FWIW, here is my $0.02 worth.
Let me preface my opinions by stating the following:
(1) In all of my nearly 70 years here on terra firma and nearly 50 years as a born-again Christian, I have remained in the single marital status. That's the calling I sincerely believe that God has called me to fulfill for all the years He has ordained for me to live in this sin-cursed world. I say this due to the fact that since God has never led me to be married, I cannot personally relate to what it must be like to be married and then divorced.
(2) IMHO, I do not see being married and then divorced as the unpardonable sin as some people do.
As annsi and others have already posted, being married does seem to me to be a lifelong commitment. But in our society today--and that would include people who claim to be born-again believers--that kind of commitment doesn't seem as important as it once was.
I know that there can be some extenuating circumstances by both marriage partners that can be real challenges to their commitment that they vowed to each other on the day of their marriage ceremony. These could arise from many different factors, none the least of these is the fact that, dedicated as they may be to both God and each other as they seemed to be on the day when they said "I do" to each other (and to God too), they are still at best depraved sinners who have been redeemed to the Father only by the finished work of their Savior Jesus Christ.
I've heard both Christian men and women tell me that they have the "perfect marriage partner." When I hear them tell me that, all I can say--if anything at all--is that, if you do, then thank God for His blessing your marriage.
Many a time in my almost 50 years as an adopted child in God's family have I witnessed both marriages that "everyone" thought would last, and marriages that few people gave little chance of lasting survive, and many of the ones that didn't last were ones in which were those of people who were pursuing a vocation as a preacher/pastor/evangelist/wife of these vocational callings.
The founding president of the Bible college from which I graduated in 1976 had three sons--two of which experienced a divorce. Almost one-half of that Bible college's student body when I was a student there have been divorced.
What I at first thought was just a humorous jest that some of the Christian girls who went there weren't there for a BA degree but for an MRS degree. Looking back over these 40+ years when I was a student there, it now appears as if there was more truth to that jest than I now realize.
OTOH hand I see divorce and/or singleness as something both our Heavenly Father and His Only Begotten Son have first hand experience.
I say this for many different reasons, including the following:
(1) About the only near perfect marriage of two humans is that of Adam and Eve. In one respect, it was kind of difficult for them to have ever been physically/carnally untrue to each other both before and during most of their marriage.
Not being by any stretch of one's imagination am I even remotely qualified to even being considered as a Hebrew student/scholar, I used what resources I have readily at hand to see what they said regarding God's "marriage commission" to the first human couple. The best and most succinct one I found is from my King James Study Bible [(c) 1988 by Liberty University].
On page 11 it has this to say regarding what Genesis 2:24 tells us:
"God's ideal plan for marriage is one man for one woman for one lifetime. God's patter for marital happiness is evident when a man loves and leads his family, with children who obey and reverence their parents (Eph. 6:1-4), with a wife who respects and supports her husband's leadership (Eph.5:21-33). A mutually supportive attitude must characterize both husband and wife if they are to succeed in building a harmonious home. Illustration: Marriage is so important in the mind of God that it was the first of three divine institutions and was patterned to illustrate Christ's love for His church. Application: Christians should therefore do their part in contributing to the success of the family. (First reference, Gen. 2:24; Primary Reference, Eph. 5:22--6:4; cf. Matt. 19:3)"
Throughout the OT we see the seriousness God put on marriage by the various laws and provisions he made in the case of a man divorcing his wife, including the curse of a man marrying a divorced woman (Matt. 5:32).
In most of the pagan oriental societies of Bible times, all a man usually had to do was just to verbally divorce his wife, but God put such a premium on marriage that He demanded that the husband put in writing a "bill of divorcement" in which the husband was required to specify his reason(s) for divorcing his wife.
Moreover, in Christ's "inauguration message" for His ministry here on earth that comprises Matthew 5-7, He takes great strains to contrast what His audience in His "Sermon on the Mount" with "Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time--an expression He uses to compare how man interpreted the OT Law-- with "But I say unto you ....," which generally means what these so-called "scholars" (usually the scribes or the Pharisees or the Sadducees) decreed was "the Law."
It's no coincidence that these three groups of Jewish religious elitists were the ones who challenged practically everything Jesus said or practiced during His earthly ministry here. They had their own way of interpreting the Law, and woe be it to anyone who dared to openly challenge their ideas, especially this fellow whom they viewed as some vagabond Galilean misfit who had the nerve to claim Himself as being the Only Begotten Son of the Father of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Yet, Jesus didn't back down when He was openly challenged by this prideful group of know-it-alls. In retrospect, where are these Jewish religious elites today? OTOH, where is Jesus today?
Throughout the OT, we see how God patiently put up with His covenant people from the times of their being in Egyptian bondage during the time of Joseph in Exodus, through their 40 years of grumbling and complaining in their wilderness wanderings, all through the book of Judges, Kings, and Chronicles, and even through the times of the major and minor prophets--a period that some say may have lasted almost as long as it's been on this side of Calvary.
I'd say that's a fairly long stretch of time, wouldn't you?
Yet God STILL doesn't give up on His fallen human creations!
What about the rest of the NT after Acts?
The bulk of the remaining NT books are letters that either Paul, James, Peter, or Jude were inspired to write.
Paul, who some claim was once married but for some unspecified reason his wife died. Be that as it may, he not only repeated Christ's emphasis on marriage, but often expanded on it in 1 Corinthians 7. We also need to remember that few, if any, of the Corinthians were "married" in what we today consider a "Christian marriage ceremony." IOW, Paul recognized that these Corinthians were living in and among one of the most ungodly and licentious societies in the then-known Western world. In fact, even other pagan societies considered the Corinthian society so low that they would use the expression "You're as evil as a Corinthian!" as about the worst curse that a pagan of that day would use against another pagan.
Still Paul accepted the fact that, however these Corinthians were married, now that they are saved, God can use their less-than-scriptural backgrounds for His glory if these couples would sincerely recognize the fact that God can take what was once considered rather lightly in the eyes of some of their pagan neighbors to be an avenue of witnessing to them how God is a forgiving God of the second, third, fourth, etc., chance if they sincerely repent of their marriage failures and seek the guidance of both His written Word as well as the leadership of the Holy Spirit Who now indwells them.
Throughout Ephesians Paul likens the marriage of a man and a women to the future marriage of the people to whom are betrothed to Jesus Christ, and one day in the future will actually be married to the One Who saved them. Ephesians 2 so beautifully expounds how we who were once spiritually dead , but now saved by His marvelous grace are now spiritually "fitly framed together as the dwelling place of God the Holy Spirit."
In Ephesians 3:14 - 5:21 he gives some general advice to all Christian men and women. Then in 5:22 - 6:4 he gives commands to wives, husbands & fathers, and to children.
Peter, whom we know was married since Jesus healed his mother-in-law (Mark 1:29-31), in 1 Peter 3:1-12, also expands on what true submission within marriage and the family ought to express itself with regard to our prayer life and other practical ways of life.
Some commentators also include 1 Peter 3:15 as a way that a Christian's neighbors who are unbelievers can see what a good Christian ought to resemble in its day-to-day relationships it should (or should not) have.
IOW, if the lost people see your Christian marriage and home life being noticeably different, they just might be prone to ask you why your marriage and home life stays together, even through the inevitable differences that will crop up from time to time between either the husband and wife, or between the parents and their children, they just might ask you how you do it. What a wonderful opportunity you'd have to tell them of the One who's made that difference in your lives!
I know that I've spent many words in describing how I see God's Word telling us not only by commands, but also by giving us examples of how a Christian marriage founded on His Word can be a powerful witness in a society that's more and more looking like the Corinthian society was on the first century A.D.
raying:
