God Can Identify With Divorce

Jeremiah 3:8; 31:31-32: "'I gave faithless Israel her certificate of divorce and sent her away because of all her adulteries . . . . I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them,' declares the LORD."



In a culture today that is saturated with marital separation and divorce, we who make up the Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ must deal with this painful reality that is affecting so many lives. Tragically, what I hear from attendees of divorce recovery programs is that the Church is ostracizing their divorced members, irrespective of the circumstances that brought the divorce to pass. Even though many of these divorced people labored to save their marriages at all costs, they still are being set aside as unfit for the kingdom of God; their churches are taking the position that the divorced are precluded by their marital status from using their giftedness for the cause of Christ. These people are being overlooked for positions of church ministry and leadership; they are marked with a stigma comparable to the reprobate (or even worse, for even the reprobate have a hope of being "redeemed").



The Church must re-examine the Scriptures to see how God has handled the subjects of marriage and divorce. First, we must recognize that divorce was never God's intention from the beginning of time when He created the institution of marriage (Matthew 19:8). Human marriage was created not only to meet a relational need within humanity (Genesis 2:18) and to produce future generations that would seek the Lord (Malachi 2:15); first and foremost, the institution was designed by our Sovereign Creator for the purpose of helping us appreciate in a tangible way His relationship with His bride. (Ephesians 5). In the Old Testamant, this marriage was with the covenant community; in the New Testament, it is with the Church. And God has commanded that the husband and wife remain faithfully commited to each other within the covenant of marriage (I Corinthians 7:10-11) to model the faithful fidelity that Our Lord has for His bride. We know that Our Lord does not abandon us. He always is faithful to us, even when we demonstrate faithlessness through sin (2 Timothy 2:13). We never have to worry about whether God will forsake us for someone else; He is commited to His covenant. So too, He holds us to the same standard of fidelity to our spouses, so that we better can appreciate His immutable commitment to us. Only God could design a human relationship so intimate and special that it would teach us about His level of intimacy with those who have surrendered to His Lordship.


Still, God is not without the painful experience of divorce Himself. As one reads through the Old Testament, one is able to see that a covenant was established early between God and the Israelites through Moses (see Deuteronomy 28-29). Yet with time, the Israelites began to adulterate themselves by following after pagan gods and commiting detestible acts of rebellion against the Lord. One can find God calling out to His bride to return to Him, so that the covenant could be restored; but the covenant community would have none of it. They enjoyed their estrangement, and determined not to return to their covenant. Eventually, a point was reached in which God decreed that He gave "faithless Israel a certificate of divorce and sent her away because of her adulteries." At this point, God's covenant relationship was broken; God became divorced.


Some would say that these passages are merely figurative . . . that God really has not experienced either marriage or divorce. I would counter by again saying that our human marriages were created to help us appreciate THE ULTIMATE MARRIAGE COVENANT of God with His covenant people. Thus, God has experienced the ultimate divorce. I believe that this is why God can say in Malachi 2:16, "I hate divorce." God has experienced the pain of rejection by His bride for another "person." He knows the agony of pleading for His covenant love to return only to see an unresponsiveness from her.


Nonetheless, once the covenant was broken, God declared that a new covenant would be established; but this new covenant would be with a new bride, the Church. Paul addresses this in Romans 9 when he says, "It is not as though God's word had failed. For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel . . . . it is not the natural children who are God's children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham's offspring" (9:6,8). God had seen the severing of the old covenant through the infidelity and abandonment of the covenant community, resulting in a new covenant with the Church. Thus, we can see that God has not only experienced divorce but He has been remarried as well. (Of course, those naturalized Israelites who lived before the arrival of Jesus Christ but who by faith trusted in the coming Messiah to provide salvation are counted with the new covenant people who now look back upon the reality of Jesus as the fulfillment of God's grace and thus are the beneficiaries of the true Abrahamic Covenant [see Hebrews 11:13-16]).


Marriage should be honored by all (Hebrews 13:4). God expects that those who enter into the covenant of marriage should remain commited to the one with whom they entered into covenant. Still, for those who have experienced the betrayal and abandonment of their spouse, they should not be ascribed by the Church the label of "Unfit for the Kingdom of God." If the Church is not going to look at the circumstances of the divorce to determine the culpability of the divorce . . . if instead the Church is going to label every divorced person as unfit for kingdom work, then it will need to assign the same unworthiness to God Himself. I wonder sometimes how many churches would prevent God from speaking from the pulpit or holding a position of leadership or using His abilities to edify the members simply because of His divorced status. It is a very sobering thought isn't it?