CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS 199
200 JESUS AND DIVORCE CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS 201 would be Christ’s disciples are called to this standard of marriage
just as they are called to lay down their lives for their friends (John 15: 13); to cut off hand and foot and pluck out their eye to avoid sin (Matt. 5: 29-30); to take up their cross, which is God’s will for their life, and follow Christ no matter what it may cost (Mark 8: 34); and to believe that ‘whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake shall find it’ (Matt.
16: 25).2 Though the standards appear to be impossible our Lord would say to us, ‘With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible’ (Matt. 19: 26). He calls each of His disciples to a life of grace and faithful dependence upon Him so that He might bring about His own image in us whether He uses a good marriage or a broken marriage to accomplish this end.
It is essential to hold before our people continually the ideal that human marriage should reflect the union between Christ and the church. As Christ loved us sinners and gave Himself for us, so Christian husbands and wives are called to love their partners even if their love is inadequately responded to. As God remains faithful despite our frequent faithlessness, so even a divorced believer who remains single out of loyalty to Christ and the former partner can be a vivid, powerful symbol of the enduring love of God for sinful mankind. When the world sees this quality of love they, too, may wish to know the God who so loved them while they were yet sinners.
Those couples who have already remarried after divorce may be wondering how their situation fits into all of this. We believe that you should see that your present marriage is now God’s will for you. You should seek to be the best husband or wife you can be, rendering to each other your full marital duty. If you come to the realisation that Jesus calls remarriage after divorce the sin of adultery, then call sin ‘sin’ rather than seek to justify what you have done. We believe this will bring great freedom to your marriage and will break down barriers to ministry you may have encountered before. As one divorced and remarried couple responded to the apologetic attitude of the dean of a Bible Institute as he explained their policy of not granting degrees to those who remarry after divorce: ‘Don’t apologize for your policy.
We know now that what we have done is wrong; but that isn’t going to keep us from preparing to serve the Lord as best as we possibly can.’
We also have theological reasons for believing that maintaining
your present marriage will accomplish the greatest good. First, Deuteronomy 24: l-4 clearly forbids restoration of marriage to a divorced partner after one of the partners has consummated a second marriage. Such a restoration of marriage is called ‘an abomination before the Lord’ (Deut. 24: 4). Now according to our understanding, 3 this Deuteronomic regulation is based on the idea that marriage creates a permanent relationship between the spouses - ‘the two become one flesh’ - a principle endorsed by the New Testament. Ideally, where Jesus’ principles have been understood and obeyed, the situation envisaged by Deuter- onomy should never arise for His followers. But where it has arisen and remarriage following divorce has occurred, it would seem wisest to adhere to the Deuteronomic provision. To act otherwise and seek to return to your former partner may or may not succeed, but it will surely bring great grief to your second partner. Secondly, all Christians, from the apostle Peter onward, recognise that their past sins have inevitable consequences which we cannot alter. But however blatant our past denials, Christ still offers us forgiveness and the opportunity to love and follow Him in the future (John 21: 15-19). If this study has perturbed you, because of your own past failures or because of the way you have counselled divorcees, do not forget that Christ came to save sinners. None of us can pretend to be above reproach in the realm of sexual morality when we measure ourselves by our Lords standards (Matt. 5: 27-30; John 8: l-11). All of us need to claim His daily forgiveness and grace if we are to be transformed into His likeness. ‘If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness’ (1 John 1: 8-9). So let us praise Him for His mercy and dedicate ourselves anew to serve Him more faithfully in the future.
We wish to conclude our study with some penetrating words from Geoffrey Bromiley’s little book God and Marriage (1980). He reminds us that marriage belongs to the temporal and not to the eternal order. Jesus told the cynical Sadducees that in the resur- rection people neither marry nor are given in marriage (Matt.
22: 30). And even though marriage may be a fulfilling and wonderful relationship between one man and one woman in this life, marriage has an eschatological limit.
Life cun go on apart from marriage; and those whose marriages
202 JESUS AND DIVORCE
have been broken must remember their citizenship in Gods kingdom. Bromiley writes:
In the world of the fall the redemptive work of God carries with it a service of God - not necessarily a technical ministry but a service according to God’s will, by God’s appointment, and in God’s dis- cipleship - which means that some part of life, if not all, must be lived temporarily outside the regular patterns of God’s created order.
This reminds us of the order of priorities which Jesus demands in the calling of his disciples. What God requires must come before all else, the good as well as the bad. The followers of Jesus must be ready, should he will, to renounce even marriage for the sake of the gospel.
They must be ready to obey God and not remarry after separation even though they might plead, as they often do, that they have a right
to happiness or to the fulfillment of natural desires. To talk of a right to happiness is to delude onself. Happiness, when it is attained, is a gift from God and it cannot be attained, nor can human life be fulfilled, where there is conflict with God’s stated will or a defiant refusal to see that true happiness and fulfillment lie only in a primary commitment to God’s kingdom and righteousness. For God’s sake some people may have to forego marriage, some may have to put it in a new perspective, and some who have broken their marriage may have to refrain from remarriage. Marriage is a good thing but it is not ‘the one thing needful’ (Luke 10: 42). Hence it may be-and in some instances it may have to be - surrendered.4
Jesus did not come to lay down a new ‘law’ on His disciples, one too strict for them to bear. He gave them a moral standard which, by God’s grace, He expected His disciples to fulfil. He said that one of the distinguishing characteristics of His disciples is that they do not remarry after divorce. Christ came to give freedom, not for divorce and remarriage, but for marriage in its creational design. Jesus’ disciples have the power of the indwell- ing Spirit of life and no longer have hearts of stone, nor are they subject to hard-heartedness when it comes to fulfilling Gods commands. Though man will never perform perfectly, he is able to live on a plane far above that of failure. And if one thing or another leads to the tragedy of divorce, Christ’s disciple has available that grace which is needed to remain single or be reconciled. The death of Christ itself has implications for the Christian husband and wife. It has resulted in Christ’s taking upon Himself the cost of human unfaithfulness. He has broken its power. In BromiIey’s words: ‘Living with divine reconciliation
CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS 203 as a constant fact in human life means living with mutual recon- ciliation as a constant fact. This makes indissoluble union a practical and attainable goal even for sinners.‘5