny sad moments are enough to indicate that a relationship is
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So such a low tolerance for hardship, such a low view of marriage.
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I've seen this multiple times on social media, these things called divorce parties, where
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And just to be clear, like we are not talking about situations in this segment of abuse.
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Um, okay, so the text on this video that I'm about to play says, POV, your friends throw
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Even if you are divorcing someone, say in some other hypothetical scenario for abuse, as we'll
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get into, that is a legitimate reason to get yourself safe and to leave, that's not something
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It's not something that should be met with a party.
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So now what does the Bible have to say first about what marriage is?
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Because we have to know what marriage is, why it's important to know why divorce matters
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It's so significant, as we've talked about so many times.
00:24:51.900
The Bible starts with a marriage and ends with a marriage.
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It starts with this physical marriage between Adam and Eve.
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We read this in the very first chapter of the first book of the Bible.
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It's like God is saying, if you don't get further than the first chapter, understand
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This is fundamental to our theological understanding, but also societal cohesion and survival.
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So God created man in his own image and the image of God, he created him.
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Male and female, he created them and God blessed them.
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And God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion
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over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing
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He said that the man and the woman are made for each other.
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Before this verse, the first time that God says that something is not good, he says it
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He had created all of these other things, the stars, the land, the animals, vegetation.
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And he had said over and over again, it was good.
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And then he made man in his own image, but he saw that man is alone, was alone.
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And he said, this is not good for a man to be alone.
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And so he creates Eve and Adam rejoices over this.
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She is just in awe of the beauty of this woman that God created just for him.
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He creates this marriage between Adam and Eve, man and woman, to be for life, to be a
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He's not just saying, okay, this was just for Adam and Eve.
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No, he's saying, therefore, because I have done this, because I have made these first
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parents, Adam and Eve, together for each other in marriage, a man shall leave his father and
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mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
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This is how much God cares about marriage, that he set it up in the very beginning.
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When God instituted marriage originally in creation, there were no provisions for divorce.
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Sproul says in a sermon in 2006 called Marriage and Divorce.
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The marriage vow does not say as long as we stay in love, as long as we get along, as long
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Rather, the marriage vow is as long as we both shall live.
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While the Bible does talk about different forms of relationships, like we see with Hagar,
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We see, of course, Solomon, polygamy, and all of his wives.
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And some people will say, see, marriage wasn't really just between man and a woman.
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And what we have to remember is that in every situation, including Jacob and Leah and Rachel,
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every situation in which there was marriage or sexual relations or even sexual desire,
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like when we think of David and Bathsheba, outside of marriage between one man and one woman,
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These were written to show us a variety of things, one of which is when we go outside
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of God's original design, we suffer consequences from that.
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Remember, not everything in the Bible is prescriptive.
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And that actually lends a lot of credibility to Scripture because if the writers of the Bible
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were trying to make themselves look good, if they were trying to make man look strong
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and wise and victorious and make Israel look awesome, they would have written things very
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But they write about when their leaders messed up, when they sinned, when they did things
00:29:09.520
that were straight up stupid and rebelled against God and suffered the consequences for
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So some things are simply descriptive, not prescriptive.
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Deuteronomy 17, 17, when God is outlining the regulations for the king of Israel, he says
00:29:27.160
he shall not acquire many wives for himself, lest his heart turn away, nor shall he acquire
00:29:38.780
That's what he's saying, that his heart will turn away from the devotion to God that is required
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Also, we see Exodus 20, 14, one of the Ten Commandments, you shall not commit adultery.
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And in fact, two of the commandments of the Ten Commandments, that's a lot, have to do with
00:30:00.620
keeping your desires, your eyes, your hands, your faithfulness to your wife, exclusive to
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Exodus 20, 17, you shall not covet your neighbor's house.
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You shall not covet your neighbor's wife or his male servant or his female servant or his
00:30:17.420
ox or his donkey or anything that is your neighbor's.
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The book of Proverbs continually warns against adultery, which points to the significance of
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the exclusivity of marriage, the permanency of marriage.
00:30:40.980
In the Gospels, Jesus reiterates God's original design for marriage.
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Mark 10, 6 through 9, he is answering a question to the Pharisees about divorce.
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They're trying to trap him as the Pharisees often did.
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But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female.
00:31:00.620
Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two
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What, therefore, God has joined together, let not man separate.
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So we've got our five R's that we talk about typically when we're defining marriages between
00:31:24.680
And hopefully so far as you're hearing scripture, you see that reiterated over and over again.
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It's never described as gender neutral or interchangeable between men and women over
00:31:35.640
It's very specific, including in Jesus's description.
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Reiterated throughout scripture, like honor your father and mother.
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Repeated by Jesus himself, as we just read in Matthew 19.
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And then our fourth one, representative of Christ and the church.
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He says in verse, Paul says in verse 31 through 32, therefore, a man shall leave his father
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and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.
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And I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.
00:32:15.320
And if you back up a little bit, he roots his commands to the wife to be submissive to
00:32:20.200
her husband and the husband to be loving to his wife in this earthly representation of the
00:32:27.480
eternal reality of Christ's marriage to the church.
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That is the universal body of believers in Christ here on earth.
00:32:45.520
And the faithfulness in marriage, even though we're talking about two imperfect people,
00:32:50.460
is to reflect the faithfulness, the unwavering dedication and love and cherishing and commitment
00:32:58.820
to sanctification and holiness that Christ demonstrates to us, his people, his flock,
00:33:06.320
According to Desiring God, this is the ministry by John Piper, marriage was created by God as
00:33:12.880
a picture of the covenant-keeping love of Christ and his church.
00:33:16.920
Jesus said, what therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.
00:33:21.420
John Piper said this in his Ask Pastor John podcast.
00:33:27.640
We, of course, see throughout Paul's letters to Timothy and Titus the importance of marriage
00:33:33.380
and how faithfulness to one wife indicates that you are a good, responsible leader.
00:33:39.020
We see 1 Timothy 3.2, an overseer in the church must be above reproach, the husband of one wife.
00:33:46.100
1 Timothy 3.12, let deacons be the husband of one wife.
00:33:50.660
Titus 1.5-6 says, if anyone is above reproach, the husband of one wife and his children are
00:33:58.040
believers and not open to the charge of debauchery or insubordination, that these elders must fit
00:34:05.300
Pastor Chuck Swindoll said in an article published on Insight for Living, at the most basic level,
00:34:12.240
the phrase husband of one wife refers to a man who is married to one woman and living in
00:34:17.780
It implies sexual purity and a reputation for devotion to his mate.
00:34:22.320
This would have been countercultural at the time.
00:34:25.360
It would have been seen as absolutely radical because at that point, women were seen as property.
00:34:34.240
You could take as many slaves as you wanted as concubines, and it wasn't frowned upon.
00:34:41.420
This is just how this ancient pagan world in the Roman Empire functioned, because they operated
00:34:48.180
under this philosophy that you were only a full person if you had the fullness of the logos.
00:34:56.700
And the belief was that only the adult free male did.
00:35:02.140
They were sexually exploited and aborted and murdered and all kinds of things.
00:35:06.800
And so the adult free male was really seen as being able to do whatever he wanted to do,
00:35:13.500
And so Paul writing to people at this time saying, no, no, no, you have to cherish your
00:35:26.400
And she is the only one that she should be having a sexual relationship with.
00:35:37.580
So any feminist out there who wants to read this and feel restricted by it, know that this
00:35:42.040
was God's good grace and protection specifically for vulnerable women and children.
00:35:46.900
It took the capital L logos, Word Made Flesh, John 1, to come and overturn and revolutionize
00:35:56.420
We've got one more point on what marriage is, according to the Bible.
00:36:00.480
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So, number four was representative of Christ in the church.
00:37:21.200
The amazing thing is, is that the Bible starts with a marriage and it also ends with a marriage.
00:37:30.340
Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters
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and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out, hallelujah, for the Lord our God,
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Let us rejoice and exult and give Him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come.
00:37:47.720
This is the Lamb of God who also comes back as a mighty lion, Jesus Christ Himself, and
00:37:59.200
We are anticipating this wedding supper, this ultimate uniting with Jesus.
00:38:05.640
It was granted her, the church, to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure, for
00:38:10.300
the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.
00:38:14.000
And the saints and all the members of the household of God, again, are all believers who
00:38:19.100
have been saved by grace through faith in Christ alone.
00:38:23.000
There's a Presbyterian pastor named Trent Castro, and this is the Denomination's official magazine.
00:38:31.380
He wrote an article that says this about this culminating passage of not only Scripture,
00:38:38.960
So it's not just that the Bible starts and ends with the marriage, it's that time starts
00:38:43.800
The marriage supper of the Lamb is the culmination of every biblical feast.
00:38:48.480
It is the end of God's redemptive work and the beginning of perfect, eternal communion
00:38:55.740
The great feast described in Revelation is our future.
00:39:00.600
Okay, so now we have a better understanding of what marriage is.
00:39:05.660
It is not an agreement between two people who want to have sex.
00:39:10.640
It is not just a promise that is made between two people who really like each other.
00:39:20.480
It is not just a team coming together with a shared goal.
00:39:28.700
Whether you want to believe it or not, there is a spiritual and eternal significance reflecting
00:39:35.640
and representation in the earthly combination covenant between one man and one woman in marriage.
00:39:44.380
There's no such thing as any other kind of marriage, by the way.
00:39:53.860
The law in America might say so, but the law can't change what God has defined because
00:40:00.340
God predates America and predates the law and He is the source of truth and He created
00:40:05.600
marriage, one man, one woman for life as a reflection of the eternal marriage between Christ and
00:40:18.100
So it is no wonder that we read, for example, in Malachi 2.16 that God hates divorce.
00:40:26.700
But this is not all the Bible has to say about divorce.
00:40:31.060
And before we even say specifically what these verses have to say about the tearing apart of
00:40:37.980
a marriage, it's just important for us to realize that as we are reading Scripture, if
00:40:42.640
we love God, we read Scripture asking, what does God want?
00:40:54.500
That is what you think when you're thinking of someone that you love, whether it's a spouse,
00:41:00.480
whether it's even just a friend, whether it's someone in your life.
00:41:03.180
When you love someone, you want to meet their needs.
00:41:07.340
And God doesn't have any needs, but I'm using an earthly comparison here.
00:41:13.400
You're motivated not by fear, but by love for them.
00:41:17.440
But if you are reading the Bible asking, what can I get away with?
00:41:26.880
How can I kind of finagle these verses and pick and choose different rules and say, well,
00:41:35.600
You are not operating from a place of loving God.
00:41:38.620
We read the Bible asking, how can I glorify God best?
00:41:43.100
So people who say, well, the Bible doesn't talk about divorce all that much.
00:41:47.060
So we don't ask ourselves, what does God say in the negative, but what does he say in
00:41:57.200
So the prophet Malachi is condemning unjust divorce as a violation of God's covenant,
00:42:02.660
emphasizing that it disrupts the sacred unity of marriage.
00:42:05.660
It harms spiritual well-being and it negatively impacts the community.
00:42:11.320
So this is the commentary from my favorite study Bible that I use, and that is the ESV
00:42:18.600
So here is the prophet Malachi speaking to God's people.
00:42:24.520
You cover the Lord's altar with tears, with weeping and groaning because he no longer regards
00:42:28.660
the offering or accepts it with favor from your hand.
00:42:34.300
Malachi is answering, because the Lord was witness between you and the wife of your youth
00:42:39.020
to whom you have been faithless, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant.
00:42:44.140
Did he not make them one with a portion of the spirit and their union?
00:42:52.560
So guard yourselves in your spirit and let none of you be faithless to the wife of your
00:42:57.800
For the man who does not love his wife, but divorces her, says the Lord, the God of Israel
00:43:02.500
covers his garment with violence, says the Lord of hosts.
00:43:05.620
So guard yourselves in your spirit and do not be faithless.
00:43:11.240
So some translations say, as I said earlier, Malachi 2.16, that God hates divorce.
00:43:19.040
The NASB, for example, says, for I hate divorce, says the Lord, the God of Israel.
00:43:28.460
This is no, there is no doubt that God hates divorce because it destroys what he loves.
00:43:32.320
Marriage is the Lord's holy institution, which he loves.
00:43:36.660
Malachi 2.11 specifically, we can say that God hates divorce for at least three reasons.
00:43:45.860
Number three, God hates divorce because it illustrates apostasy and damnation.
00:43:50.880
Because it is that earthly reflection of an eternal reality.
00:43:55.100
It is an earthly representation of the separation of Christ and his church, which we know won't
00:44:06.380
He's not here saying that everyone who gets a divorce is automatically going to hell, but
00:44:10.520
he's saying that is what it represents on an earthly level.
00:44:17.240
Of course, in the Old Testament, there was divorce.
00:44:20.140
God created provisions for divorce, which Jesus explains later that this was not because
00:44:26.200
God wanted divorce or because he liked it, but because people were sinful.
00:44:31.140
And so because people were sinful, God had to create a law and he had to create a way to
00:44:37.100
It's actually very gracious of God to deal with people's sin through the law and through
00:44:41.640
the sacrifices that we see in the Old Testament, because it shows how much he wanted a relationship
00:44:46.560
with his people, so much so that he not only went through Moses to distribute this law,
00:44:54.560
which in some ways seems very complicated, but later we see that he sent his own son to
00:44:59.240
die so that we would be cleansed and he could have a relationship with us.
00:45:03.120
So we see in Deuteronomy 24, for example, that there are all these kinds of provisions for
00:45:08.300
divorce, how you can have a certificate of divorce, what this means for the man, what this means
00:45:13.040
for the wife, and it was so significant that he said her former husband, this divorced woman
00:45:19.480
who sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife after she has been defiled, for
00:45:24.140
that is an abomination before the Lord, and you shall not bring sin upon the land that the
00:45:28.820
Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance.
00:45:33.600
Okay, so there's all different kinds of things there.
00:45:37.840
So it's actually talking specifically about the woman then going to another husband and then going
00:45:44.900
back to her husband, and God is saying that is defilements. You just can't do that. Divorce causes
00:45:51.080
all kinds of layers of messiness there, but we'll read about what the New Testament, how the New
00:45:57.700
Testament interprets what God's heart was behind all of that. We read in Matthew 19, 4 through 9,
00:46:04.360
he said, and we already read this verse, that Jesus says,
00:46:08.600
Have you not read that he created them from the beginning male and female? Therefore a man shall
00:46:12.040
leave his father and mother. Two shall become one flesh, so they are no longer two but one flesh.
00:46:16.960
What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate. And the Pharisees said to him,
00:46:20.960
Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away? And Jesus said to
00:46:26.840
them, Because of your hardness of heart, Moses allowed you to divorce your wives. But from the
00:46:31.780
beginning, it was not so. And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife except for sexual immorality
00:46:39.420
and marries another commits adultery. So we have to look at that exception right there,
00:46:46.840
except for sexual immorality. What does that actually mean? Let me pause, tell you about our
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We also read this in Matthew, this same idea from Jesus in Matthew 5, 31 through 32. It was also said,
00:48:23.960
whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce. But I say to you,
00:48:28.420
Jesus says, that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality,
00:48:32.880
makes her commit adultery. And whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery. So we've got
00:48:41.180
some commentary on this. This is a reformed pastor teaching on marriage, David Guzik. He says,
00:48:48.040
if the divorce was not established on biblical reasons, that it was never a divorce at all in
00:48:51.760
the eyes of God. Even though the government, the community, and the people involved may have
00:48:55.700
considered it a divorce, such a divorce is only in the eyes of man and not in the eyes of God.
00:49:00.740
And the parties involved are still obligated to a marriage bond, as far as God is concerned. So
00:49:06.120
you're not free in God's eyes to go and get married and have sex with someone else. Every time you do
00:49:12.280
that, if that is the case, you are committing adultery. That's what Jesus is saying here. The Greek word
00:49:19.000
for sexual immorality is pornea, and it encompasses all illicit sexual activities, such as homosexuality,
00:49:25.820
fornication, etc. It is where we get the English word for pornography.
00:49:29.980
Through the writings of the Apostle Paul, the Holy Spirit once again affirms this lifetime
00:49:34.640
commitment of marriage in 1 Corinthians 7, verses 10-11.
00:49:39.520
To the married I give this charge, not I, but the Lord. The wife should not separate from her
00:49:44.140
husband, but if she does, she should remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband,
00:49:49.080
and the husband should not divorce his wife. 1 Corinthians 7, 15.
00:49:53.620
But if the unbelieving partner separates, let it be so. So this is talking about cases of spousal
00:50:00.080
abandonment. So you've got an unbelieving spouse. They don't believe in God's precepts. They're not
00:50:06.600
honoring this as a covenant. They leave. So Paul says, in this case, the brother or sister, so the
00:50:13.100
Christian in this case, is not enslaved. God has called you to peace. So Paul seems to be saying
00:50:19.800
here that if your partner abandons you, then you can remarry, and it is not considered adultery.
00:50:28.340
Death also dissolves the marriage covenant so that widows and widowers are free to remarry,
00:50:34.060
and actually he says that they should. This is Romans 7, 2-3. For a married woman is bound by law
00:50:39.700
to her husband while he lives. But if her husband dies, she is released from the law of marriage.
00:50:45.780
Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is
00:50:51.440
alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law. And if she marries another man,
00:50:56.920
she is not an adulteress. So what we see over and over again, Old to New Testament,
00:51:02.240
if you divorce for an unbiblical reason, except for spousal abandonment and sexual immorality,
00:51:09.360
you are committing adultery by getting in another marriage. Every single time. Because God doesn't
00:51:14.860
consider that second marriage a marriage, it would seem. Abuse is not explicitly mentioned as grounds
00:51:22.160
for divorce. So this is where there are a lot of questions. Abuse is not explicitly mentioned by Jesus
00:51:29.600
or by the Apostle Paul as a grounds for divorce. But there are theologians who argue that that is what
00:51:37.380
is implied if we properly translate and interpret 1 Corinthians 7.15 and Matthew 19.9. Denny Burke
00:51:46.800
is a seminary professor, and I've cited a lot of his stuff before, a very theologically thoughtful
00:51:55.040
person, and we are very aligned. He argues this in his 2013 book, What is the Meaning of Sex?
00:52:01.980
An abusive spouse has made choices that force a separation, and the abuse, therefore, can become
00:52:07.860
tantamount to desertion. That is why I conclude, Denny says, that when the abuser leaves the marriage
00:52:14.080
in this way, so by abusing his wife or children, the exception for desertion comes into play that we
00:52:19.680
see in 1 Corinthians 7.15. In any case, the victim must be protected and the abuser sanctioned.
00:52:27.540
Wayne Grudem writes this in a 2020 article for the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood.
00:52:34.400
If an abused spouse is forced to flee from the home for self-protection from ongoing violent abuse,
00:52:40.140
in my judgment, that would be a situation where the damage is sufficiently similar to the damage from
00:52:44.860
adultery or desertion. So the divorce would be a legitimate option. So it is tantamount to abandonment.
00:52:52.780
One of the reasons for divorce that we read in 1 Corinthians is tantamount to the damage,
00:52:59.500
at least, that we see from the betrayal in adultery. There is also a pastor, Jared Wilson. He is a
00:53:07.280
Midwestern seminary professor who says physical abuse constitutes a kind of sexual immorality,
00:53:12.020
porneia, in fact, because it is direct and sinful bodily unfaithfulness. It is just as much a violation
00:53:17.560
of Ephesians 5. The marriage of Ephesians 5 marital nurture is having sex with someone outside
00:53:24.900
the relationship. It is destruction of one's body and dignity, and thus a destruction of the vow to
00:53:30.080
protect, cherish, and nurture. What we see, though, and what we understand is that marriage is supposed
00:53:40.280
to be for life. That covenant is supposed to be forever. However, we live in this very simple fallen
00:53:51.020
world, and there are provisions that God gives for separation, for protection when it comes to abuse
00:54:00.080
of you and your children, and when it comes to sexual immorality. However, when we're talking about
00:54:06.920
sexual immorality, that does not mean that you have to get a divorce. That does not mean that you
00:54:12.780
have to separate. It doesn't mean that you shouldn't try to reconcile, because God still considers your
00:54:18.840
marriage a marriage, and God can redeem that, and He can heal that, and He can bring people back
00:54:24.220
together. I know people who went through many, many years ago—I'm talking like decades ago—went
00:54:31.780
through infidelity and went through that betrayal and stayed together. I'm not saying that's easy,
00:54:38.720
and maybe that's not the situation that every person finds themselves in, but the goal of unity
00:54:44.620
and reconciliation in that kind of situation should be primary, because that redemption and forgiveness
00:54:54.540
and reconciliation and restoration when possible is God's will, because of all of the reasons we listed
00:55:01.220
of what marriage actually is. So there are grounds for biblical divorce, but understand that they are
00:55:09.180
rare. They are rare grounds for biblical divorce. They are not being hurt emotionally by your spouse.
00:55:19.320
They are not wanting to find yourself. They are not wondering if you made a mistake 10 years ago.
00:55:26.900
They are not wondering if the person you're married to is the same person that you married 10 years ago.
00:55:33.340
Those are not the reasons. Now, that's not to say that those aren't real problems to work through.
00:55:37.740
I'm not saying that you should just push it down. I'm saying that you should figure it out
00:55:42.060
with however much help you need, whether it's professional help, whether it's church help,
00:55:46.940
the prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. So prayer, Holy Spirit help.
00:55:53.320
But your goal should be to honor God in your marriage. I'm not saying that's not difficult.
00:56:01.360
I'm not saying that that doesn't require a lot of sacrifice. But as we read in Scripture,
00:56:06.300
it is so incredibly important to the God who is love, 1 John 4, 8, for marriages to stay together.
00:56:12.460
There's also, of course, the offspring and the product of marriage that we have to consider.
00:56:20.720
And that, of course, is the kids. And what we read statistically, for example,
00:56:26.000
from the Institute for Family Studies is that children of divorce face a 35% to a 55% increase
00:56:33.680
in mortality rates with effects persisting for at least 10 years. Teen birth rates among children of
00:56:40.160
divorced parents increased by 63%. Children of divorced parents are more likely to experience
00:56:45.440
emotional and behavioral problems, with studies showing a 20% to 30% higher risk of anxiety and
00:56:52.300
depression. And I could go on and on with the statistics there, but God has ordered us and
00:56:58.440
ordered the family for kids to be protected, for kids to be cared for and stewarded and nurtured.
00:57:05.780
And that is very hard to do when you are divorced. Your kids need you to be, yes, safe. But aside
00:57:15.120
from that, they need their parents to be together. It is such a lie that kids just want their parents
00:57:21.600
to be happy. Not primarily. Sure, they would like that. Ideally, they want their parents to be
00:57:27.520
together. They need their parents to be together. All right. Before we get to this last segment,
00:57:31.640
I just want to play you this heartbreaking video that I saw of this child and this view that we
00:57:39.140
don't see very often from a girl whose parents got divorced. Here's thought three.
00:57:42.980
This is a poem I wrote about being a child of divorce. It's called One Gift. You're lucky,
00:57:48.980
they say. Two Christmases, two birthdays, two roles to play. Double the presents, double the gifts,
00:57:54.820
double the families to exist. And although it's true, they love me, they do. They don't love each
00:58:01.520
other. No, my dad is just the father of her children and her the mother. There may be two
00:58:06.860
Christmas celebrations, two birthday parties, but there's never enough of me, enough time in one
00:58:12.640
day. And then I get the text from my dad saying, hey, what do you want for your birthday this year?
00:58:17.980
And cash is what I say. No, I can't tell them what I actually want. That wouldn't be fair to say that
00:58:24.140
I want both of my parents to be there. So when my mother asks what I want next year,
00:58:29.500
cash is what I'll say. Because what I really want is something they don't want to hear.
00:58:36.300
Oh, sweet girl. That was great, by the way. You have a real talent for creating those
00:58:43.300
thoughts and putting them together in a poem. But that just breaks my heart so much.
00:58:49.560
Guys, our kids' well-being is more important than our wants. Our kids' well-being is more
00:58:54.120
important than our wants. Being a grown-up very often means pushing our desires, especially our
00:59:01.760
fleeting feelings aside for the well-being of other people, especially the children that have been
00:59:06.660
entrusted to us. All right. We've got actually something very hopeful to talk about here as we
00:59:15.780
end this episode. And that is the statistical trend that we are seeing, that divorce rates
00:59:22.540
are actually going down and marriage rates are going up. Praise God. Hallelujah. But let me go
00:59:28.380
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slash Ali. So thankfully, there are people who have decided that divorce causes unnecessary
01:00:33.760
instability and marriage gives the much needed security and stability that people are looking
01:00:40.380
for in such chaotic times. It apparently is making a comeback. Brad Wilcox, we've had him on this show
01:00:47.540
before. He's a sociology professor at the University of Virginia. He wrote an article in the Atlantic on
01:00:53.840
July 29th about the perspective that people like Andrew Tate has. There's no benefit to men for marriage
01:01:03.220
and that men should be single. They should have lots of baby mamas, lots of kids so that, you know,
01:01:12.160
they can conquer. Basically, Andrew Tate's idea of being a man is having no self-control. And actually,
01:01:19.620
part of being a strong man is being able to rein in your most base desires. Otherwise, you're just an
01:01:25.920
animal. You are not ruling your desires. They are ruling you. And that is maybe the least masculine and
01:01:34.520
the least impressive characteristic that you can have. Lack of self-control is just the biggest ick in the
01:01:41.080
world. But this article refutes what he is saying about a lack of need for marriage and rebuts the
01:01:51.060
hostility that he articulates about marriage by showing that men actually are benefiting a lot from
01:01:58.080
marriage, and that is showing up in fewer divorce rates. So we see in 1960, divorce rate was 9.2,
01:02:07.140
went up, as we already said, 1979, 22.6. 2010, it was at 18.8, and now it is down to 14. That is pretty
01:02:18.360
awesome. Now, some people might say this is, you know, fewer people are getting a divorce, some people
01:02:24.540
or fewer people are getting married, and some people might say, well, it's because people are waiting
01:02:28.880
longer to get married, and so they really know who they want to marry. I wouldn't say that. I wouldn't
01:02:35.460
argue that. I would say maybe people are seeing the chaos and the problems that divorce causes. Also,
01:02:41.960
there is, for the first time in years, a rise in religiosity and Christian conversion, which is
01:02:48.340
exciting. We also see that kids growing up in married two-parent homes, that that number is going up
01:02:54.740
slightly. And so that's a good thing. Gosh, I mean, that's a very depressing graph, though. 85% grew up
01:03:03.880
in married two-family homes in 1970, and it has just been a steep, steep drop-off, 64% in 2014. And now
01:03:13.620
it's up slightly to 66%. So let's keep going in that direction. According to the 2024 General Social
01:03:22.100
Survey, married men and women aged 25 to 55 or over twice is likely to report being very happy with their
01:03:29.820
lives compared to their unmarried peers. Marriage changes men, this article says, but not in the
01:03:36.480
nefarious ways Andrew Tate might think. Men work harder, find more success in work after they get
01:03:41.260
married. They drink less. Marriage can channel noble characteristics and behaviors that have
01:03:46.040
classically been identified as masculinity, protection, provision, ambition, and stoicism. And of
01:03:52.640
course, it is a protection for children. It's a protection for women, just physical protection as
01:03:59.180
well as provision. So marriage is good. It is practically good. It is spiritually good. It is
01:04:06.420
eternally good. There is not a reason to dissolve your marriage just because you feel like it. Very,
01:04:12.400
very, very rarely is there a justification for divorce. This should be talked about more from the
01:04:18.400
pulpit. This should be talked about more among our friends. This should be talked about more in
01:04:24.280
society, the practical benefits of marriage, but also the beauty of the unity between one man and
01:04:30.400
one woman and the unique ability this relationship has to produce future generations. And so thank you,
01:04:38.260
God, for knowing what you're doing always, for being so wise and so loving and creating this
01:04:44.360
institution that gives you so much glory. And we as Christians should honor that, protect that,
01:04:49.620
and use it to honor him as much as possible. All right, that's all we've got time for today. We'll be