Why ‘Falling Out of Love’ Never Justifies Divorce
00:00:00.000 | Happy Friday. Thank you for listening to the podcast and joining us today. Today, Pastor
00:00:08.640 | John joins us over the telephone for a question from a perplexed father who writes in anonymously.
00:00:16.320 | Pastor John, my adult son wants to get a divorce from his wife. They have been married for
00:00:22.200 | two years and have a one-year-old son and a newborn baby girl of 10 days old. I'm totally
00:00:27.880 | perplexed by the timing. I don't understand why he feels unhappy, but he claims he is
00:00:32.240 | no longer in love with his wife anymore. What would you say to someone who has "fallen out
00:00:38.120 | of love" with their spouse, and why is that no grounds for divorce?
00:00:44.440 | Well, what I would say to them face-to-face would depend partly on their demeanor, but
00:00:51.280 | I don't have him face-to-face. And so I'm just going to say what I think he probably
00:00:57.020 | needs to hear, whether I would say it exactly like this, I don't know, but here we go. We
00:01:04.720 | would be naive, I think, to suppose that people, young or old, our own children or those of
00:01:12.560 | others will act on the basis of reason and biblical truth when it comes to justifying
00:01:18.600 | divorce. I would guess that 95 cases out of 100 people do what they want to do and then
00:01:25.760 | find reasons to do it, especially those who claim to believe the Bible, find biblical
00:01:31.960 | reasons to do it. They just know what they're going to do. They want to do it, they do it.
00:01:36.620 | So we should be realistic as we talk to people, and we should pray. I think that's the greatest
00:01:43.960 | realism. Pray and fast that God would do what our biblical arguments and reasonings by themselves
00:01:52.960 | could never do. But having said that, I totally believe in speaking the truth in love, because
00:02:02.080 | it's God's way, it's God's design that people should know the truth, and the truth would
00:02:06.260 | set them free, and that context is free from sin, like leaving your wife. So I would hang
00:02:14.280 | my thoughts on three words—joy, significance, and ownership. I would try to make those three
00:02:23.920 | words as compelling and winsome as I can, but also as forceful as Jesus and the apostles
00:02:31.560 | did for the sake of staying married. So let me say a word about what I mean by joy, significance,
00:02:40.720 | and ownership. Joy. I would say to this young man who wants a divorce because he's not in
00:02:48.640 | love, "Oh, what joy lies ahead for those who do not break their covenant even when their
00:03:00.600 | hearts are broken." And here's what I mean. I believe that most couples who stay married
00:03:08.700 | for 50 or 60 years fall in and out of love numerous times. And I say that with not the
00:03:17.640 | slightest hint of trying to be funny. It is, in my judgment, almost ludicrous to think
00:03:26.440 | that we experience as being in love for the entire 60 years what we felt at the beginning
00:03:36.200 | of that relationship. That's just utterly crazy. It is naive and immature to think that
00:03:44.520 | staying married is mainly about staying in love. In a relationship between two sinners,
00:03:51.800 | forced to live as close as married couples live, it is naive to think that every season
00:04:00.440 | will be one of warmth and sweetness and sexual romance. That's just contrary to almost the
00:04:07.000 | entire history of the world and contrary to every makeup of fallen human nature. Staying
00:04:13.280 | married is not first about staying in love, it's about covenant-keeping, promise-keeping,
00:04:22.040 | being a man and woman of your word, a man and woman who keep the vows to be committed
00:04:29.500 | for better or for worse, a man and a woman of character. That's what it's about. This
00:04:37.880 | covenant-keeping relates to being in love. Get this, because I thought about how to say
00:04:45.800 | this. This covenant-keeping relates to being in love the way gardening in the fall relates
00:04:54.080 | to roses in the spring. This is why I said a minute ago, "Oh, what joy lies ahead for
00:05:03.420 | those who do not break their covenant even when their hearts are broken." The modern
00:05:08.700 | world of self-centeredness and self-exaltation and self-expression has taken the normal 50-year
00:05:19.580 | process of falling in and out of love and turned it into a 50-year process of multiple
00:05:26.120 | divorces and remarriages. That pattern has not and will not bear the fruit of joy. It
00:05:34.780 | leaves a trail of misery in the soul and misery along the generations. Marriage is the hardest
00:05:42.940 | relationship to stay in and the one that promises glorious, unique, durable joys for those who
00:05:53.400 | have the character to keep their covenant. So that's what I mean by joy. Now here's what
00:06:01.980 | I mean by significance. God offers to husbands and wives the highest possible significance
00:06:09.540 | for their marriage relationship by showing them what its greatest and most glorious meaning
00:06:17.960 | is, namely, the replication in the world of the covenant relationship between Christ and
00:06:26.820 | his bride, the Church. That's what the highest meaning of marriage is. There is no higher,
00:06:35.920 | more glorious, more significant conception of marriage than the one that Paul portrays
00:06:41.140 | in Ephesians 5, a parable of the greatest, strongest, deepest, sweetest, richest relationship
00:06:49.460 | in the universe, the blood-bought union between Christ, the Son of God, and his bride, the
00:06:56.420 | Church. That's the meaning. That's the significance of marriage. And I would just say to this
00:07:03.760 | young man that you are acting, or about to act, on one of the lowest views of marriage.
00:07:12.940 | Not one of the highest, one of the lowest views of marriage. If you divorce because
00:07:18.860 | you don't feel love anymore, there is nothing noble, nothing great, nothing beautiful, nothing
00:07:27.260 | high, nothing truly significant about such a motive. What does it say about Christ, the
00:07:36.340 | model of a man's commitment in marriage? What does it say if he forsakes his wife because
00:07:44.220 | he doesn't feel like staying anymore? What does it say about Christ? That's the issue.
00:07:52.500 | Marriage is an act of worship. It's a display of the price and the preciousness of the covenant-keeping
00:08:01.160 | love between Christ and his Church. Covenant-keeping in marriage glorifies Christ and the blood
00:08:10.360 | he shed to possess a bride forever. We cannot even conceive of a greater significance of
00:08:19.180 | marriage than the one God has given. And lastly, the word "ownership." What do I mean by ownership?
00:08:27.560 | What I mean by ownership is that the union between a man and a woman isn't theirs to
00:08:32.460 | break. They didn't create it. They can't break it. It's not theirs. Jesus said, "What
00:08:41.180 | therefore God has joined together, let not man separate." It's another sign of the
00:08:51.460 | man-centeredness and contemporary self-centeredness of Christianity that a young couple would
00:08:58.540 | have the mindset that they created the union called marriage and therefore they can break
00:09:04.700 | it. They didn't create it. They can't break it. God made it. God breaks it with death.
00:09:11.060 | Or as I think Paul would say, you are free to break your marriage covenant when Christ
00:09:18.980 | breaks his covenant with his bride. So for the sake of maximum long-term joy, and for
00:09:29.180 | the sake of the deepest and highest significance, and for the sake of the maker and owner of
00:09:36.740 | your union, keep your covenant. Oh, what joy lies ahead beyond anything you can presently
00:09:47.500 | imagine for those who keep their covenant even when their hearts are broken.
00:09:53.460 | Yeah, that's a bold claim and appropriate. There's a lot here to think about for every
00:09:58.540 | married couple. Thank you, Pastor John. And thank you for sending us this very raw question.
00:10:03.820 | It's appreciated that you sent it in to us. And thank you for listening and making the
00:10:06.540 | podcast part of your week. You can subscribe to our audio feeds and search our past episodes
00:10:10.860 | in our archive. You can reach us by email with a question of your own, even questions
00:10:14.300 | related to marriage and divorce. You can do all that through our online home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.
00:10:21.780 | Well speaking of marriage pressures, ministry is demanding work. And I know from looking
00:10:27.860 | at all of the APJ questions that we've gotten over the years, there are a lot of discouraged
00:10:31.980 | pastors and wives of pastors who are not flourishing in their local church roles. And Pastor John,
00:10:38.380 | you are not unfamiliar with the discouragement of pastoral ministry. On Monday, Pastor John
00:10:42.860 | will be back with me in the studio to share from his own personal experience about a season
00:10:46.120 | of life which was especially dark in the ministry and the takeaways that he has from it. You
00:10:50.580 | won't want to miss it. Even if you're not a leader or in pastoral ministry, you won't
00:10:54.140 | want to miss this. I am your host, Tony Reinke. Have a great weekend. We'll see you on Monday.
00:10:58.220 | [END]
00:11:00.220 | 1. What is your favorite part of the ministry? #AskPastorJohn