Marriage, Divorce and the Church

September 3, 2009 in BLOG with 6 Comments

Recently, I was in a car with a few of my colleagues—all older and smarter than me—and I began making outrageous statements (as is my custom) to see if any of them would rise to the occasion and correct me as a young fool in need of some schooling. Unfortunately, no one took the bait. I’m not sure what that means, but I’m hoping that someone here will take the challenge and set me straight, if I’m in need of edjewkashun. Here are some bullet points of my thoughts on the topic of marriage and divorce—and its implications in the church:

  • Marriage is something that God (not a pastor or justice of the peace) performs (Genesis 2:22; Matthew 19:6). It occurs when God seals a man and woman into a life-long, covenant relationship with the community of faith as witnesses. Governments and religious bodies may or may not recognize this union and confer on it various legal privileges or responsibilities, but their recognition (or lack thereof) in no way legitimizes (or delegitimizes) the union.
  • Therefore, divorce among believers is not a legal issue, but an issue of “church discipline”, as it is a breaking of a covenant within the body of Christ (Matthew 18:15-17). Reconciliation, not legal dissolution, should be the first step of dealing with it. If an offended party refuses to reconcile, or an offending party refuses to repent, there would appear to be biblical substantiation for the church body to expel that person (or both) from the covenant community and for the faithful party to separate him/herself from his/her spouse indefinitely until the sinning party repents and is restored to fellowship.

Now, maybe these statements don’t seem that inflammatory or controversial, but consider the implications. I’m arguing that there is no biblical concept of “secular” marriage, since marriage is a covenant institution inextricably intertwined with its purpose as a reflection of the Trinity and the relationship of Christ and His church and as a means of advancing the gospel. Therefore, …

  • Are unbelievers really married? Apparently so, because Paul gives instructions to people who are married to unbelievers (1 Corinthians 7:14).
  • Do new believers, who were previously married, need to get “re-married” or affirm their covenant in the presence of the believing community?
  • Just because a couple is legally divorced, are they really divorced in God’s sight, if they have not gone through church discipline?
  • What would a church look like if it actually applied these principles? How long would it take before it was sued or the pastor “ridden out on a rail”? (Someone, please explain that euphemism, while you’re at it.)
  • On a personal note, I would like to take my Holy Ghost time machine back in church history and strangle the person whose idea it was to relinquish marriage into the hands of secular government.

Now it’s your turn …

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  • Andy

    I don’t know about your kid situation, but if you had a daughter, and she walked in with her boy friend one day and said “I declare we are now married before God” and walked out the door with him, how would you respond as the father?

  • http://www.matthewdgreen.com Matt

    I would say, “No, you’re not.” But, if they were both part of a REAL covenant community, discipled, demonstrated maturity and an understanding of biblical marriage, in accountability with others and wanted to make a commitment to God and each other in the presence of fellow believers, what would be my biblical substantiation for saying “no, that’s not marriage”?

  • Clint Wagnon

    “Ridden out on a rail” = placed on a departing train from a given location, under compulsion and without benevolence

  • http://www.Mikeandkaren.blogspot.com Michael McDonald

    because I don’t want to spend a lot of time in a reply i will just say – I agree with your points. The church is very lax in the way we deal with marriage. Part of our work here in Russia is to counsel per-marrieds and married couples n the local churches we serve – you have given me some interesting things t think about. Some of your thoughts will certainly be incorporated into our teaching and will affect families here. Thanks

    Just because I like to provoke people to think – How can/does/should all the above affect the current battle in America over homosexual marriage?

  • http://www.matthewdgreen.com Matt

    Thanks, Michael. I think this conversation is crucial to the “gay marriage” debate. From the biblical perspective, it’s not that gay marriage is not allowed. It simply doesn’t exist. The interesting thing is that, with my view, the government has no authority to grant marriage licenses. Therefore, a secular government may be free to provide for certain legal partnerships between same-sex couples or heterosexual couples. But it’s not marriage.

  • Heather Green Shimansky

    You brought up some very interesting points, Matthew. We personally dealt with those kinds of questions when we were planning to get married. In Ukraine, a Christian couple is not considered married, unless they have been blessed by the pastor/church (even if they already have a marriage license). As you know, we got legally married (meaning we had a ceremony at the government center and received our marriage license) three weeks before our church wedding/blessing–and according to the Christians, we were not married. I always considered us married during that time, because if we changed our minds and decided to not go through with the church ceremony and not be “married” we would have had to get divorced and all our legal records after that would say we were divorcees. Also, because I grew up in a culture where it is acceptable to be married by the justice of the peace. Of course, we didn’t begin our life together until we had our church wedding–because according to the Christians that was when we were really married. Since God is the creator of marriage, that seems to be the Biblical way to go about getting married. But I still think that government, in a sense, can marry people—I just cannot really explain why I think that….need to think through that logic, because, in a way, that contradicts the idea that marriage is something that God performs. But the fact that the Apostle Paul talks about others being married (and doesn’t seem to be referring to Believers, only) means those married by government are really married. They have still made their vows, although perhaps not before a group of Believers.
    I remember one Ukrainian couple (who had actually immigrated here to the States and got married here) talking about how there was some mess-up with them getting their marriage license before their wedding day. They went ahead with the church wedding and the honeymoon and got their marriage license two weeks after the wedding. That seemed so strange to me–like they were living together before getting married. But to them, it was totally acceptable because they were married–they had had their church ceremony and made their vows before God and the congregation.
    I do think that in God’s sight a couple is not divorced (even though they are legally divorced) because God didn’t create divorce, man did.–and that would explain why God says that a person who marries someone who is divorced commits adultery.
    Perhaps our culture and society is mainly what shapes how we view marriage–to be something that God does or man/government.