THEME:
The American Psychological Association estimates that 41% of first marriages will end in divorce. The Barna Research Group reports that the divorce rate among evangelicals is around 30%. While that’s an improvement, it’s still far too high. This makes it important for us to talk about marriage and its true purpose. Let’s explore what God intends for marriage and how he calls us to live—whether we are married, divorced, or unmarried. What I believe you’ll discover is that God’s love for you, and his desire to be close to you, is both overwhelming and wonderful.
KEY SCRIPTURE:
Ephesians 5:21-33
Ephesians 5:22-23
Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.
Love and respect are the centerpieces of a healthy Christian marriage
God intends for divorce to be a last resort, and never the primary option
Matthew 19:3-9
And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?” He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” They said to him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?” 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. And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.”
Adultery and abandonment by a non-believing spouse can be grounds for divorce
Matthew 5:32
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.
1 Corinthians 7:10-16
To the married I give this charge (not I, but the Lord): the wife should not separate from her husband (but if she does, she should remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband), and the husband should not divorce his wife. To the rest I say (I, not the Lord) that if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her. If any woman has a husband who is an unbeliever, and he consents to live with her, she should not divorce him. For the unbelieving husband is made holy because of his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy because of her husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy. But if the unbelieving partner separates, let it be so. In such cases the brother or sister is not enslaved. God has called you to peace. For how do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife?
Matthew 19:9
“And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.”
God is for you and he wants your marriage to succeed
Ephesians 5:3
But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper with the saints.