Yes, God Still Hates Divorce

Standing for marriage "till death do us part" in a culture of no-fault divorce

Apr 13, 2023

This newsletter is chapter I of an upcoming eBook on the scandal of Church-sanctioned divorce. If you haven’t already done so, please check out chapters II, III, IV, V, VI, and VII, as well as the preface, afterword, and appendices A and B.

This Photo by Unknown author is licensed under CC BY.

Reasoning frankly on divorce

Divorce is a highly sensitive topic for many Christians and it is no mystery why: Many of us are either divorced or have close family and friends who are. This was not the case in our grandparent’s generation, but it is in today’s culture of no-fault divorce.

As a result, it seems an unspoken truce of silence has arisen among believers on the subject. We seldom address divorce and when we do, the little we say dies the death of a thousand qualifications.

But walking on eggshells has only made the problem worse. Absent strong, unequivocal statements against the practice from our pens and pulpits, divorce has thrived, feeding off our silence like an ever-growing elephant in the room.

Consider this our strong, unequivocal statement:

Divorce and remarriage while your spouse is living are sins forbidden by God.

Period. You can’t do either. Ever. No exceptions.

In this post and the ones to follow, we will carefully document how the scriptures clearly and repeatedly bear this statement out.

Our reasons for adopting this frank, unapologetic approach are not primarily pragmatic but are first and foremost Biblical. The scriptures teach “You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason frankly with your neighbor, lest you incur sin because of him” (Leviticus 19:17). Nearly identical commands are given in the New Testament as well (Ephesians 4:15, 25).

Dancing around the truth while people march along their merry way to destruction is to invite destruction upon oneself (Ezekiel 3:16-21). We must risk offense and personal blowback in addressing touchy topics like divorce, especially for the sake of the ones we love most. Keeping silent to “keep the peace” is a self-serving, hateful act according to the scriptures.

So consider yourself forewarned tone police. By taking divorce head on, just as Jesus did, we are firmly on the side of the scriptures.

Our greatest spiritual blunder

In compiling our list of the top sins plaguing God’s people in America,1 we knew we had to start somewhere. All sins lead to death, but some are deadlier than others, striking closer to the core of our troubles as a Church. When it came to prioritizing the most impactful, detrimental, root-level disorder to tackle first, divorce jumped out early on as the clear front-runner.

This should come as no surprise given how basal the family is to the superstructure of any society. Foundation issues weaken the integrity of the entire house built upon it. Conversely, if the foundation is sound, the house can take a beating, and remain standing (Matthew 7:24-27). Put another way, whereas Christ and obedience to His teachings hold all things together (Acts 17:28; Colossians 1:17), sins like divorce threaten to tear it all apart.

Indeed, if happy, stable families are the foundation of societal flourishing, and divorce causes more misery and instability in families than any other sin, then in this sense, divorce is the most foundational sin of a society.

That is a bold statement, but it is self-evidently true, particularly in America.

While governor of California, Ronald Reagan signed into law our nation’s first no-fault divorce bill, a decision he later admitted was one of the greatest mistakes of his political career.2 Within two decades, practically every other state followed suit.3 Predictably, divorce rates skyrocketed, more than doubling from 1960-1980.4 We are still absorbing the cultural aftershocks of these seismic shifts in the composition of the modern American family.

On a national level, divorce represents the deepest, most damaging fissure in the foundations of our now largely broken, dysfunctional families. Its concurrent rise among Christians is nothing short of scandalous, spreading the widening cultural chasm into the very bedrock of the household of God. Divorce tears families, churches, and countries apart, inflicting incalculable emotional, mental, and spiritual damage on husbands, wives, and their children.

If Reagan’s divorce legislation was among his greatest political blunders, then how much more are the Church’s now numerous divorce concessions among her greatest spiritual blunders?

A Biblical line in the stone

The Bible teaches that a lawfully wedded husband and wife must not divorce (Matthew 19:6; Mark 10:9; 1 Corinthians 7:10, 11). However, even if they do separate (note the critical distinction, which we will discuss in detail down the road), they are not permitted under any circumstance to remarry another person so long as their original spouse is living (Romans 7:2; 1 Corinthians 7:39). To do so would constitute adultery (Matthew 5:32, 19:9; Mark 10:11, 12; Luke 16:18; Romans 7:3) and preclude the possibility of reconciliation (1 Corinthians 7:11, 16).

The logic underlying these teachings is simple: In marriage, God has joined together a man and a woman in an exclusive, lifelong, one-flesh union that only God can separate (Genesis 2:24; Matthew 19:6; Mark 10:9), and that only by physical death (Romans 7:2, 3; 1 Corinthians 7:39). There is no other way out. According to Jesus Christ, this is God’s rule for all people for all time (Matthew 19:3-9; Mark 10:2-9)— it applies as much today as it did when God first instituted marriage at the beginning of creation (Genesis 2:18-25).

Yes, God still hates divorce. He always has and He always will (Malachi 2:16):

“‘For I hate divorce,’ says the LORD, the God of Israel. ‘He who divorces his wife covers his garment with violence,’ says the LORD of Hosts. So guard yourselves in your spirit and do not break faith.”

Jesus perfectly summed up His Father’s position on divorce: “What God has joined together, let not man separate” (Matthew 19:6b; Mark 10:9).

Everything you need to know about the Bible’s teachings on divorce is summed up in this single, straightforward statement.

American Christians must stand uncompromisingly on the word of God and draw a hard and fast line, not in the sand, but in the stone against the twin evils of divorce and unlawful remarriage. This is precisely what God did when He etched the seventh commandment into a stone tablet with His own finger (Exodus 31:18): “You shall not commit adultery” (Exodus 20:14). God never gave His people permission to divorce and enter adulterous remarriages under any circumstances because God Himself is the standard for our conduct, and He would never do that. To violate a sacred, lifelong vow would be totally antithetical to His nature.

If God hates divorce, why would He ever condone it? Can those Christians who bless divorce under certain conditions think of any other sin that God usually hates, but nevertheless sometimes allows? Does God lower His standards when we lower ours?

Changing God’s unchanging standard

Though this may come as a shock to you, the overwhelming consensus of the Early Church Fathers was that a spouse who divorced and remarried during the lifetime of his or her first partner was committing adultery, meriting severe Church discipline.5 When the Fathers spoke of “divorce” they clearly did not have in mind a dissolution of the marriage bond, but rather separation holding out for reconciliation.

The Fathers had obviously received this tradition from the Apostles (1 Corinthians 7:10, 11), who by their own admission were only reiterating what they had received directly from Jesus (1 Corinthians 7:12; Galatians 1:12; 2 Peter 1:16; 1 John 1:1). Jesus in turn said only what His Father commanded Him to say (John 12:49) and the Father said only what He had been saying from the beginning: What I have bound together for life, do not put asunder (Genesis 1:27, 2:24; Matthew 19:4-6; Mark 10:6-9). This is God’s standard, and like God Himself (Numbers 23:19; Malachi 3:6; Hebrews 13:8; etc.), it changes not (Isaiah 40:8; Psalm 119:89; Matthew 5:18; etc.).

This doctrine, known as the “indissolubility of marriage,” has been preserved to this day in the teaching of the largest branch of Christianity on earth, the Catholic Church. It was only during the Reformation some five centuries ago that a major offshoot of this branch, the Protestants, formally rejected this teaching.

Do not miss the gravity of what is being said here: By allowing for the dissolution of marriages and the concomitant right to remarry for certain exceptions, apart from God’s dissolving of marriage in death, the Protestant Reformers and their contemporaries were altering, as a matter of formal ecclesiastical policy, the consensus teaching of the majority of the Church for the first millennium and a half of its history.6 Yes, you had your rare dissenters from the mainstream understanding of divorce here and there, as was the case on virtually every other point of doctrine, but this was a unprecedented departure from Biblical orthodoxy and Church tradition.

This is not an overstatement, but rather an uncontroversial fact of history, and too few evangelicals are aware of it. Even people who disagree with the stance we are taking here grant this point.

Our Protestant predecessors did not live to witness the damage that their capitulation on divorce and remarriage would cause their spiritual descendants—residual precedent and societal pressures kept divorce at bay for a time in most of the cultures where their errors spread. Despite the great good the Reformers did in many important areas of Church doctrine and practice, on the topic of divorce, they sowed the wind, and we are reaping the whirlwind (Hosea 8:7).

Believers of recent generations are now feeling the mounting destructive forces of the flood of easy divorce our leaders have unleashed on us. And we are by no means mere passive victims but active perpetrators: According to some studies, evangelical Christians divorce at rates comparable to,7 if not higher than8 those of their unbelieving neighbors!

God, help us!

And yet, even now, our leading evangelical lights are swinging wide open the door to divorce that our Protestant forebears first cracked open. One eminent conservative evangelical theologian has even been so bold as to recently propose no less than ten grounds for divorce and remarriage, with many more like them possible! What started as zero exceptions became one, then two, then…ten! Where does it end?!

O how far we have fallen from God’s holy standards in our day!

Forget the 2015 Obergefell decision: The institution of marriage was first defiled in America decades earlier when Church-going, heterosexual Christians began embracing good old-fashioned, hard-hearted divorce. The unraveling of our marriages paved the way for the unraveling of marriage itself.

A holy hill to die on

One of the bloodiest and most controversial battles of the Vietnam War occurred at Ap Bia Mountain, or “Hamburger Hill” as it came to be known among Americans due to the carnage that took place there. Some of our readers may view this series on divorce the same way the antiwar protesters viewed the battle for Hamburger Hill: a “senseless and irresponsible” wasted effort that only added to the mounting numbers of the wounded.

We could not disagree more with this assessment.

True, not every hill is “a hill to die on.” But unlike Hamburger Hill, which was of little strategic value, the hill we are fighting for here, God’s holy hill of holy matrimony (Psalm 24:3; Hebrews 13:4), is perhaps the most strategic territory that the Church has ceded to the enemy in our time. It is truly a hill to die on. If American soldiers were willing to lay down their lives to defend a hill that was abandoned within days of its capture, how much more should we as Christian soldiers lay down our lives to defend the hill of covenant marriage, an institution whose heavenly reality will shine in consummated glory for all eternity (Revelation 19:6-9)?

Like the general who oversaw the costly conquest of Hamburger Hill, should we succeed in our mission to take back marriage from the hand of the enemy, we would say “This was a tremendous, gallant victory.”

We are enlisting to suffer in the fight for marriage to please our commanding officer (2 Timothy 2:3, 4)—will you join us?

We aren’t mincing words on our plan of attack.

Our objective is to strike a death blow to divorce, or die trying.

Let’s divorce divorce

American Christians have become wedded to divorce. In many churches, it is simply taken for granted. This has to change. In part II of this series, we will begin to unpack the Biblical teaching on divorce and remarriage in detail, showing that Christ forbade, without exception, both divorce and remarriage during the lifetime of one’s spouse. We’re serving up our divorce papers to divorce, chapter and verse, and we’re inviting you to do the same.

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