Key Passages:
Genesis 1 & 2; Exodus 21; Deuteronomy 22 & 24; Isaiah 50; Jeremiah
3; Ezekiel 16; Malachi 2
Matthew 19; Mark 10; 1 Corinthians 7
Exegetical Method
The New Testament texts should be understood within two background contexts:
1. The Old Testament’s moral framework and practices.
The New Testament’s ethical instruction is given within an assumption of Old Testament’s moral framework and regulation. The coming of the Lord did not prohibit previously permissible practices. He did not so much add tighter rules but expounded the principles inherent within the existing commands. The Law’s commands and its moral framework, practices, prohibitions and permissions can be assumed unless clearly abrogated.
[God’s character does not change and so neither does morality. So the Old Testament Law continues to shed moral light for Christian living.
Christians are “not under the Law” (Rom.6:14-1-15) and the Law was not laid upon Gentile believers (Acts 15). They are “not under the letter but … the Spirit” (Rom.7:6). The Law should not be applied as a regulatory system but moral direction is instead achieved in the transformation and mindset of the Spirit (Rom.8:1-12). The Law’s regulation is fulfilled and achieved through the Spirit.
Yet the Law and the Spirit are not different ethics. Both reflect the unchanging character of God and his will for people. It is the means that is different. The Spirit produces love and holiness by transformed mindset rather than application of legal regulation. The Law’s commands, properly understood within their national covenantal context and then properly translated from this, continue to give moral direction. So, the Lord Jesus “did not come to abolish the Law … but to fulfil it”. He filled out or expanded its meaning from the regulated minimum to the unfulfillable mindset of love and holiness.]
2. The Jewish and Greco-Roman cultural practices of the 1st century.
The relevant passages of New Testament teaching are not all-encompassing systematic statements on divorce-remarriage but responses to specific pastoral situations and issues. For example, Jesus (Matthew 19 etc) is entering into and taking a side in a contemporary rabbinic debate on how to understand Deuteronomy 24, not setting out full teaching on divorce or commenting on other Old Testament instructions such as Exodus 21:10 or wider universally accepted norms. Paul (1 Corinthians 7) seems to be correcting some errors that develop from a desire for higher ascetic holiness.
Theological Overview
1. Marriage is a covenant (or contract) with set responsibilities or conditions. It is a breakable conditional relationship not a unbreakable metaphysical union.
The Old Testament laid down several responsibilities or conditions, common to its cultural background. Failure to meet these broke the covenant relationship and provided grounds for divorce. These were sexual immorality, desertion, and failure to provide and protect. The Lord alludes to such unfaithfulness when depicting his relationship with Israel as a divorce (Ezekiel 16 & 23).
The New Testament, in the teaching of the Lord or Paul, either reaffirms these or fails to abrogate them. The pattern husband-wife with Lord-church picks up on these responsibilities (Ephesians 5:22-33, esp. v29).
2. Marriage breakdown is always wrong. It is contrary to God’s design and intentions. There is no “no fault” divorce. It arises from covenant unfaithfulness.
Godliness requires effort for reconciliation through repentance and forgiveness. Such repentance is not mere remorse or words but accountable action. Upon persistent unrepentance the covenant relationship is decisively broken.
3. Marriage breakdown through covenant unfaithfulness culminates in divorce. Divorce is not itself the breach of the covenant relationship but the public determination and declaration of the prior fact of the breach.
Divorce is commonly pursued on invalid grounds. In such cases it is the act of covenant unfaithfulness causing marital breakdown.
Divorce also may rightly be pursued on valid grounds; sexual immorality, desertion or abuse (failure to provide and protect).
Separation may range from being the equivalent of divorce (this was the case under Roman law), being desertion and valid grounds for divorce, to being an extreme practical step specifically aimed to achieve reconciliation through providing breathing space to gain help. Separation without commitment to rebuild the marriage relationship is a withdrawal from the covenant responsibilities.
4. Remarriage after divorce is permissible. (It was normal practice in Jewish and Greco-Roman cultures and without explicit denial should be assumed in New Testament teaching.) This is readily so for an innocent party after valid divorce. It is also, eventually permissible for the guilty part, after true repentance. Whether it is right before God for them to remarry is irrelevant until they deal with their past sins.
Pastoral Practicalities