Back in 2023, I wrote “On Divorce” where after many years I finally wrote down my thoughts on the Bible’s teachings on divorce. During that discussion, I concluded from scripture that no Christian may choose divorce, ever. It’s completely forbidden. I recently read another article on divorce, and I’d like to go over it point-by-point.
The first thing to do is disentangle from the mainstream churches’ fierce defense of American law; it is entirely unchristian. American marriage law is an ugly, materialistic contract with the government as a the major party. The couple are not contracting with each other, but with the government for enforcement. And the government has done a horrific bad job of it, making noises about what really matters between a couple, but really only interested in seizing control of physical property, and then treating the children as property, as well.
I recommend private ritual ceremonies and frankly advise people not to involve the government in any way.
This is absolutely correct, especially for men. But even for women, involving the state adds a perverse temptation to divorce for material reasons.
Back in 2021, China introduced a law requiring a 30-day wait period before finalizing a divorce. The result? The divorce rate dropped 70%. If government even hints that divorce is bad—by literally making couples wait a seemingly trivial amount of time—this has a huge impact in reducing divorces. Now, imagine how much less likely a woman is to divorce if she has fewer financial and social incentives to do so.
Just think about that for a moment: modern women—who initiate about two-thirds of every divorce—will forego a life-altering divorce because a minor inconvenience—waiting 30-days—is placed in front of it. This goes to show just how shallow most divorces truly are. This also shows that No-Fault Divorce directly serves to incentivize and actively encourage divorce.
Everything Jesus said about marriage, divorce and remarriage assumes the whole nation is a covenant community. The provisions don’t work outside of that.
Paul discusses things from an entirely different angle. His letters mentioning marriage were all published before any of the Gospels were. Whatever Paul knew about it came from his PhD background in the Talmud, and his later post-graduate level study with the risen Christ in Arabia. He says something slightly different than Christ taught because too many in Paul’s audience were Gentile converts bring into Christ their pagan marriages.
Let’s be quite careful about what we mean here. Jesus and Paul did talk about different aspects of marriage and divorce in different contexts. What they said was, at a simplistic level, literally different, but their teachings were not at odds with one another. They both taught the same thing. Here is what I wrote previously:
No Christian man has a right to renege on his marital covenant: the Law does not abrogate the man’s responsibility to the marriage. And so, no Christian man may divorce and a divorced woman should remain unmarried or reconcile. Thus Paul, Jesus, and Mosaic law are in agreement.
Why didn’t Paul and Mark allow an exception for sexual immorality? Was this exception implied and on what basis can someone make this claim? We have good reason to believe that Matthew’s account was not even written until long after Paul wrote to the Corinthians, and Paul gave no exception. Neither Mosaic Law, Jesus, nor Paul ever give an explicit right to divorce. None deny that divorce takes place, but they all forbid it nonetheless. What about the exception clause only found in Matthew?
Not even the exception clause in Matthew enables divorce, it merely excludes some divorced and remarried men from the category of adulterers. The primary purpose of the exception clause appears to be to exonerate the aggrieved party (men) from the charge of adultery after they remarry.
A lot of the confusion stems from the fact that modern man has rejected that sex always establishes a one-flesh marital bond, even when one or both parties are already married to another. Adultery is thus a second marriage (which is part of why it is so illicit!). But it is also an implicit divorce of the first (e.g. the wife literally leaves—divorces—her husband for another man).
Remember that divorce in the ancient Hebrew sense was just “sending away” or “being sent away.” It was just as informal as the act of marriage which produces a marriage, requiring no formal ceremony, certification, or third-party involvement.
If you drill down to what he was actually saying, particularly in his Corinthian letters, the issue boils down to this: If your spouse is a full member of the Covenant, then the rules are whatever Christ taught. If your spouse has a no connection, or a dubious connection, to the covenant community, then it’s a different game entirely.
Hurst notes that the audience matters. However, the audience of Jesus and Paul were different. Jesus was speaking to Jews. Paul was speaking to Christians. The key difference is that both groups were operating under different Covenants. The New Covenant that Jesus established has stricter requirements when it comes to divorce and remarriage, which is why I keep saying…
No Christian man has a right to renege on his marital covenant
…even if…
A Jewish man had the right to a divorce in certain situations
…and this is why Paul emphasized that a Christian man could not remarry even if his pagan wife left him. A pagan outside the Covenant Community could legally divorce, but this declaration of divorce was not binding on the man or on God himself.
Unlike most of the other Apostles, Paul was supremely fluent in Greek. He knew all the grammar rules and when they could and should be bent or broken. You cannot really trust English translations on this.
This is an important observation, and understanding it will get to the heart of the issue relatively quickly:
This is supremely important.
The term bondage here refers to being a bond-slave, being under the control of another. Paul is saying that if she leaves, he is no longer bound to serve her. What does this mean? Paul is referencing the Mosaic law:
If he marries another woman, he must not deprive the first one of her food, clothing and marital rights. If he does not provide her with these three things, she is to go free, without any payment of money.
Under Mosaic law, a husband was bound—enslaved, like a slave to his master—to provide for his wife. He was obligated to her even if he married another. This law in particular made it clear that if a husband failed in his duty, she was released from the marriage.
In Jesus’ discussion on divorce with the Pharisees, he made it clear that failure to provide “food, clothing, sex, children, and inheritance” was not valid grounds for divorce. How did he do that?
Consider the context of the debate. At the time there were two Rabbinic schools of thought regarding divorce: the school of Hillel and the school of Shammai. The Pharisees asked Jesus to weigh in on the argument. The school of Hillel believed that divorce was justified for any cause. It is to this which Jesus was arguing against. By contrast, the school of Shammai taught that only sexual sin was grounds for divorce, and Jesus agreed that any other reason for divorce would lead to adultery upon remarriage.
Thus, per Jesus, even if a spouse was released from their marital obligations, the couple remained married. That’s why remarriage was adultery: you can’t commit adultery unless you are still married!
I don’t mean to beat a dead horse here, but let’s repeat this because it is super important. According to Jesus, if a couple divorces for some reason other than sexual immorality—like food, clothing, sex, children, or inheritance—then any subsequent remarriage is adultery. If it is adultery, it must be because they are still married to their original spouse. By definition, only married people can commit adultery. If they are unmarried, it’s just called “getting married,” not adultery. In other words, though the couple may have been legally divorced, they were still married in the eyes of God.
Paul is saying the exact same thing, but this is obscured in the English. However, we can see it quite clearly in the Greek language.
If a pagan wife leaves [chōrizō] her husband he is no longer bound [enslaved; douloó] to provide for her the things—food, clothing, sex—that he is obligated to provide his wife. But even though she leaves [chōrizō] Paul forbids the husband from divorcing [aphiēmi] her.
We know this Paul explicitly contrasts two different words for divorce: one for the woman leaving [leave, depart, divide, or separate; chōrizō] and the other for the man divorcing [send away, leave, abandon; aphiēmi]. This indicates that the wife’s leaving is a different kind of divorce from the man’s divorce (to which he is forbidden). We also know this because Paul wants husbands to reconcile with their wayward wives if possible, which per Deuteronomy 24:1-4 (see below) is forbidden after a certification of divorce. If a wife leaves [chōrizō], yes, even if she gets a full legal pagan divorce, in the eyes of God and the church they are still married. The goal in such cases is always reconciliation, not divorce.
Paul is not saying the husband is now divorced because his wife has left, rather, the husband is now released—unbound—from the duties and obligations of that marriage (i.e. food, clothing, etc.) because she chose to leave. By leaving, she’s waived her marital rights. She cannot claim that she was wronged by his failure to provide for her: he owes her no support at all. But, if she decides to return, they are still married so he will take her back unconditionally (as with, incidentally, Hosea and Gomer) and she will regain her rights under that marriage.
This is one reason why the modern system of no-fault divorce and alimony and child support is decidedly unbiblical: a wife who leaves voluntarily—without cause—waives her marital rights. Who is at fault—who abandons the marriage and why—matters.
Under no circumstances can a Christian man divorce [aphiēmi] his wife, even if she leaves [chōrizō] him. Paul never allows a Christian man to divorce [aphiēmi] his wife, and neither does Jesus.
So when Hurst says…
The first thing to do is disentangle from the mainstream churches’ fierce defense of American law; it is entirely unchristian. American marriage law is an ugly, materialistic contract with the government as a the major party.
…he’s doing the same thing that Paul did when Paul refused to recognize any validity in the pagan Roman State’s issuance of divorce. The divorce issued by the Roman State to the pagan wife was not binding on her Christian husband because the husband answered to a higher authority.
Paul, when describing a Christian husband or wife, never once uses the word for divorce—apoluó—that Jesus used. Let’s emphasize this:
And some Pharisees came to him, testing him, and saying, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce [apoluó] his wife for any reason at all?”
So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together no human is to separate [chórizó].
They said to him, “Why then did Moses command to give her a certificate of divorce [apostasion] and send her away [apoluó]?” He said to them, “Moses, in view of the hardness of your hearts, allowed you to divorce [apoluó] your wives, but from the beginning it has not been this way. And I say to you, whoever divorces [apoluó] his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.”
Pay special attention to what Jesus said:
So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together no human is to separate [chórizó].
This is the same word—chórizó—that Paul used to describe a woman leaving her husband. It isn’t the word Jesus and the Pharisees used for divorce! Jesus said that what God has joined together, man shouldn’t even separate, let alone divorce. Thus, per Jesus, if a spouse is separated—chórizó—then they are still married because no man may separate, let alone divorce, what God has joined.
This teaching of Jesus is implicit in Paul’s use of these Greek words. The whole point of Jesus’ teaching is man can’t divorce a husband and wife and that doing so after a separation results in adultery after remarriage because they are still married despite being divorced—apoluó. In other words, no man is supposed to send away (aphiēmi) his wife even if she has separated (chórizó) from him or even divorced (apoluó) him, lest he be guilty of adultery when he marries another.
Let’s make this simple: if you separate what can’t be separated because only God can separate, then you are not actually separated.
If marriage doesn’t work, I recommend celibacy for prophetic reasons.
However, this is not a hard and fast rule. If you feel led by God to remarry, let’s counsel about that, because the door remains open for remarriage. By no means is this on the same terms as our pagan/secular American society. We decide remarriage on the same grounds as marriage in the first place: If the pairing serves a covenant purpose, then by all means, proceed.
…
For remarriage: Yes, you know that you’ve lost something that you cannot recover. That first partner imprinting will be a glitch you must live with the rest of your lives. It’s not insurmountable, but you must be extra vigilant against the Enemy forever after. The power of imprinting God built into us is not going to support your marriage for anyone who has had sex with anyone else. That’s a primary meaning of “defilement” — something God gave us is missing. Don’t confuse the ritual meaning of defilement with the spiritual meaning.
This is absolutely and critically incorrect. Whatever you do, do not follow this advice. If a non-Christian wife leaves her Christian husband, he cannot remarry. This has nothing to do with prophetic reasons or personal opinions. The Bible forbids it.
I’ll say this again: do not remarry.
Paul never allows a Christian to divorce, let alone remarry (while she still lives, of course). He accounts for a legal State-sanctioned divorce, but he never asserts its validity because it has none. Nowhere in the writings of Paul does he ever say that a Christian can get a divorce or is divorced in the eyes of God. He unbinds Christians from their previously enslaved marital duties to their spouse if their spouse leaves, but they remain married, regardless of what the pagan State says. To remarry is to commit adultery because they are still married to their “former” spouse, just as Jesus taught.
Never advise a legally divorced Christian to remarry: to commit adultery!
The whole point of Jesus’ exception was that it was an exception to the divorce, not an exception to the remarriage. The exception allows the divorce to be certified, but it does not allow remarriage. To wit:
The exception clause is an exception to the divorce, not the remarriage. When a man “divorces” his wife (gives her a certificate of divorce) after her sexual immorality—adultery—he is merely formalizing that which has already taken place when she abandoned her marriage.
This is precisely why Jesus said in Matthew 5 that when a man divorces his wife, it makes her—not him!—look like an adulteress. The Revised English Version translation captures this sense:
Because giving a wife a certificate-of-divorce makes everyone think she was unfaithful, a man can only divorce his wife if she was actually unfaithful. That’s the point of the exception clause. It’s not an allowance of divorce, but an exoneration of the husband for his wife’s unfaithfulness, that is, her divorcing him. It’s a matter of technical law: the certificate-of-divorce is the public acknowledgment that his wife was unfaithful.
When a wife is unfaithful, she is implicit divorcing her husband and explicitly marrying another man. That’s what leaving your spouse and having sex with another person—adultery—is: divorce and remarriage. So when the man formally “divorces” his wife following her unfaithfulness by giving her a certificate of divorce, he’s not actually divorcing her—sending her away—but merely getting the official certification of what already took place when she left him. He’s legally certifying that she played the harlot—that she divorced him—by officially declaring that she’s an adulteress.
Per Deuteronomy 24:1-4, a man who decides to give his wife a certificate of divorce is forbidden from taking her back. After publicly declaring her to be a harlot, he cannot later be reconciled to her, even if her second husband dies and frees her from that marriage. If he desires the option to take her back, he cannot formally divorce her. If you’ve formally divorced your wife for reason of marital unfaithfulness—the only “legitimate” reason to divorce—you cannot take her back.
This is, incidentally, what God did to Israel in Jeremiah 3:8. Israel had engaged in harlotry, and God explicitly issued her a certificate of divorce because of her adultery. But despite Judah also engaging in harlotry, God did not issue her a certificate of divorce, indicating that he never divorced her. God rejected Israel forever, but decided to stay married to Judah until her death released him. After the deaths of Israel and Judah, God then proposed marriage to their virgin children, which the Jews ultimately rejected.
Why would a husband choose give his wife a certificate of divorce (or not)? Because normally if she leaves him and remarries, it is assumed that it was due to a dereliction of his duties towards her, given her legal rights as per Exodus 21:10-11. The dissolution of the marriage might be presumed to be his fault. A divorce certificate is the prescribed way to distinguish between a wife’s marital unfaithfulness versus his failure to provide for her. In particular, if a man were to divorce his wife for any other reason than unfaithfulness it would nonetheless make it seem as if she is an adulterer. That’s what Jesus said in Matthew 5.
Thus, the only time Jesus allowed a Jewish man to “divorce” his wife was when she had already left him for another man. So, the exception is not actually an exception at all, but a merely legal allowance for the Jewish man to get a formal declaration (under Mosaic Law) against his unfaithful wife to exonerate him—to clear his name—from any wrongdoing. It’s a judgment against her, not a marital dissolution.
But, most importantly, he is still married to her in God’s eyes despite the declaration of divorce. If he were to remarry, he would become, in actual fact, a polygamist. The prescription against remarriage applies even after a legitimately certified divorce. He must remain single.
In the Old Testament, polygamy was permissible. But in the New Testament it no longer was. This is why remarriage was permissible to the Jews under the Old Covenant, but it was not permissible to the Christians under the New Covenant. Remarriage is disallowed because polygamy is disallowed. The Christian church has universally understand this to be the case. There is good reason for this:
Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be loosed. Are you loosed from a wife? Do not seek a wife. But if you marry, you have not sinned, and if a virgin marry, she has not sinned. Yet those who do marry will have trouble in the flesh, and I am trying to spare you.
This is one of those strange teachings to modern ears. Paul knew that polygamy was not a sin, but he also knew that it was, nonetheless, a bad thing to do. So he instructed all separated, unbound men not to remarry, but could not condemn people for choosing to do so. Thus it has been the teaching of the church to forbid polygamy, even though it is not a sin. It is one of those unusual cases in the Bible where something that is not a sin is forbidden anyway. Let this be a warning to those who teach “permissible” remarriage: you will have trouble in the flesh. Spare yourself the grief.
In any case, Paul makes clear here that it is not permissible for a man to seek to be loosed from his wife. Though it may be thrust upon him, he may not choose it nor steer its course towards that end.
In the Old Testament, where polygamy was acceptable, a woman could remarry if her first husband abandoned his duties to her. But a man could not divorce his wife for the same. The standards for men and women were different. The reason for this is rather obvious: while a woman has no control over whether a man does his duties to provide for her, a man has full control: he can’t choose to abandon his duties to his wife as an excuse to divorce her (e.g. to coerce her to leave by steering her towards that end), allowing him to marry another woman. This is precisely the point Jesus was making by rejecting “any cause” divorce and Paul was making by forbidding men from seeking divorce.
Tangential but important: It’s not about falling in love. That’s the dumbest reason for anything humans do. What matters most is that it’s a good idea based on the assumptions of the Covenant life. Romantic affection will grow on its own accord. It does not come first, but last. I realize that’s really tough for American women in particular, and it warrants an awful lot of teaching and reviewing to break down that demonic stronghold.
When Christ describe the Law of Love, he established the two greatest commandments: the love of God and the love of your neighbor. Paul established love as the highest ideal in marriage. The choice to love—truly falling in love—is of critical importance. Nearly any factor that would otherwise lead to divorce can be overcome if both parties truly love one another. But if one or both parties lack love, then virtually anything can tear it apart.
While a marriage cannot be held together if only one party loves, it is an absolute requirement that they do so unconditionally. One cannot wait for the other party to love completely before they do. This is why Paul’s command for husbands to love their wives is not conditional on his wife’s actions. This is why Peter tells wives to be devoted to their husbands, even when they are objectively bad husbands. Love is necessary for any marital relationship.
A lot of the confusion stems from the fact that modern man has rejected that sex always establishes a one-flesh marital bond, even when one or both parties are already married to another. Adultery is thus a second marriage (which is part of why it is so illicit!). But it is also an implicit divorce of the first (e.g. the wife literally leaves—divorces—her husband for another man).
In any case, Paul makes clear here that it is not permissible for a man to seek to be loosed from his wife. Though it may be thrust upon him, he may not choose it nor steer its course towards that end.
In the Old Testament, where polygamy was acceptable, a woman could remarry if her first husband abandoned his duties to her. But a man could not divorce his wife for the same. The standards for men and women were different. The reason for this is rather obvious: while a woman has no control over whether a man does his duties to provide for her, a man has full control: he can’t choose to abandon his duties to his wife as an excuse to divorce her (e.g. to coerce her to leave by steering her towards that end), allowing him to marry another woman. This is precisely the point Jesus was making by rejecting “any cause” divorce and Paul was making by forbidding men from seeking divorce.
This is the main reason why i don’t trust any of the RP® Genius Leaders who in the words of ST. Dal’ – ”talk like Christ but act like Oprah on the issue of divorce.”
https://theredarchive.com/blog/Dalrock/warn-men-beware-christian-marriage-doublespeak-and.12193
This issue is so important I’m asking my readers and other bloggers to do whatever they can to help spread the word and protect men and their future children. Any blogger who wishes to is free to repost this entry in part or its entirety on their own blog with a link back to this page. Literally millions of men are at risk here, and we can help them understand the reality they face.
One of the more dangerous assumptions I see men making is that if they marry a Christian woman they will be somehow shielded from the epidemic of divorce. I’ve stated in the past that most churches talk like Christ but act like Oprah on the issue of divorce. I’ve also shown how Christians like Glenn Stanton from Focus on the Family are actually proud that devout Christians only divorce 38% of the time. More recently I’ve shown that the movie Christians cherish for representing their values on marriage is actually barely dressed up divorce porn for women.
Dalrock was better than any of the self-proclaimed RP® Genius Leaders as he didn’t eat bonbons while watching NFL players in pink play foosball, admire himself in the mirror as he did biceps curls, or love divorce as they effeminately do.
I recently had a talk with my parents about the modern state of marriage. We were talking about how people are not getting married, but are living together as if they were. More and more they are not involving the State.
I suggested that this was right and proper, that the State shouldn’t be involved. Shockingly, they didn’t outright disagree. A few years ago they would have.
I suggested that churches would be the best place to enforce the marriage, not the State, and they said that churches refuse to do this.
This is from my parents. I was shocked to hear it from them. After decades of gay schisms, I think they finally realize that the modern church isn’t there to help establish godly relationships.
I don’t think the Red Pill has gone mainstream, as they know nothing about Red Pill. Rather, since the tyranny of 2020 and 2021, the degradation of society and Christianity has gotten so bad and overt that it’s just too big to ignore. Those with discernment know because it’s too obvious not to see.
If he’s talking about the movie “Fireproof” verses the book “The Love Dare” that it is based upon, I both read the book and watched the movie. I don’t agree with his take…
…that the beloved movie was feminized but the hated book was conservatively Christian. Where the movie is full of “man up” language and other churchian tropes, so too is the book. In fact, I found some parts of the book to be especially cringeworthy, as such things were written explicitly, whereas the movie merely implied those same things.
I wonder if Dalrock even watched the movie or read the book. From his comments, it sounds like he was just reading about them on a forum. I find his conclusions to be suspect. I’m not 100% positive that he knows what he’s talking about.
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