Join us as we delve into the rich discussion on the relationship between personal choices, societal norms, and the teachings of scriptures. This episode sheds light on how infidelity can impact the sanctity of marriage and why societies have historically advocated for marriage stability. We also touch on the differing interpretations of divorce in religious contexts, with insights from the teachings of Paul. Understand how love, intimacy, and commitment play vital roles in our lives based on biblical perspectives.
The CEM Network is pleased to present Ronald L. Dart and Born to Win.
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When the history of our generation is finally written, I think historians will see the greatest single tragedy of our generation as the disintegration of the family. Some experts are now telling us that half of all new marriages will end in divorce. You’re walking down the aisle next Sunday? Well, you’ve got a 50-50 chance, according to these people. We tried an experiment in this country of making divorce easier, but we just never thought through the consequences. I don’t think we understood why society ever felt constrained to keep marriages together. I think people thought perhaps it was purely a religious impulse, and since religion isn’t very important, we don’t have to do that anymore. I don’t think they realized that the reason why society has an interest in keeping marriages together is for the children. And what happens to the children? And when the children start going bad in society, the society is going to go bad. You know, they’ve done studies on this and determined that children in single-parent families, including those whose parents never got married in the first place, are more likely to drop out of high school. Children in single-parent families, well, the girls are more likely to become pregnant. Those children are more likely to abuse drugs and to get in trouble with the police and than children who live with both parents. Oh, it’s not an absolute. Sure, there are kids who live with both parents who do all these things, but the statistics are remarkably different. Society and God have seen a need to keep the family together for the sake of the children. So Jesus, in his most fundamental teaching, the Sermon on the Mount, takes what appears to be a very strict view of divorce. He said this, Now this is a pretty tough statement. although it’s not quite like some theologians would try to make it. You may have trouble believing this at first, but this is really a very, what shall we say, a very pro-woman statement on Jesus’ part. It’s protective of women and women’s rights. You’ve got to understand that the civilization in which Jesus was speaking, including the one that originally gave the laws on divorce and remarriage, It was a very different world from this. It wasn’t so easy for a woman who found herself divorced to go out and get a job. And as far as welfare was concerned, well, there was a kind of societal welfare system. But it was a pretty tough way to live. And you have a situation where a man can marry a woman. and she can keep his house and bring up his children and all those good things, devote her life to him and to her children. And he can, because he gets tired of her or because he finds a new cutie, he can divorce her. Well, the Old Testament law said, well, anybody that does put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement. We can’t have this willy-nilly just throwing a woman out in the streets. She’s got to have something in her hand as she goes out to say that she is a free woman, with the possibility of remarrying again, as we’ll come to in a moment. Well, Jesus said, you men, when you put away your wife, saving for the cause of her having done some fornication, you cause her to commit adultery. You’re culpable, you louse. Men who actually take their wives through the childbearing years, men who live with women during all those early years, and then find another woman they like a little better and throw her out. God’s eyes are lice. They are just a louse, the way they treat the women. Now, there are those who believe that all divorce is simply wrong, all the time and for whatever reason, and that those who are divorced should remain single or be reconciled to their original mate. Now, it’s very hard to see how this position can be maintained in the face of the actual words of Jesus. In the first place, the opening statement according to Jesus is too broad. Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement. Now what this implies is that divorce for any reason is okay, but the formalities must be observed. And this was the position of many in the religious establishment at the time Jesus was teaching this. Jesus said no. He says, I say unto you that whoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causes her to commit adultery, and whoever marries her who is divorced commits adultery. Now, think very carefully about what he said. He plainly includes an exception, doesn’t he? Whoever shall put away his wife except for the cause of fornication. What’s fornication? Well, fornication in English is defined as, and I quote, voluntary sexual intercourse between two unmarried persons or two persons not married to each other. Now, some interpreters have chosen to see this in terms only of the first phrase. In other words, fornication is only before marriage, and if it’s discovered after marriage, it’s cause for divorce, because what it really amounts to is fraud. In other words, we got married under fraudulent circumstances. The marriage, therefore, was not valid. We can more or less annul that marriage. But really, that’s not what the word means. The Greek word translated fornication refers to any kind of sexual liaison apart from that between a man and his wife, including adultery or any other kind of sexual deviancy. Jesus is plainly allowing an exception of divorce with the right of remarriage in cases of infidelity. What he recognizes is that infidelity breaks the bond of trust and may very likely make the marriage untenable. And also, think about what the offended mate has got to consider. The possibility that her husband, who went out and fooled around, has brought home AIDS or syphilis or gonorrhea. that once that sexual relationship has been broken, it can break the marriage. Indeed, if the offended party does not want to stay with the other person, they don’t have to. Now back to Jesus’ statement. But I say unto you that whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causes her to commit adultery. Why does putting away one’s wife cause her to commit adultery? There are two considerations here. One, if she’s put away for an invalid cause. According to Jesus, she’s still married to the man in God’s eyes. Therefore, if she marries another, the marriage is adulterous. But couldn’t she remain single? I mean, why does he say he causes her to commit adultery? She could, of course, just not get married again and not have sex for the rest of her life. Now, not many people will point this out here, but I have to. that there is a tacit recognition here that human beings need intimate companionship. It’s unreasonable, having put a woman away, to expect her to live alone the rest of her life. A wife put away for an unjust cause will almost certainly enter a new intimate relationship and therefore commit adultery because of her marriage to this first man. So Jesus says, you’re putting an intolerable burden upon a woman when you throw her out of your house like that. But that wasn’t all Jesus had to say on this subject. We’ll talk about the rest of it when I come back after this message.
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What did Jesus really say about divorce? If you have been through the agony of divorce, do you have to live single for the rest of your life? Write or call for an eye-opening article, Is There Life After Divorce? Write to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. Or call toll free 1-888-BIBLE-44.
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The Pharisees came to Jesus sometime after he’d made this statement and tried to put him on the spot. They said, is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause? Now, this was a basic point of theological disagreement among the different elements of the religious establishment of the time. Some of them felt that you could divorce your wife for any cause. Others of them were more restrictive in their approach. Well, Jesus’ answer to this was, well, it set them back on their heels because it was pretty absolute. He answered and said to them, Have you not read that he that made them at the beginning made them male and female, and said, For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. Wherefore they are no more two, they are one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder. Now, notice how absolute this statement is. No exceptions, no breaks, no remarriage. God put them together. Man can’t put them apart. Well, the Pharisees then had a logical question. They said, well, now, why then did Moses command to give a writing of divorcement and to put her away? We don’t understand. They thought they had him. He was disagreeing with Moses. And if they could get him disagreeing with Moses, well, they felt they could discredit Jesus. Well, here is what Moses said. It’s found in Deuteronomy chapter 24 and verse 1. When a man has taken a wife and married her and it come to pass that she find no favor in his eyes because he has found some uncleanness in her, then let him write her a bill of divorcement and give it in her hand and send her out of his house. Now, what in the world does it mean that she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some uncleanness in her? Well, the Hebrew word for uncleanness means nakedness. And Moses, and indeed the law as a whole, is pretty delicate in the terminology that it uses for things that people do. It uses a lot of euphemisms. And nakedness or matter of nakedness in Hebrew structure is a euphemism for sexual uncleanness or fornication. Playing the harlot. In other words, he has taken a wife, he’s actually married her, and then it happens that she falls out of favor because he has found that she’s been fooling around. In other words, this is not divorce for any cause, but for the same cause Jesus gave in the statement on the Sermon on the Mount. If any man put away his wife for any cause except fornication. So Moses said the same thing that Jesus said. Then he goes on to say, and Moses does, when she is departed out of his house, she may go and be another man’s wife. You know what is happening here is that Moses’ law is saying a woman can continue to have a life. And that’s what I mean when I have in this article entitled, Is There Life After Divorce? Does it mean you basically have to dry up and become a hermit or go jump off a cliff somewhere because you can’t live single? Well, hardly. The Law of Moses specifically said that when this has happened, She may be another man’s wife. The whole idea is you don’t want people throwing women out and them going and shacking up with some other guy. Society needs the stability of marriage. Children need the stability of marriage. If you don’t have that, your society is going to turn into Sodom and Gomorrah. So divorce with the right of remarriage was permitted by Moses in one particular case. Now, how did Jesus respond to this idea when they said, well, now, why does Moses in the law command to give a writing of divorcement and to put her away? He said to them, Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, permitted you to put away your wives. But from the beginning, it was not so. In other words, there was an original intent by God that marriage be one man, one woman for life. But because of the hardness of human hearts, because we’re sinners, because we make mistakes, because we foul up, then additional considerations have to be taken. Jesus said, this is the way Moses permitted. It was not that way from the beginning. But I say unto you, whoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, commits adultery. And whoever marries her which is put away, commits adultery. So Jesus agrees entirely with Moses, and in the process, he tells us something very interesting about the law. There was an original intent. There was a statement of right and wrong, which is rooted in the natural law. But when sin enters the picture, life and society still has to go on. So what are we going to do when sin has entered the picture? What are we going to do when the marriage has come completely apart because of infidelity on the part of one or both parties, for that matter? Well, Jesus said, under those circumstances, a person may get married again, but only under those. The disciples said to him, well, if that’s the case of a man with his wife, it’s good not to marry. Now, the disciples aren’t making a whole lot of sense here. You know, you just read that and they say, well, now, wait a minute. Based upon this thing that a man can’t put away his wife except for fornication, then it’s good not to marry? Well, unless they’re speaking narrowly of the divorced man, they’re not making any sense. In other words, if this is the case, they are saying, then it’s good for the divorced man not to remarry. And Jesus said to them, All men cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it is given. There are some who are eunuchs who were born that way. There are some who are eunuchs who were made eunuchs of men. And there be eunuchs which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. And by eunuch, he is basically speaking of someone who is going to be celibate. He said, He that is able to receive it, let him receive it. Now, this is a pretty important statement because it is, again, a tacit recognition of the very real human need for intimacy. We need to be touched. We need to be held. We need to be loved. And you take a poor woman who has no other means and throw her out of the house in a divorce situation and give her her writing of divorcement, what’s she going to do? Is she going to be able to have a man? Is she going to be able to have a family, a home, a place where she can feel secure? In that world, it was really tough to be outside of marriage. And, you know, what a lot of people don’t realize in the 20th century is it’s terribly hard on women who are divorced. A man finds himself a new cutie, decides, well, I don’t love this woman anymore, and it’s probably better for her if we’re not living together, right? Right. And so he divorces her. Statistics tell us that, by and large, women suffer twice as much financial hardship after a divorce as the men do. It’s still very hard on women. Well, it was harder yet in the days when Moses gave his law and when Jesus made his statement. And so consequently, what both Moses and Jesus were trying to do was to offer some measure of protection to women. Paul recognized the same problem. In 1 Corinthians 7, verse 1, he said, Now concerning the things you wrote unto me, it’s good for a man not to touch a woman. Now, before anyone goes off the deep end here, keep in mind Paul’s opening statement. In whatever circumstances the Corinthians had described in their letter to Paul, it was not good for a man. He’s not making a generalization to cover all times, all places, and all circumstances. It purely has to do with the circumstances that the Corinthians had written to him about. In those circumstances… it’s good for a man not to touch a woman. What were those circumstances? Well, we don’t know for sure. Now, you’re reading someone else’s mail, and it’s very easy to understand or misunderstand what he is saying. And he clarifies it, though, as he goes on. He says in verse 2, having said it’s good for a man not to touch a woman, nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and every woman have her own husband. Now, that is a clear recognition of the human need for intimacy. He says, get married, don’t commit fornication, because the temptation will be very powerful. Let the husband render to the wife due benevolence, and likewise the wife unto the husband. The wife has not the power of her own body, but the husband. And likewise the husband has not the power of his own body, but the wife. Paul’s beating around the bush a little bit here and using, again, euphemistic language. And what he’s talking about is that for husbands and wives, they need to have their sexual relationships on a regular basis, lest somebody be tempted outside of the marriage. He says don’t defraud the other. He actually considers the withholding of the intimate relationship as defrauding one another. Don’t do that, he says, except it be with consent for a time to give yourselves to fasting and prayer. And then come together again that Satan tempt you not because of your abstinence. Interesting, isn’t it? He recognized fully the flesh, the needs of the flesh, and the fact that you’re going to get tempted if you stay apart too long. He continued to say, but I speak this of permission and not of commandment. He’s giving his judgment for the time and for those circumstances. For I would, says Paul, that all men were like I am. But every man has his proper gift of God, one after this manner and another after that. He’s basically saying the same thing Jesus did. Some men have the gift of celibacy and some of them don’t. And the ones that don’t had better get married. I gather Paul was single, and he recommended, at least in those circumstances, that being single was better. I say, therefore, he said to the unmarried and the widows, it’s good for them if they stay like I am, but if they cannot contain, let them marry. It is better to marry than to burn. Now we could talk a lot about what he meant by that, but I think the implication is simply this. That we are human and we need love. We need affection. We need intimacy. We need human contact and touching. And if we can’t live without it, then we need to be married. Because otherwise… We’re just going to burn internally in our hearts and our lives, and the chances are we’re going to sin. There’s more on this. We’ll talk further when I come back.
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For a free copy of this radio program that you can share with friends and others, write or call this week only and request the program titled The Words of Jesus No. 9. Write to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. Or call toll free 1-888-BIBLE-44. And tell us the call letters of this radio station.
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Paul says that it’s better for the unmarried and widows to stay single if they can under those circumstances. But he says if they can’t contain, let them marry. It’s better to marry than to burn. Then he says, “…to the married I command,” this isn’t just my opinion, this is what God says, “…let not the wife depart from her husband. If she departs, let her remain unmarried, or be reconciled to her husband, and let the husband not put away his wife.” Now Paul’s not changing the rules here. He’s talking about the circumstances that prevail unless there has been fornication or sexual uncleanness involved. In other words, if you’re just getting upset with one another a lot, if you’re just fighting a lot, or if the woman isn’t a very good cook. To the married, I command, let not the wife depart from her husband. If she departs, let her remain unmarried or be reconciled. And the husband is not to put away his wife. Let’s don’t have any more of these frivolous divorces. Now, to the rest speak I, not the Lord. Now, this is funny. He has a category called the unmarried and the widows. Then he has the people who are married. And then he says to the rest, well, what’s the rest? You’re either married or you’re unmarried, you would think. Well, the rest is a category of people where one person in the marriage is a believer and the other one is not, which really posed a special problem for the early church. He said, To the rest speak I, not the Lord. If any brother has a wife who doesn’t believe, and she is pleased to dwell with him, let him not put her away. The fact that she’s not of the same faith as you, or she’s an unbeliever, is not cause for divorce. And the woman that has a husband that doesn’t believe, if he’s pleased to dwell with her, she shouldn’t leave him. For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife. The unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband. Else were your children unclean, but now are they holy. Now that is a strange statement. Very hard to grasp, really, from the 20th century looking back, is what in the world is he talking about? Well, the word holy is the operative word in this case, and it’s a simple enough concept. Basically, it means your children are set apart. They’re not just like every other children. They are actually considered as special to God or set apart for God. And in fact, an unbelieving husband is set apart from the rest of the world in God’s eyes because he’s married to a believing woman. And so consequently it says, don’t break up these marriages because one believes and another one doesn’t. I mean, after all, if they’re pleased to stay, stay together. Now the problem of being married to an unbeliever in the first century church was a very different one from what it would be today. Because in that world, the pagan practices and the practices of unbelievers were, that’s for another program. But Paul goes on to say, but if the unbelieving depart, let him depart. A brother or sister is not under bondage in such cases. God has called us to peace. But what do you know, O wife, whether you shall save your husband? Or how do you know, O man, whether you shall save your wife? But as God has distributed to every man, and as the Lord has called every one, so let him walk, and so ordain I in all the churches. Now, Paul’s choice of the word bondage, if the unbelieving depart, let him depart, a brother or sister is not under bondage in such cases. His choice of that word suggests that the woman who is deserted need not feel bound to the departed husband. It means that she is free to remarry. If you’d like a more detailed discussion of Jesus’ teaching on divorce and remarriage, write and ask for our booklet, Is There Life After Divorce? We’ll give you the address again at the end of the program. Now back to the Sermon on the Mount and the words of Jesus. He said, Again you have heard it has been said by them of old time, You shall not forswear yourself, but you shall perform unto the Lord your oaths. But I say unto you, swear not at all, neither by heaven, for it’s God’s throne, nor by the earth, for it’s his footstool, neither by Jerusalem, for it’s the city of the great king. You shall not swear by your head, because you cannot make one hair black or white. Let your communication be yes, yes, no, no, for whatever is more than these things comes from evil. Now, you’ve got to understand this section in the light of Jesus’ teaching that sin starts from the inside. It starts from the heart. The fact is an awful lot of people had the idea that, well, if I tell you something is true but I don’t swear that it’s true, I haven’t done anything wrong. In other words, I can lie in my teeth if I just don’t swear. So by telling you, well, before God in Christ I lie not and I hold up my hand and I actually, as it were, give you an oath, well, then you can depend that I’m telling the truth. And then you can feel offended if I have lied to you. Jesus said, no, you can feel offended if somebody lies to you, period. The mere matter of giving an oath or swearing up and down on a stack of Bibles that this is true, it’s foolishness. Your word had better always be good. If you intend to deceive, you have lied, whether you swore by an oath or whether you didn’t. The losers of this world go around constantly looking for loopholes. The winners tell the truth from the heart. Until next time, this is Ronald Dart, and you were born to win.
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The Born to Win radio program with Ronald L. Dart is sponsored by Christian Educational Ministries and made possible by donations from listeners like you. If you can help, please send your donation to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. You may call us at 1-877-7000. 888-BIBLE44 and visit us online at borntowin.net.
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Christian Educational Ministries is happy to announce a new full-color Born to Win monthly newsletter with articles and free offers from Ronald L. Dart. Call us today at 1-888-BIBLE44 to sign up or visit us at borntowin.net.
