Did
God Think About Divorce?
31
“It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate
of divorce.’ 32 But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on
the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries
a divorced woman commits adultery.
Matthew
5:31-32
One
of my friends who got married last year got divorce last month. I asked him why
did he divorce. He said at a spur of a moment, “There is no spark no in between
us.” Marriage today has become spark business and has knowingly or unknowingly
lost the sanctity for which God had created the union of marriage.
We
are living in a world where there are different views on marriages. We find
people who go around saying that Bible teaches no divorce. There are few others
who say that Bible teaches divorce but no remarriage. There are yet others who
say that the Bible teaches divorce and remarriage and you’re free to do as you
will. What exactly does the Bible say is a question we need to ask and ponder.
Jesus
in the Sermon on the Mount is unmasking the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. God had
a very high view of marriage and had a clear command regarding marriage and
divorce. The Pharisees were not able to live by the standard God created and so
they invented a new standard and called it God’s standard.
Did
God ever think about divorce when he made man and woman? When we look at the
union that God created we see that it is God who brings the two people
together. When the man and woman are made one God says, “A man shall leave his
father and his mother, cleave unto his wife; and they shall be one flesh.” ‘Cleave
unto’ reveals the nature of marriage bond that God intended. The term has the
idea of being glued to something. When two people are glued together they
become one single individual and so it says, “they shall be one flesh.”
People
today enter into a marriage with the idea: if it doesn’t work out we’ll end it,
if it doesn’t make it we’ll forget it. Divorce was never an intention of God.
This is exactly what Jesus says in Matthew 19:8 – He said to them, “Because of your
hardness of heart, Moses, allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning
it was not so.”
When
Jesus says in v. 32 “But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife,
except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and
whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery”, Jesus is not sanctioning
divorce but trying to stop adding adultery to the already sinful thing of
divorce.
Why
didn’t God want divorce to take place? I believe, because it is a destructive
element. It hurts everybody involved. It does irreparable damage to everybody. And
most importantly it goes against God.
God
wanted an absolute commitment of body and soul for life to come forth in the
union.
This
Lenten season let us pray that we may have the energy, power and dimensions
necessary to fulfill the vows we made to our better halves and also to Lord
Almighty. Let us also take some time to pray for those who are on the point of
divorce in their life or are contemplating a remarriage.
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