Why Christians Don’t Divorce, Part 1 | Why Christians Don’t Divorce

Luke 16:18

Today we are going to take a closer look at the topic of divorce and remarriage. Divorce and remarriage. So, you can go back to Luke 16. We’re going to start with what Jesus said in Luke 16:18, then we’ll expand outward from there, to get kind of an overview of the subject. I’ve titled today’s message Why Christians don’t Divorce. And I know, when you hear a title like that, one that paints with such a broad brush, one that makes such a strong generalizing statement, perhaps there are a few objections that come to mind. So, I’m going to join you for a moment. Making some objections. Entertaining some of those objections. And then I’m going to return to the strong generalizing statement I just made.

So first are you saying that Christians never ever, ever, ever get divorced? No, I’m not saying that. Are you saying that, if someone gets a divorce, that’s evident that someone is not a Christian? No, I’m not saying that either. Are you making divorce the unforgivable, unpardonable sin? No, divorce is not the unforgivable, unpardonable sin. Those who’ve been divorced receive the same love and grace as any other person. And we welcome all, because as we read, and admitted and acknowledged, along with David in Psalm 51, we’re all unrighteous. “There’s no one righteous, not even one.”

Jesus himself made a very, very strong, unequivocal statement about divorce and remarriage in Luke 16:18. He said, if you look at your Bible, “Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and he who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery.” Now, is Jesus being ungracious, when he said that?

 Perhaps we should let his words factor into our view of what grace and what Love actually are. And we should adjust our definitions of what grace and graciousness actually entails. You know who Jesus was speaking to here, the unregenerate Pharisees. And Pharisees were routinely divorcing their wives. Routinely marrying other women. And so, Jesus told them, you’re committing adultery before God. You’re doing so flagrantly and routinely. You’re doing this as a lifestyle.

 Pharisees were permissive about divorce. At the same time, we know that the Pharisees are the very epitome of legalism. Aren’t they, in the New Testament? So maybe, along with adjusting our understanding of grace and making conform to what Jesus is like. We need to, also, adjust our view of what legalism entails, too.

 It’s not legalistic to speak about law and about sin and about righteousness and about judgment. That is not legalistic. That’s gracious. That’s loving and kind to speak clearly and biblically about issues like divorce and remarriage. In fact, it’s legalistic not to. Jesus says to divorce and to remarry is to commit adultery

 Adultery is the result of practicing, divorcing and remarrying, is what Jesus says. We live in a sin saturated world. We live in a world that, that has lost perspective. A world in which shades of grey are presented as mostly white.It’s prone to warp one’s perspective. It’s prone to shape one’s judgments. And ultimately, it’s prone to soften how seriously people take sin.

 And beloved, I’m concerned about us. That we do the same thing. Oh, maybe not in our own lives, but we do it with loved ones, family members. Are we reluctant to speak the truth in love, but speak the truth to them about their marriages, divorcing, remarrying?

Starting with this text, Luke 16:18, and working our way outward from there. I want to give you four reasons why Christians don’t divorce. And I hope that these four reasons will not only encourage you to stay married, that is, don’t even think about divorce. Don’t even use the word divorce.  I want to encourage you to stay married. Yeah, but more than that, I want to encourage you to rejoice in marriage. To see the great privilege and have gratitude for marriage. And look I get it. Marriage can be hard at times. Really hard.

Marriage is the most intimate sphere in which we work out and work through our sanctification. Marriage is the most penetrating, the most revealing context, in which we’re pushed ever forward, ever onward toward holiness in the Lord. Toward righteousness. So, while marriage is a blessing from God and it is always a blessing and for the Christian, whatever the difficulty is, whatever the day is good or bad, difficult or not, marriage is always a blessing. It is always God’s good gift. It is always God’s wisdom for us. And it is always, always, worth the effort. So, I want to encourage you to stick with it. I just want to encourage you to stand firm. And stand strong and rejoice in your marriages and I’m gonna give you four reasons to do that.

Four reasons why Christians don’t divorce. Here’s the first reason. Christians love to practice God’s holiness. Whenever the subject of divorce comes up, we quote, often, as we really should, Malachi 2:16, where God says, “I hate divorce. I hate divorce,” God says. Those who fear the Lord take that seriously. He proceeds that strong pronouncement with a very stern warning. Before he says, “I hate divorce”, he says this, ”Take heed, then to your spirit and let no one deal treacherously against the wife of your youth.” Don’t deal treacherously with your wife. You treat her as precious. You cherish that wife. You don’t throw her away.

 Then he says, “I hate divorce.” And then he says, again, “Take heed to your spirit, so that you don’t deal treacherously.” I hate divorce. I don’t want you dealing treacherously with your wives and, therefore, go to the heart of the issue, which is your own heart. Take heed to your spirit, because the treachery doesn’t come from the outside. The treachery is within your heart. Treachery is disloyalty. Treachery is a betrayal of a covenant. It’s breaking an oath to God. It’s breaking a vow to your spouse.

 So, on a vertical level and horizontal level, it’s treachery. It’s betrayal. God hates divorce, because it’s an act of violence against his covenant. It transgresses both tables of the ten commandments. The first table, which is the first four verses, and the second table which are six verses. Both tables: The laws of sin against God and laws of sin against one’s neighbor.

 Divorce does violence against all of it. We get a hint of those concerns when Jesus confronts the Pharisees, in our texts. Luke 16:15 and following, when he starts his confrontation, look back over those verses. And in verse 15, you can see Jesus said, “You justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts.”

Whatever the stated reasons for divorce, God sees through to the truth of it. These Pharisees were dealing treacherously against their wives. Didn’t matter what, what excuse they gave, Verse 15, he, Jesus says, “What’s exalted among men.” What is exalted among men? What is it? Love of happiness. Love of ease and comfort. Elevating public reputation over private responsibility.

 That’s what the Pharisees were doing, refusing to love one’s wife, things that men exalt are abominable in God’s eyes. He hates divorce. Verse 16, the Pharisees viewed themselves as faithful to the law, but really God saw them differently. He saw them as profoundly unfaithful to the law. Jesus said, in verse 16, “The Law and the Prophets were until John; And since then the good news of the kingdom of God is preached, and everyone is being urged or pressed into it.”

Those who get the message, of the law and the prophets, they get the fact, that they’re sinners. And you know what that makes them? It makes them poor in spirit. They realize they have nothing. They have nothing to commend themselves before God. They know that. They have nothing in their account to offer except sin and defilement and depravity and wickedness, and so they mourn over their sinful condition. They’re not indifferent to it, don’t shrug and move on. They’re not self-righteous either, like the Pharisees. Instead, they’re hungering, hungering for righteousness. They thirst for it. And not proud in their sin, not justifying their sin. They’re not blaming other people. They look directly to themselves and they’re humble. They’re not self-righteous. They’re meek, meek people.

 Those who get the message, of the law and the prophets, they are those who have been well prepared by the law and the prophets to receive the gospel of God’s kingdom, the good news. Whenever that message is preached to them, they’re ready to receive their king, the Messiah, the Savior, the atoning sacrifice for their many, many sins. Especially the sins they’ve committed in their marriages, against their spouses against, their families.

 In fact, the permanence of the law, Jesus mentions in verse 17, “It’s easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one dot of the law to become void.” The permanence of law carries the weight of eternal condemnation. But so do the promises, of the law and the prophets, carry the weight of eternal affirmation.

 The promises are fulfilled in the Gospel of the kingdom. And those promises reward those who believe the promises with salvation, with eternal assurance, with everlasting confidence, with an abiding hope that, yes, all my sins are forgiven in the cross.

 So, when Christians, when those who get the law and the prophets, those who get the gospel of God’s kingdom, when Christians come across verses like Luke 16:18, they not only confess their guilt and their sins, they lay hold of the Gospels promises, in faith, for the full atonement of their sins. And they never ever, ever want to return to those sins.

Quite a stark categorical statement isn’t it from Christ. He didn’t seem to bother to qualify the statement here. He doesn’t seem interested in undermining the pronouncement that he’s just made. Lest he rob it of its power. Less he eviscerates its authority, its starkness. He just lets it stand, and he leaves us to reckon with its truth. The one who divorces his wife. The word there is apolyo. One who dissolves his marital relationship. That’s what the word means, in that context. To dissolve the marital relationship legally and then marries another woman, he is guilty of committing adultery.

 Second, half of the verse, any single unmarried man, who marries a divorced woman. That guy is, also, guilty of the sin of adultery and Jesus implicates not just the man in this condition, he implicates the woman too, “and if she divorces, her husband marries another, she commits adultery.” She commits a sin against God and against her husband. Just stop for a moment, and think about the implications of Luke 16:18, in our nation. Just think about that.

 Without going on, to kind of explain some of the exceptions and all that of divorce. Let’s just think about the implications of this. Divorce and remarriage. Jesus says adultery. Ever since California’s Family Law Act of 1969, no fault divorce has spread from there all across the country. Proliferating divorce and remarriage in our country. It’s saturated Americans and the guilt of adultery. Saturated. Is it any wonder that we are where we are today? They haven’t dealt with their guilt righteously before God through the gospel. When guilt covers them, man, they are under a plague, a weight of guilt. And you know what that does to the conscience? It shrivels it up.

 The conscience is like a warning system. It’s a nerve ending for the soul. It’s a nerve ending for your spirit. And so, when you get close to that which is dangerous, that which is a violation of the law of God, it sounds a warning. Get away from that. You know what I’m talking about. As you’ve gotten close to sin, your conscience starts to fire off on you, and your adrenaline starts to flow and says, huh uh, “Don’t do that. Don’t do that.” Listen to your conscience. Pull away.

 In a country that is weighed down with divorce, remarriage, divorce, remarriage, divorce, remarriage, it is adulterous. And with that not resolved, you know what happens to the nerve endings of the conscience? They’re worn down and they no longer fire as they should.

 Don’t push through your warnings of your conscience. Never train yourself to ignore your conscience. Train yourself to respond to your conscience and then inform your conscience by the word of God. But with a country plagued by the guilt of adultery, you know what else we’re giving ourselves to, every other sin. Is it any wonder that boys are growing up saying, I’m no longer a boy, I’m a girl and girls are growing up saying, I’m no longer a girl, I’m a boy. Is it any wonder, there’s total moral confusion? Sexual perversion.

Pornography is rampant in our country. People clicking away, clicking away and defiling themselves over and over with porn and with sexual immorality and homosexuality and cohabitation and if they do decide to tie the knot, it’s, it’s an untie able knot, in their minds.

 Making a marriage covenant, taking this oath, this vow of marriage before God and man. To another human being should weigh heavy, heavy on the Christian conscience at all times, such that, even if a divorce should occur, remarriage is not an option. Divorce and remarriage, violates both tables of the ten commandments and I want to explain what I mean by that. Why it is that God hates divorce so much? As an act of violence and treachery, against the covenant and that’s what the ten commandments are; is a covenant. Setting aside the exception clauses, for now. Which we’ll come to in a moment. How is it the divorce itself violates both tables of the ten commandments? How is divorce a sin against God and a sin against one’s neighbor?

In the first table, first four commandments. Divorce is a sin against God. All four of those commandments are about our relationship with God. And when we make marriage vows before God. When we take an oath to him and before him. When we take his name. Better not take his name in vain and divorce. When we get a divorce, we break our covenant to God.

 Second table of six commandments. Divorce is a sin against our neighbors. When we make marriage vows to one another, since our spouses are our closest neighbor, we commit sin in divorce by failing to love our neighbor as ourselves. That’s why Christians don’t divorce? Because they don’t want to break God’s law. They want to practice holiness in the sight of God.

That’s the first reason why Christians don’t divorce. Christians love to walk in holiness. Here’s a second reason why Christians don’t divorce. Number two, Christians love to practice God’s design. What Luke records here is understandably brief. It’s in a context of controversy with the Pharisees. He’s answering their ridicule. He’s confronting their sins. And so, we understand that this is a very brief summary indictment against the Pharisees, in Luke 16:18. But what Jesus had taught on divorce before in the sermon on the Mount. We can see it in Matthew 5:31 and 32.

 He would also teach on divorce, again, later in his ministry, even after Luke 16. And that’s recorded in Matthew 19:1 and following, and Mark 10:1 and following. Matthew er Matthew 19 and Mark 10, those are parallel passages and they give much fuller instruction on divorce. When Jesus is teaching in the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan.

 So go ahead and turn to Mark Chapter 10, Mark 10 verse 1. The Pharisees knew about Jesus’s teaching on divorce. They’d heard about his strong stance. They heard about his sermon on the Mount. Famous sermon that spread all through the land. All through Galilee. All through Judea. They’d heard his reputation. They knew  he’s kind of hard on this issue.

 And so, they knew about his teaching on divorce. And they came up to him and says, in Mark 10:1 they came up to him in order to test him. And so, in Mark 10:2, they pose the question to test him, to trip him up. They said there, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” Matthew 19 adds, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason?” Which kind of hints, the controversy that they’re trying to pin him on.

 They, they hope to draw him into a debate on divorce. They wanted to polarize popular opinion against Jesus, forcing him to take sides in this ongoing theological debate. In his answer, Jesus sidesteps the question altogether. He sidesteps the debate and he refuses to entangle himself in the opinions of this, Rabbi versus that Rabbi versus that Rabbi. Instead, he challenges them in his questioning. Goes back to Moses. He asks him a question of his own. He says, what did Moses command you? Like, let’s not get caught up in the opinions of Rabbis and scholars. Let’s go right back to the Bible.

You got a Bible? I got a Bible. Let’s go back to the Bible. What did Moses command you? They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce.” In Matthew, “It’s Moses commanded a man to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away.” Here the Pharisees are stuck in their thinking about divorce and remarriage. They’re stuck on Deuteronomy 24:1. Just that verse. Deuteronomy 24:1-4 is the whole context. Here’s what it says, “When a man takes a wife and marries her, if she then finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, and she departs out of his house.”

 That’s verse 1. Verse 2, “And if she goes and becomes another man’s wife, and the latter man hates her and writes,” a poor woman, right? She’s divorced and then she’s hated. Ah. “The latter man hates her and writes her a certificate of divorce, puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, or if the latter man dies, who took her to be his wife, then,” verse 4, “Her former husband, who sent her away,” that is originally, “He may not take her again to be his wife. After she’s been defiled, for that is an abomination before the Lord, and you shall not bring sin upon the land the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance.”

 Jesus asked them, what did Moses command you? Their answer goes back to Deuteronomy 24: 24:1. And it makes it sound like Moses is concerned about filing the right paperwork. Moses allowed a man to write her a certificate of divorce and to send her away. You heard 24:1-4, is that what Moses is allowing to file proper paperwork and then send your wife away?

 Sounds like the Pharisees had recast Moses as some kind of bureaucrat. He’s just in their own likeness and image. Just concerned about the right paperwork. Getting the external form right, so you can do what your heart wants to do. Get rid of that wife, get another one. Here’s what Moses actually commanded. The first husband after divorcing his wife. He may not take that woman back after she has been remarried. After she has been another man’s wife. God says that would be a defilement. That would be an abomination before the Lord. That would bring sin upon the land.

 What kind of sin upon the land? The same sin that the Canaanites had practiced before the Israelites got there. The sin that got them expelled. So, the command of Deuteronomy 24, the command is to prohibit remarriage. That’s the command. It’s barring remarriage after a divorce. Yeah, Moses acknowledges the reality of divorce in that text. But in and of itself, he’s not giving permission to divorce. He’s certainly not commanding divorce. Pharisees, though, following their favorite rabbis, they failed to discern the point of Deuteronomy 24:1 to 4. Instead, they found permission in that text to divorce their wives and send their wives away.

 They turn the whole text on its head. They turn the intent of the text on its head. Moses wrote to prevent the proliferation of defilement in the land. He intended to help Israel avoid increasing sin in the land. Committing abominations before the Lord, like the Canaanites before them. Resulting in their destruction and their annihilation. Moses wants to prevent that. The Pharisees turned Moses’ intention upon its head.

Notice how Jesus answered. He bypassed the debate in 24:1 in Deuteronomy 24:1. He goes all the way back to where? The beginning. Back to God’s original design, which, Christian’s love. Mark 10:4, Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce send her away. Jesus said to them, listen, it’s because of your hardness of heart, he wrote you this commandment.

 Don’t center in Deuteronomy 24, that’s about you and your hardness of heart. “But from the beginning of creation,” verse 6, “God made them male and female, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”

 That’s why Christians don’t divorce. They recognize, that’s the plan. That’s the design. It’s God who’s joined them together. They’ve come to see that, no matter what challenges, no matter what difficulties they can encounter in a marriage. A marriage, by the way, that joins two fallen sinners, imperfect people, a fallen man and a fallen woman coming together. You think that’s gonna be flawless?

Gods the one who put them together though. He’s the one who united them in marriage. He’s the one who made them one flesh. It’s his will, then, that when that happens, when that covenant is made, that’s a revelation of his will. You stay together. The longer Christians go in marriage, the more they lean into it.

The good and the bad. The difficult and the very, very pleasant. The more they mature in marriage. The more they see God’s goodness and God’s wisdom and God’s blessing, and uniting them in marriage, as the first formative institution, and uniting them together. This man, that is, this particular man with this particular woman and this particular woman with this particular man, they see God’s wisdom in that. God’s will is always good. His plan is always wise. His kind, intention is always to bless and bless and bless. Christians know that. They believe that. They are eager to explore and discover the goodness of God’s design for their marriages. So, they stick with it.