What Does The Bible REALLY Say About Divorce?
What does the Bible Say about separation and divorce?
There comes a time when this may become the question.
As a person who loves God and your spouse and who desperately wants to please God, the last thing you ever thought you’d consider is divorce. But you’ve tried all the marriage advice, set some boundaries, and maxed out your consequences, and you’re still being abused: emotionally, verbally, mentally, sexually, physically, financially and/or spiritually.
Financially, a spouse might incur debt that affects your credit record. (S)he might have medical bills that you are jointly responsible for. (S)he still has rights to your personal savings or investments that you might have accrued. (S)he might be withholding financial support from you or attempting to wield money as a weapon or a pawn.
Spiritually, you may still be assaulted by accusations of being “unbiblical” an “unbeliever” or “a rebellious spouse” with Bible verses still being used as weapons against you.
And the assault to your person, whether verbal, emotional, physical, or sexual is something you have decided you will no longer tolerate.
When it has reached that point, your next step to protect your safety, sanity, and security might be separation or divorce. But you might wonder: "what does the Bible say about that?"
When you get to this point in your journey, it may be agonizing. More than anything you want to please God, and you may have determined that you are not going to take a step until he gives you the next step. And this is a big one. You have to take this question to God and trust Him to give you an answer that you know beyond a shadow of a doubt is from Him.
You may be at a place where you want with all your heart to be with your spouse. Not one ounce of you wants a divorce. As you search Scripture and pray, seek to know what God really says about it, and what He wants you to do - and be willing to do whatever God tells you to, even if you don’t want to do it – even if God says that you should divorce.
Marriage was never meant to be that way: ending in divorce.
God really did make us male and female and join us together. We were not meant to be apart. And it will never feel good.
But you can know beyond a shadow of a doubt whether it’s what God says is the right next step for you.
One indicator that it's the right next step is that you don't want a divorce (what you want is for your marriage to get better), but you have run out of options/consequences for responding to your spouse’s continued harmful behavior. In this instance, divorce is the next loving thing to do to protect yourself and give your spouse a chance to become aware of their sin.
In fact, if you want a divorce for reasons like "you're just not happy" or "you don't love your spouse anymore" or "you're angry with your spouse," then you might not be wanting a divorce for the right reasons. You see, divorce should not be something that you want. We shouldn’t want to be apart from our spouse whom we promised to love and cherish. What we should want is for them to fulfill God’s plan for their lives, to be godly men or women, to be leaders like Christ, and to be faithful to their spouse. Those are the things that God wants (and God doesn't want you to experience the heartbreak of divorce) but, in love, sometimes divorce is the next consequence of a continuously broken covenant. To that end, divorce should be the most loving thing you could possibly do.
How can divorce be loving?
It is the final act of giving someone the freedom that comes with love. It is a willingness to give up all of your hopes and dreams for your own life, marriage, and family, and submit to what your spouse wants. What (s)he really wants.
How can we know what (s)he wants? A healthy person who is about to lose the one they promised to love and cherish, upon learning that the harm (s)he is inflicting is causing a permanent rift in the relationship, would say “I don’t want this to happen. What can I do to fix this?!”
But if it’s gotten this far. If there have been consequences all along the way, starting small and becoming more significant [get the step-by-step guide to healthy confrontation], then we already know that your spouse’s heart isn’t in it. (S)he doesn’t want you. If (s)he did, (s)he’d have done something by now about the harm (s)he’s doing.
Divorce should never be used as a threat to try to get someone to change.
Rather, it is a declaration of what has already happened. Your spouse has already left you, has emotionally cut themself off from you, has indicated that they are not interested in fulfilling their vows to you, has no willingness to live as a spouse to you. It’s just time to face reality and legally declare what has already happened spiritually.
And this is exactly what the Bible says about divorce. In Matthew 19 and Matthew 5, we see the Pharisees asking Jesus whether it’s OK to divorce (“dismiss or send away”) your wife for any reason at all. Jesus said that it’s not OK to just dismissively discard someone like that.
They responded, “Then why did Moses command us to give our wives a certificate of divorce and send her away?” Jesus said that Moses commanded a certificate of divorce because they were doing what they should not be doing anyway (sending their wives away) - their “hearts were hard.” This “sending away” left wives legally bound to someone who no longer supported them, making it impossible for them to remarry or receive support from their families whom they’d left in order to become one with their husband. However, if they received the “certificate of divorce” commanded by Moses – a legal annunciation of divorce – they could remarry and not be left without support.
A legal divorce is a declaration of what has already happened in your marriage.
If you spouse has already indicated that (s)he has no intention of holding on to you, then you have already been discarded. Your “certificate of divorce” granted by the court will release you legally from what has already been spiritually rendered.
Doesn’t the Bible say that God hates divorce?
Of course God hates divorce. It is the separation of something that was supposed to not be separated. It hurts, it leaves scars, it isn’t in line with God’s intention for us. He made us for “happily ever after.” (Don’t believe me? Read Genesis Chapters 1 and 2 and Revelation Chapters 21 and 22.) But the Bible doesn’t say that God hates divorce. That declaration is garnered from Malachi 2: 16 where it says:
“the man who hates and divorces his wife does violence to the one he should protect”(NIV)
and in the KJV: “the Lord, the God of Israel, saith that he hateth putting away: for one covereth violence with his garment” (as we saw earlier, “putting away” is different in the Jewish context than in the “westernized” context where it’s translated “divorce”)
and in the ESV: “the man who does not love his wife but divorces her, says the Lord, the God of Israel, covers his garment with violence,”
The context here is not that God hates divorce but that hatred and sending a spouse away are acts of violence toward a spouse. Those are things that God hates.
Here are some other things that God hates (and note that “divorce” is NEVER in any of the lists of sins or evil behaviors):
How many of those characteristics describe the character of your spouse? Not just their behavior, but their character – their repeated, ongoing way of doing life.
We are all guilty of some of those at times, but godly people would never be described that way. Those descriptors have no part in godly character. So, if your spouse is marked by those characteristics, this leads to another Bible discourse that mentions divorce:
It brings into question whether someone is a believer and, if they are not, what is a spouse to do?
Many people point to this passage as a command to not separate, but to use the passage that way is to overlook Paul’s concession for separation when he says that a wife should not separate: he says “but if she does . . .”
The statement that wives must not separate from their husbands is made to protect women (rather than limit them) from the cultural consequences of being without a husband: either destitution if they are alone or adultery if they are taken in by another man.
You see, women in that day could not pursue a legal divorce, so they either had to live alone with no means of support (destitution) or live with a man who isn’t their husband (adultery). To avoid this devastating no-win situation for women, Paul told women not to separate. But if a husband and wife did separate, it was commanded (as seen in Matthew 5 and 19) that the husband must give his wife a “certificate of divorce,” making the separation legal and allowing for the woman to remarry.
Furthermore, many people use 1 Corinthians 7 as a passage about divorce, but that is not the context of the passage. The context is that the Corinthians had questions about how to behave toward others in a way consistent with the character and will of God, and Paul is answering those questions for them.
The passage starts by addressing people who are married and unmarried and letting them know that they should “yield” their bodies only to a spouse (which wasn’t happening at the time: they were having sex with whoever they wanted).
Paul goes on to say that you don’t have to have sex, but if you’re going to, do it with your spouse and your spouse only. [Read my article “Do I Have To Have Sex With My Husband?]
After addressing everyone, he addresses married people specifically, telling wives what God desires for them as their Protector, as described above. He then goes on to tell husbands what God desires for them as people who are to love their wives as Christ loves the church: that a husband must not divorce his wife.
The Greek word that is translated "divorce" in this Corinthians passage indicates that the passage is not a command against legal divorce. The word used here is different than the word translated "divorce" in the gospels where the question is about whether they can “send away” their wives, giving them a certificate of divorce (i.e. a legal divorce). Here in Corinthians, with the Greek word translated as "divorce," Paul is advising them not to “abandon or neglect” their wives. It is not a command against “sending away” (i.e. not a command against legal divorce). Rather, it is telling husbands not to abandon or neglect their wives.
At the heart of every passage on divorce is the desire of God for us to keep our lives pure.
God doesn’t want us to break the commandment that says “you shall not commit adultery” because he knows how much damage that does. Dismissively discarding someone leads to adultery. When the disciples asked Jesus why divorce isn’t OK except for in instances of adultery, he said that it’s because anyone who divorces (“sends away” their spouse without a certificate of divorce) and marries another commits adultery. It’s always about adultery and being careful not to break that commandment. The “certificate of divorce” eliminates the sin of adultery, making the separation legal (Luke 16: 18, Mark 10: 10-12, Matt 19: 9, Matt 5: 32). [Read my article on Biblical Grounds For Divorce”]
What constitutes marriage?
As a side note, anyone united in flesh with another becomes one with them (1 Cor 6: 16). So, to that extent, even casual sex is a consummation of marriage, of becoming one - even without a marriage certificate. A marriage certificate simply declares legally what happens spiritually – just like a divorce certificate simply declares legally what happened spiritually. So, in principle, anyone whom someone has had sex with and then separates from is committing an act of divorce and adultery (see Mark 10: 7-9).
Back to 1 Cor 7: beginning in verse 12, Paul talks about “unbelievers.” He clarifies that, if your spouse is an unbeliever, don’t abandon or neglect them because of that. If they are willing to live with you, then live with them in peace. But if the unbeliever leaves (including showing an unwillingness to be a spouse to you), give them the freedom to do that. Maybe in giving them that freedom, they will experience the freedom of the love of God and be saved.
And that’s what it’s all about, dear friends. It’s about giving a spouse whose character indicates that he is an unbeliever the freedom to leave and the chance to experience the freedom of the love of God in your release of him/her.
And, if you’re still not sure that divorce is not a sin, brace yourself…
God is a divorcer
God divorced His people (and God does not sin).
In Jeremiah 3: 8, God gives Israel a certificate of divorce and sends her away because she was unfaithful to Him. Clearly Israel was not sexually unfaithful to God, but their unfaithfulness was, rather, a condition of their hearts. The same kind of unfaithfulness that your spouse has toward you (if this describes your situation). And even God gave his people a certificate of divorce in that situation, even while pleading with them to turn their hearts back to Him. [Click here to read my article about forgiveness]
And that brings it full circle.
Divorce should only be done if it’s the most loving thing you ever do.
If divorce could be in your future, don’t try to go through the process without guidance. Many kind, selfless people like you hope that their spouse will be cooperative and compromising in court, and then they are devastated to find that they end up losing everything. To prevent that from happening, I’ve created a guide that will walk you step by step through how to win in family court. This guide will show you how to make sure you don’t lose everything while still maintaining your kindness and integrity.
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