What Jesus said about divorce and remarriage. Part1

In my 30 years as a missionary in Pakistan, I’ve been sitting on the sidelines, so to speak, and watched this bomb explode in the West. The sexual revolution, feminism and the philosophy that says all men have a right to realize their full potential, has – along with the reformers’ acceptance of remarriage for the innocent party – led to an incredible increase of the divorce rate. In England and the United States I believe there now are 50 divorces per 100 marriages. The situation isn’t quite as bad in Scandinavia, but that is probably due to the prevalence of cohabitation, which is even more unstable than today’s shaky marriages.

Life without father

This is worst on the children. Today the majority of Norwegian children are born out of wedlock. In northern Norway I heard of a girl coming home from her first day at school, saying that “in my class there’s only me and one other girl who has a daddy.” What are the consequences of such a situation for our children’s lives – in childhood, and also later, as adults? We have for may years been fed massive propaganda about how a happy divorce doesn’t hurt anyone, that the children quickly get over it, and so on. Only in later years have some begun to protest against this glossy image. If life in this world continues for another 20-30 years, our descendants might well look back in horror and disgust at a time that allowed so much human destruction in the name of freedom and self-realization.

Protecting marriage

From a social-psychological point of view, there is no doubt that a ban on remarriage was and still is the only effective defense against the wholesale destruction of marriages. All marriages run into problems, and with remarriage as a seductive possibility, it is hard to take the difficulties seriously, and try to solve them – or endure them. It is far easier to let the problems grow until they seem insurmountable, determine that “we weren’t compatible” and file for divorce, hoping for a new and better start. The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. However: If the only alternative to continued marriage is lifelong sexual abstinence and a life without being part of a couple or a nuclear family, the motivation for saving the marriage is far stronger. With a ban on remarriage some would get a divorce anyway, but many more would continue in their marriages – albeit some in an unhappy one – and many would be able to work through their problems. This in itself should be enough for secular governments to ban or limit the possibility of remarriage. In addition we as Christians and Christian churches have another and even more important reason: Jesus’ own and very clear prohibition on remarriage.

Plain prohibition

The ban on remarriage was plain to the early church. It was, and still is, clear to the Catholic church. It is also plain from a strictly linguistic point of view, if one reads the Greek text without theological reservations. There are only two groups that this is not clear to – theologians who think they know that the meaning of Scripture is different from what the text actually says, and Protestants who have been brought up in a tradition of accepting remarriage out of consideration for to the innocent party, a tradition which has its roots in humanism. In later years we have also seen a new twist to this: Saying that in a divorce neither party is a hundred percent innocent. But instead of drawing the only right conclusion from that, to forbid remarriage, most people use it as a pretext to allow remarriage for both spouses.

Humanistic protest

In the West it was the humanist Erasmus who first launched the interpretation that the innocent party had the right to remarry. An obvious background for this reinterpretation is the very same reaction as the disciples’ protest against what Jesus said, that it far too difficult, even inhuman: “[Then] it is better not to marry.” (Matt. 19.10). How can Jesus condemn the innocent party (and others) to live the rest of their lives without sex? In Jesus’ time, however, life without family and children was probably seen as harder than sexual abstinence.

Jesus’ answer

Jesus answers that some must renounce marriage – be eunuchs – to gain the kingdom of heaven. Which is to say they must abstain from remarriage after divorce, which Jesus says is adultery, to gain the kingdom of God – both in this world and the next. In Matt. 19.12 Jesus says this about men, and in 1. Cor. 7.10b-11 Paul says exactly the same about women; as a command from the Lord, he says: “A wife must not separate from her husband. But if she does, she must remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband.”

Legal fiction

Why did most of the reformers accept Erasmus’ interpretation? And why did Luther and the Lutherans break with the basic principle of their Book of Concord; that they only returned to the initial teaching of the church, and that everything must be supported by the early church fathers? To the reformers’ honor it must be said that they took the issue very seriously. There was absolutely no question of remarriage for others than those who innocently had been the victims of adultery. They took adultery so seriously that they thought the authorities should introduce the death penalty for it, as in Old Testament law. With this, a legal fiction was constructed as “grounds” for Erasmus’ exegesis: Even if the authorities did not execute the guilty as they ought, the church could still regard them as dead and thereby allow their spouse to remarry. (And what about the guilty? Luther says more or less: “Let them marry, so they don’t have to be in hell both here and in the hereafter.”) Luther also suggests that another reason might be the Catholic church’s attitude: The ban on remarriage was suspect because the pope approved of it.

Differing traditions

Even though the Lutherans accepted Erasmus’ new interpretation, the Anglicans didn’t. My own Church of Pakistan has followed the Anglican tradition, and in our statutes it says that anyone who remarries as long as the first spouse is alive, shall be under church discipline. This rule has held until recently, when Western influence gained access also in our church. In the last two years I have therefore had to work through this Scriptural material again. In Norway we have seen few examples of anyone abiding by the early church view, but it can be mentioned that professor Ole Hallesby, who originally followed Erasmus and Luther, in his ethics textbook of 1951 had come back to early church teaching: that separation in some cases may be necessary, but remarriage under no circumstances is allowed.

The main issue

What then must one do, if separated or divorced? The Bible’s answer is as clear as it is painful: Live without marriage (and without sex) or be reconciled with one’s spouse. This answer may seem especially painful in our time, when most people are programmed to think that a successful life as a couple, including sex, is the greatest good we can achieve in life. There is good reason to remind ourselves that Jesus consistently requires that we place him before all the other good things of life. He is himself the treasure of heaven. Fellowship with him is that pearl of great price. As he required of the rich young ruler, that he should sell everything, and as he required of Abraham, that he should sacrifice Isaac: He demands that absolutely everything shall be subordinate to our relationship with him.

Painful answer

What then about the one who is divorced and remarried? That is an even harder issue. The answer can only be that he or she must do penance. That is to say, get out of the situation, discontinue the relationship. To do penance, “metanoia,” means to turn around, turn the other way. Even so, some theologians who in principle accept the ban on remarriage, still try to find other solutions. Like Erasmus they are motivated by consideration for the people involved: One cannot be so hard as to say they must split up, can one? Some try to say that both marriages are valid, and regard the situation as polygamy, having more than one wife (or more than one husband.) But it is hardly unproblematic to call remarriage polygamy when Jesus himself unambiguously calls it adultery.

For the children’s sake

Another objection is consideration for the children. Which is a legitimate concern, and may be even more important than we understand today. Even now we begin to see how damaging a broken home is for children, and this may become much more obvious in the future. In a home where one or both parents are divorced and thereafter have children together, the solution may be to continue living together – sharing board but not bed, living together as brother and sister, until the children are grown.

Forgiveness?

In our time we are often confronted with the question: “Didn’t Jesus come to atone for our sins, isn’t there forgiveness?” In other words, can’t we be forgiven for committing remarriage? The problem is that the sin is not the remarriage. Remarriage is not a one-time sin that breaks the first marriage. The sin is adultery. Jesus says clearly that he who remarries commits constant adultery against his first wife. In the Greek grammar this is very clear, as we shall se in part 2.

Repentance

Forgiveness presupposes repentance. The gospel is the message of forgiveness for sins, but it starts with the call to repentance. The same call to do penance, turn away from sin, is heard from John the Baptist, Jesus, Peter and Paul. He who knowingly and willingly continues to live in a sinful relationship, is not forgiven. There is a difference between falling in sin and living in sin. Adultery has more serious consequences that “lesser” sins such as tax evasion or other kinds of theft, but in both cases the condition is to turn away from the sin. If you steal, then stop. If you live in a relationship that Jesus calls adultery, then stop. The difference is that to turn away from stealing is relatively simple, while turning away from a marriage relationship necessarily is much harder.

A holy people

The gospel of forgiveness for sin is also the gospel of liberation from sin. (John 8.34-36. This is also the main thrust of John 13.34-17.26.) The aim of the gospel – indeed, the primary aim of Jesus’ coming and all his work – is to create a holy people who obey his commandments and live to the glory of God (Eph. 1.4, 1. Peter 1.15-16 and 2.9.) But for the one who won’t repent, who won’t turn away from sin, Jesus makes the situation very clear in the conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 7.21-23): “Away from me, you evildoers!” (or rather, as a better translation: “you who keep breaking the law!”)

Is it written?

This requires documentation. Is Jesus’ prohibition so clear? Is it absolute? What about the exception for “adultery”? We will look at these issues in parts 2 and 3