Many people seem to be confused by divorce. Some call it an impossibility with God. Others call it a necessary evil. And others call it relief. But when you get to debating the finer points from scripture, it is very easy to get caught up in misconceptions and modern contextual thinking. One of these misconceptions is, believe it or not, the precise meaning of divorce and does it really mean that that marriage is dissolved. The following attempts to explain that it does.
Divorce means dissolving the marriage covenant. You can call it one flesh union, you can call it marriage, you can call it a marriage covenant. But it is a vow made by two people to each other. Vows are broken. And when the marriage vows are broken, specifically in terms of sexual immorality in this discussion, the covenant is at risk. If both spouses reconcile, then the covenant is restored.
However, as it often happens, and increasingly so it may seem, at least one of the spouses refuses to repent of the immorality that broke the vows and shook the covenant. Once they have their hearts hardened to that point, and they do not repent, the other spouse is to give them some time to repent of their sin and reconcile. If after some time, and that amount is dependent on the situation and the individuals involved, that erring spouse does not repent and reconcile, then yes, Jesus said you can divorce them and thus dissolve your marriage covenant with that person. And once the covenant is dissolved, the spouses are no longer in a one flesh union.
Jesus lived in this definition of divorce. When the Pharisees attempted to broaden the grounds for divorce, Jesus narrowed them. But Jesus did not abolish divorce. In the OT, God said that He made an eternal covenant with His people. That covenant was one way, from God to man. Human marriage is like that heavenly covenant in that we bind in exclusivity. However, unlike the eternal God, we are incapable of making vows that we will not break. Our marriage is a pale imitation of the marriage of God to His people just as it is a pale imitation of the marriage of Christ to His church.
God established divorce in the OT because He divorced His people. He removed from them the benefits of the union He had with them. Completely removed those benefits and left Israel on its own to whore after other gods. When that happened, there was no union with God. Then God raised up prophets at those times to deliver His words to His people, to bring them back. But until that time, they were divorced, they had no union with God. Once the people returned to God, He restored a union with them.
Now then, Jesus would never be diametrically opposed to God the Father. God instituted this concept of divorce in the way he disciplined His people. We also know that in Christ, "nothing can snatch those the Father gives Him from His hand." Again, like the Father who made an eternal covenant with His people, Christ continues that same eternal covenant with His people. And those that He saves, He keeps. He keeps them safe like a shepherd. He does not abandon them.
But just like sheep, people abandon Christ, and they abandon God. That is how we know when someone is not one of His. Their walk falters and we realize they were a goat all along.
Now I have just spoken of the divine marriage of the triune God to his people. Now let us look again at human marriage.
Human marriage is a pale imitation of the divine marriage. There is a covenant between two sinners. Neither of the spouses are capable of sitting in the place of God and keeping the covenant eternally. Because of this we can only say human marriage is like the divine marriage. The covenant is not made by divine and eternal beings. It is made by beings that sin and fail.
It was because of this very thing that God allowed Moses to institute divorce. God demonstrates divorce means dissolution of the union, and in the case of Moses, it was written into Law that it meant the dissolution of the marriage. So that when any Jew from the time of Moses on ever used the word divorce, they knew it meant the dissolution of the marriage covenant and the complete breaking of the one flesh union.
God allowed this because of the hardness of human hearts and our inability to not sin at times. God allowed this not by concession to sin. God is capable of overcoming any barriers to His plan. He allowed divorce not from frustration, but from compassion. This is what I have been trying to get across to everyone all along on this thread. God is compassionate. It is not compassionate to leave someone in a situation where they are dishonored daily by an adulterous spouse or worse, being abused. God requires the sinner to repent. but they don't always. The pride in their sinful hearts makes them hard as stone and they do not repent.
When that happens, in compassion, God allows the divorce to occur. This serves two purposes. The first purpose is for compassion and mercy to the innocent spouse. The second purpose is to disconnect the adulterous spouse from the union. This is exactly the same concept as removing the unrepentant sinner from amongst the congregation when they do not repent (as Paul instructed). So then by being apart from the union it is the intent that this serve as a means of rebuking the sinner and bringing them to repentance.
Now in the case of marriage, God in the OT established a few more regulations through Moses to control divorce. Like all good things from God, even compassion can be abused. You can "love" your kids so much you spoil them and that is wrong. And likewise, a tool for compassion and restoration of sinners, namely divorce, was abused as well. The OT Laws sought to contain that abuse. And that is what Jesus did in the NT. He sought to contain that abuse.
God also directed through Moses to write into the Law provisions for remarriage. It was implict from the nature of divorce that the divorced spouses were free from the covenant, free from the bondage of marriage, and therefore free to marry again. However, to prevent further abuse, there were limitations put in place so that you could not return to a spouse once they were defiled.
God created marriage for permanence. He created love to be ever present. Just as we do not love as we should, we do not keep marriage as we should. There is an important lesson here in that we can never meet the mark. What this literally means is we cannot do all God calls us to. If we were able to love perfectly, worship perfectly, keep marriage perfectly, and do all the other commands of God perfectly, then there would have been no need of Christ. However, Christ was with God at the foundation of creation. He has been in the plan all along because we cannot earn our way to God through our works. We must rely on grace. There is no other way.
Because of this, God does not require us to keep a perpetual marriage covenant when it is impossible to keep because of the hard heart of one of the spouses. When one spouse leaves, and there is divorce, there is no more covenant. To require an innocent spouse to continue in a broken covenant completely defies the compassion God instituted when He created divorce.
Now then, where does that leave Jesus teaching in the NT on divorce and second marriages? If you still hold that Jesus was in opposition to the Father in His design of marriage and divorce then you are wrong.
What Jesus did do was clarify the misunderstandings of the Pharisees, and by way of God's plan for the scriptures, we believers as well. Jesus clarified many things the Jews had wrong. They had a wrong view of murder, adultery, lust, marriage, and divorce. Jesus clarified all these things. But neither did Jesus deny divorce nor did he deny marriage after proper divorce. And Jesus did not deny the cleansing of a repentant sinner by the forgiveness from the Father.
So again I say, marriage after divorce is not only allowable, whether the person was the innocent spouse or the repentant sinner, as long as they build their marriage on God, then God will honor that marriage. And I further say that to tell anyone that they cannot marry after divorce when they were the innocent spouse or they are repentant, is diametrically opposed to God. And that puts the position that divorce does not allow for subsequent marriage directly in that light.
Denial of marriage to those that are free to do so is no different than what the Judaizers were doing in the time of Paul that attempted to prohibit marriage, eating of all foods, and all other freedoms in Christ. Furthermore, to insist that a person in an honorable marriage to God must divorce and return to their original spouse or forever remain single is completely wrong and does considerably much more damage than the original divorce did.
So then as it comes all the way full circle, when a spouse is sexually immoral in their marriage, and a divorce occurs, their marriage covenant is dissolved and the innocent spouse is immediately free to marry again. The immoral person must repent of their sins completely and then they likewise, as forgiven sinners cleansed by God, are free to marry again.
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