The Marriage Vow
- Christopher Diebold
- 15 hours ago
- 3 min read
Among the antithetical sayings of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus raises an issue with the marriage vow by quoting the words of Moses from Deut 24:1-4. Broadly speaking, the intent of those verses in Deuteronomy was not to establish divorce as normative but to highlight simultaneously the sanctity of marriage and the effective power of speech via marriage vows. If a man marries a woman but then divorces her, he cannot take her back, “for that is an abomination before the Lord.” If whatever prompted the divorce in the first place was suddenly no longer an issue, then the sanctity of marriage as an institution would be defiled. These verses in Deuteronomy are not intended to restrict the practice of remarriage but to restrict the practice of divorce. To be sure, Jesus acknowledges a certain exception that would warrant divorce, namely sexual immorality, but that is a consequence of the fall and of sin; in the beginning it was not so. Thus, Jesus seeks to bring the law and the prophets to their fullest expression by underscoring the sanctity of marriage and the binding power of the marriage vow.
But what about that exception? And is Jesus disallowing any other grounds for divorce? The intent of this reflection is to present the thoughts of our denomination on this matter as presented in a study paper delivered to the twentieth General Assembly of the PCA. That study paper reviewed the biblical data on the matter of divorce in the Old and New Testaments. In their comments on Matt 5:31-32, the authors emphasize the fact that Jesus is focused on the guilt of a husband who divorces his wife for an unbiblical reason. Then, they comment, “[W]e simply point out that the emphasis in this text should not be on the fact that there is an exception, but rather that there is only one exception. There is only one legitimate reason why the husband may be considered as not sinning by putting away his wife. … Nor are we led to believe that a husband is ‘obliged’ to divorce his wife in the case of sexual immorality. All that the text says is that if he does divorce her for that reason, he is not implicated in the sin of causing her to commit adultery.”[1] Nevertheless, sexual immorality is presented by our Lord as an exception to the binding nature of the marriage vows and is therefore a ground for divorce.
Whether that is the only ground for divorce depends in part on how one understands Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 7. If “Paul is referring to a situation in which the deserted spouse is the passive victim of the unrighteous termination of a marriage,” then “what we have here is not another ground for divorce, but from the perspective of the offended spouse, a fait accompli.”[2] That is to say, Paul seems to be dealing with a de facto situation of divorce, even if the two are still legally married and even if they are still cohabitating. Thus, the authors conclude, “In the circumstances of our culture, Paul would say that the believer is not obliged to go to court to attempt to stop the divorce, and may in fact undertake to make de jure what is already de facto by initiating the legal process of divorce.”[3] If one avoids semantic arguments, then what Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 7 is tantamount to a ground for divorce.
But what is Paul describing in 1 Corinthians 7? Desertion is the act of nullifying the marriage vows, whether that be through forms of abuse or a physical withdrawal from the home and marriage relationship. Because Scripture gives us a foundation and general principles for life and godliness, an exhaustive list of behaviors that qualify as desertion is not provided in the Bible. Nevertheless, the authors provide the following general principle: “To qualify, a sin must have the same extreme effect as someone’s physical abandonment of his spouse. Both porneia and desertion are objective acts by which a marital covenant might be broken.”[4] Discretion is left to each Session, as shepherds, to address specific situations with godliness and gentleness.
So, then, while God’s intent for marriage and the goal of the marriage vows themselves is to commit one man and one woman to a life-long covenant relationship, the ravages of sin in and through fallen humanity may result in the lamentable breach of the marriage vows and covenant relationship in the cases of sexual immorality and desertion.
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