Divorce, Remarriage, and Honoring God
00:00:00.000 | Well, given your outspoken position on divorce and remarriage, we get a lot of questions
00:00:09.260 | in the inbox on this front.
00:00:11.200 | Here's one from a podcast listener named Lisa.
00:00:13.680 | "Dear Pastor John, I read your long article about divorce and remarriage and agreed all
00:00:18.640 | along.
00:00:19.840 | Near the end, you restated that only God can end a marriage.
00:00:24.080 | Yes.
00:00:25.080 | Then you went on to say that remaining in a second marriage is right.
00:00:29.280 | I noticed that you did not give scripture to back up that point, and that's where I
00:00:33.580 | no longer agreed with you.
00:00:35.680 | All the other scriptures seem to only prove that marriage is impossible to end.
00:00:40.400 | Are there any passages to suggest that a divorced spouse should remain in their second marriage?"
00:00:46.640 | It's important to point out that this question that's being asked is a question everyone
00:00:55.720 | has to face, not just me with my conservative view of divorce and remarriage.
00:01:03.320 | It's a question that everyone, except those who think that all divorce and remarriage
00:01:09.160 | is biblical.
00:01:10.840 | If you have any limits at all in your view of divorce and remarriage, you will sooner
00:01:19.480 | or later meet a couple who has transgressed even your limits and are in a marriage that
00:01:28.360 | they should not have entered, that you think they should not have entered, not just me.
00:01:35.360 | This is a question then for almost every Christian.
00:01:41.160 | If the marriage that you are in was entered wrongfully, you shouldn't have entered it,
00:01:49.040 | but you stay in it.
00:01:51.840 | That's the question.
00:01:52.840 | And my answer is yes.
00:01:55.400 | Repent honestly before God to each other and to him.
00:02:00.640 | Admit it should not have happened.
00:02:04.320 | Ask for forgiveness from each other and from God, perhaps from former spouses, and then
00:02:14.680 | keep your promises that you made to each other when you made your vows, rather than a second
00:02:24.720 | time breaking your word.
00:02:27.680 | And Lisa's question is, are there texts for that opinion?
00:02:32.440 | I mean, you're just saying that, Piper.
00:02:34.900 | What about the Bible?
00:02:37.400 | And I want to say here, I could be wrong about this.
00:02:40.200 | I could be drawing inference from texts illegitimately, but there do seem to me to be three or four
00:02:47.400 | or more pointers in this direction in the Bible, and I'll give them to Lisa now.
00:02:55.920 | Number one, in Joshua chapter nine, there's the story of the Gibeonites, who you may remember
00:03:06.320 | hear about Joshua and the Israelites destroying cities, and they don't want to be destroyed,
00:03:11.600 | so they know they're going to be next on the list of destruction.
00:03:15.700 | So they pretend to be from a faraway country, and they lie to Joshua, and they get Joshua
00:03:25.560 | to promise that he will not kill them because they're not in his territory.
00:03:32.800 | And Joshua makes a vow and swears to them before God that he won't kill them.
00:03:38.560 | And then he finds out that they were lying to him.
00:03:43.520 | And it says in chapter nine, verse 19, "All the leaders said to the congregation, 'We
00:03:52.280 | have sworn to them by the Lord, the God of Israel, and now we may not touch them.'"
00:03:57.960 | Now, my point there is that it appears that a vow that you enter wrongfully—there are
00:04:08.720 | two reasons why they shouldn't have entered this vow.
00:04:11.480 | One is because the Gibeonites were lying to them, and two is because it says explicitly
00:04:17.840 | they did not consult God, and God explicitly intended for the Gibeonites to be destroyed.
00:04:25.920 | And now they're keeping the vow they never should have made under horrible circumstances,
00:04:33.000 | thus elevating the importance of promise-keeping or vow-keeping, even when it was entered into
00:04:40.400 | wrongfully.
00:04:41.560 | And I'm saying that perhaps suggests—I think it does suggest—that a vow you make
00:04:48.720 | to a person to be their husband or their wife till death do you part is not something to
00:04:55.900 | be taken lightly.
00:04:57.840 | Number two, Jesus talked to the woman at the well in terms that suggest pretty strongly
00:05:07.240 | that he believed she had five genuine husbands and one non-genuine live-in.
00:05:17.040 | He put it like this.
00:05:19.120 | He said to her, "Go call your husband and come here."
00:05:22.760 | And the woman answered him, "I have no husband."
00:05:25.960 | And Jesus said to her, "You're right saying I have no husband, because you've had five
00:05:33.120 | husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband.
00:05:40.480 | What you have said is true."
00:05:43.320 | Now think about that.
00:05:44.720 | What does that imply?
00:05:46.720 | It's true that the Greek—that includes this text here—does not have a different
00:05:52.960 | word for husband and man or husband and male.
00:05:58.660 | So it could be translated, "You've had five men, and the man you now have is not
00:06:05.280 | your man."
00:06:07.420 | But even if you translate it that way, it doesn't make sense unless you distinguish
00:06:12.720 | this sixth man from those other five in some way, because he says, "This is not your
00:06:17.080 | man.
00:06:18.520 | Those were your men.
00:06:19.520 | This is not your man.
00:06:20.520 | This is not your husband.
00:06:21.640 | Those were your husbands."
00:06:22.640 | What was the difference?
00:06:24.120 | The only thing I know to suggest is that they had somehow formalized the relationship in
00:06:31.340 | a ceremony in which they took some promises to create the relationship that was known
00:06:37.280 | as marriage or husband-wife.
00:06:40.720 | So it seems Jesus put some stock in calling those five men real husbands, different from
00:06:50.920 | five live-in boyfriends that she never married.
00:06:54.360 | Here's the third one.
00:06:56.800 | And this one comes, interestingly enough—I was talking this over with all the team of
00:07:01.440 | the Together for the Gospel guys, and I won't say who said it, but one of them, I thought,
00:07:08.120 | very provocatively pointed this out.
00:07:10.520 | Jesus does use the verb "marry" for what they should not do and do do when he's
00:07:20.440 | forbidding them from doing it.
00:07:22.280 | Let me give you—let me show you what I mean.
00:07:24.800 | Matthew 5:32, "Whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery."
00:07:32.480 | So he doesn't say, "Whoever presumably marries" or "tries to marry."
00:07:39.080 | He says "marries."
00:07:41.120 | He doesn't say "presumes to marry" or "tries to marry" as if, yes, this is a
00:07:49.160 | real marriage being created.
00:07:50.960 | It should not be created, and it's like committing adultery when you enter it.
00:07:56.880 | He says the same, similar kind of thing in Mark 10, 12, 11, and 12.
00:08:01.560 | He said to them, "Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against
00:08:07.760 | her, and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery."
00:08:14.240 | So if Jesus is willing to call wrongfully entered relationships marriages, then it seems
00:08:24.200 | to me that we should hold people to the expectations of holiness and permanence implied in the
00:08:33.360 | word "marriage" till death do us part.
00:08:37.560 | So I take the warning that remarriage involves adultery—whoever divorces his wife and marries
00:08:43.480 | another commits adultery—not to mean that sexual relations in a wrongfully entered relationship
00:08:52.200 | can never be sanctified through repentance and forgiveness, but rather that an unholy
00:09:00.560 | relationship involves unholy sex.
00:09:06.160 | Until that relationship is newly consecrated to God through repentance and forgiveness,
00:09:14.640 | that relationship remains tainted at every level.
00:09:18.680 | One last thought.
00:09:20.900 | If this seems strange, that a prohibited relationship can become a consecrated and holy one, consider
00:09:30.040 | the example—and there are several in the Bible—of the kingship of Israel.
00:09:35.320 | The people came to Samuel in 1 Samuel 8 and said, "Now appoint for us a king to judge
00:09:41.240 | us like the nations."
00:09:43.140 | But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, "Give us a king to judge us."
00:09:50.000 | But Samuel prayed to the Lord, and the Lord said, "Obey the voice of the people in all
00:09:55.760 | that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being
00:10:01.520 | king over them."
00:10:03.800 | And yet, in spite of this evil origin of this new relationship of king and people and God,
00:10:14.680 | God made the kingship an integral part of his plan for Jesus to come as the King of
00:10:21.080 | Kings and Lord of Lords and as the Son of David.
00:10:25.680 | So for those four reasons, examples, kinds of texts in the Scripture, I would appeal
00:10:34.320 | to those in a marriage they should not have entered to remain there and consecrate themselves
00:10:45.600 | by confession and repentance and consecration so that henceforth they will keep their sacred
00:10:56.360 | promises.
00:10:57.360 | Thank you, Pastor John, for that.
00:11:00.920 | Everyone should stop and go read that article.
00:11:04.080 | It's titled Divorce and Remarriage, a position paper written by John Piper back in July of
00:11:09.040 | 1986.
00:11:10.040 | It's a very key document to read and to understand, and you can find it, of course, at DesiringGod.org.
00:11:17.520 | And there you can also scan or search through all the episodes we've released over the
00:11:21.200 | years.
00:11:22.200 | You can also find articles, we're writing and editing, and videos.
00:11:25.040 | You can find all sorts of content to edify your soul at DesiringGod.org.
00:11:31.360 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:11:32.760 | I'll see you tomorrow.
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