What the Bible Teaches about Divorce Lesson 5: Correct Policies for a Local Church

In carrying out its mission to a world where the family and other basic social institutions are disintegrating, a local church encounters more and more people who have been divorced. They view themselves as leading normal lives, whereas Scripture brands the remarried ones as adulterers. As the instrument of Christ, a church must show compassion and mercy without compromising its testimony against sin. Fashioning right policies toward these people is therefore not an easy task. A church must find a path through a thicket of thorny questions. The most pressing are these, ordered from easiest to hardest:

1. Should a pastor officiate at the remarriage of a divorced person?
2. Should a church promote a divorced person to leadership?
3. Should a church admit a divorced person to membership?
4. Should a church require a divorced person to repent or make restitution?

The Lord Himself clearly condemned divorce and remarriage after divorce. He did not allow either for any reason. Except under special circumstances that cannot arise in the modern world, which no longer treats adultery as a capital offense, divorce and subsequent remarriage break the Seventh Commandment. Thus, a pastor today need not doubt the right answer if he is asked to officiate at the wedding of a divorced person. He must say, no. Otherwise, in his exalted role as a minister of the gospel, he will place his blessing on adultery. While speaking on behalf of God, he will tell the blasphemous lie that God approves of sin. How will God regard the lie? He will see it as a monstrous presumption, a betrayal of a sacred trust.

In laying out the requirements for high office in the church, Paul counseled Timothy,

2 A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behaviour, given to hospitality, apt to teach;
. . . .
12 Let the deacons be the husbands of one wife, ruling their children and their own houses well.

For both positions, elder (pastor) and deacon, Paul gives as a chief requirement that the man be "the husband of one wife." The church has always assumed, and correctly so, in my view, that Paul means "one living wife." Otherwise, this requirement would disqualify a remarried widower, and the church has never regarded such a man as unfit for office.

The requirement covers two cases. A man should not hold office if he is a polygamist, or if he has ever divorced a wife and remarried. On the authority of Paul's teaching in these texts, most fundamental churches today bar a divorced and remarried man from the offices of elder and deacon. They bar also a divorced, single man, partly on the grounds that he may be tempted to marry while holding office. I accept such a policy as solidly Biblical, although I personally do not agree with those churches that extend the rule to a divorced man whose former wife or wives are no longer living.

The rule has two main purposes.

1) The church should not elevate anyone to a place of high visibility whose domestic life is open to question. The church should not expose itself to avoidable criticism. The requirement of one wife is akin to another requirement, that a man "must have a good report of them which are without; lest he fall into reproach and the snare of the devil" (1 Tim. 3:7).

2) Imposing this rule is not only a matter of protecting the church from outside attacks. It is also a matter of example. The church teaches that divorce is wrong, because it breaks the one flesh that God intended to last as long as life itself. Yet if a pastor or other church leader is divorced, people of the flock will say, "If he can do it, so can I." Sinners are like that. They are always ready to leap on the nearest excuse, and the perfect excuse to ward off censure is to say, "But the pastor . . . ," or, "But the deacon . . . ." So, with great urgency Paul told a young pastor,

Let no man despise thy youth; but be thou an example of the believers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity.

Some have argued that the expression "the husband of one wife" refers only to polygamy. But elsewhere, Paul uses a comparable expression when he describes the widows who deserve support by the church.

Let not a widow be taken into the number under threescore years old, having been the wife of one man.

This translation, from the KJV, suggests that Paul is talking about a woman who has been widowed only once, as opposed to a woman who has been widowed two or more times. But how is a woman who has lost only one husband any more deserving of support than a woman who has lost several? Paul himself advised the younger widows to remarry (1 Timothy 5:14). The underlying Greek is a bit clearer. It says, "having become the wife of one man" (1). The thought is that she never became the wife of two or more men simultaneously. A multiple marriage involving one woman and more than one man is known as polygyny, which did not exist in the ancient world. Therefore, Paul's rule of exclusion cannot be aimed at polygynists. The widow Paul evidently means to exclude is the one who became the wife of more than one man as a result of divorce and remarriage. Thus, a few verses earlier, when he uses almost the same expression to specify what kind of man should lead the church, he must also be referring to divorce and remarriage.

If we view remarriage as adultery, we might suppose that any remarried person is inadmissible to the church, because he is living in sin. We might suppose further that such persons would be acceptable only if they terminated their present marriages and sought reconciliation with their first spouses.

Scripture does not ratify this conclusion, however. Every qualification for high office that Paul sets forth in 1 Timothy 3 is a virtue that a church member might lack. An ordinary person in the pew might not be blameless, or vigilant, or sober, or of good behavior, or given to hospitality, or apt to teach. He might even be given to wine, or be a striker, or be covetous. Likewise, he might be the husband of more than one wife. By listing "one wife" among the special requirements for high office in the church, Paul clearly implies that some men in the church did not meet the requirement. We infer that Paul did not expect the church to refuse membership to people with blemished marital histories.

But why should the church open its doors to remarried persons, if in fact they are living in adultery? The problem today, as it was in Paul's day, is that both divorce and remarriage are legitimate in the eyes of civil authority. Therefore, the church cannot reject remarried persons for two reasons.

1) Within broad limits, God supports the civil authority that He Himself ordained. Notice Jesus' words to the Samaritan woman,

16 Jesus saith unto her, Go, call thy husband, and come hither.
17 The woman answered and said, I have no husband. Jesus said unto her, Thou hast well said, I have no husband:
18 For thou hast had five husbands; and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband: in that saidst thou truly.

Jesus acknowledged a difference between her present adulterous relationship and her several marriages after the first. Her former partners were truly husbands. Her present partner was not a husband. Jesus is not condoning remarriage, or questioning that it is basically adulterous. He is merely conceding the obvious—that a marriage with the blessing of civil authority has more legitimacy than a liaison outside of marriage. The words of Jesus show that God Himself wishes to uphold and preserve this extra legitimacy. Losing the distinction between marital and nonmarital unions would do harm both to civil authority and to the institution of marriage itself. That is the first reason the church should not rebuff remarried persons.

Yet God will judge those rulers and lawmakers and judges who cheapened the institution of marriage by allowing easy divorce and remarriage.

2) Because society places few effective restraints on divorce and remarriage, a divorced person readily starts a new life and a new family, the result being that his former marriage soon lies buried in the past. To go back and resurrect that marriage may not be possible, or even desirable. You can't always unravel the mistakes of yesterday. As one preacher I knew said, "You can't unscramble eggs."

Let me give an illustration. When a Christian woman was very young, she married a man who had recently entered the church and professed to become a Christian. After a short while, however, he started to associate with people involved in radical politics. The man's dalliance in the wrong crowd quickly destroyed the marriage. He spent less and less time at home, took up with other women, and finally obtained a divorce from his wife. A few years passed by, and the woman married again. Her new husband was a member of her church, a widower with two daughters who needed someone to look after them. Because the church rightly disapproved of their marriage, they left and attended elsewhere until after they had a child. Then they decided to return to their home church. What should that church have done? Should it have rejected them, on the grounds that they were living in adultery? Such rejection would in effect have been a demand that they separate. But did God want them to separate? The woman's first marriage was irreparable and childless. Her second marriage produced a child and established a Christian home for three children. So, I hardly believe that God wanted the couple to get a divorce. We can become so preoccupied with parsing the abstract principles bearing on theoretical situations that we lose sight of simple justice. What the church decided to do was to admit them after they went forward and confessed their sin. Time proved that decision to be correct.

I conclude, therefore, that the church should admit remarried people, and that, in many cases, it should admit them without imposing any requirement that they return to the status quo before their last marriage.

Simply for practical reasons, a church should not admit people who have either initiated a divorce or remarried after a divorce unless they acknowledge their sin and demonstrate repentance (that is, unless they convincingly declare their resolve never to commit the same sin again). Otherwise, once they obtain a voice in the church, they may rise up in protest if the pastor tries to give the Biblical view of divorce and remarriage, and their presence in the church will dilute its witness against these scourges on society.

What restitution the church should require is a far more convoluted question. The only way we can address it is by considering some specific cases. Whether these are real or hypothetical is irrelevant.

1) A couple started coming to church while they were still dating. The man had been married twice, the woman once. All three former marriages had produced children. They went to the pastor for counsel, and he told them that he could not marry them, and that if they joined the church, they could not get married even outside the church without facing church discipline. Yet he implied that if they got married first, before they tried to join the church, he would accept them as members. Was this the right counsel? Of course not. The pastor was making himself a party to their adultery. His knowledge that the second wife wanted reconciliation made him more blameworthy.

2) A married couple and their two children came into the church after both professed to be saved. For awhile the whole family seemed to thrive under the preaching of the Word. But then the man's love for his wife grew cold. Eventually, he left his family and became involved with another woman. The church took the necessary steps of discipline, leading at last to his expulsion. But he turned a deaf ear to Christian counsel, obtained a divorce, and married his paramour. Then, lo and behold, he and his new wife decided to join another church. Meanwhile, his former wife and his children were still languishing in hope that their home might be restored. What should the second church have done? Unfortunately, it ignored the man's past and admitted him and his new wife to membership.

These cases illustrate situations that require restitution. In the first case, the pastor should have told the dating couple to break up. Moreover, he should have warned the man that he would not be admitted to membership until he had returned to his second wife (or better yet, to his first, if she still wanted him). In the second case, the proper response when the remarried man asked the second church to admit him was much the same. The church should have told him that the price of joining was reconciliation with his first wife.

Is there a procedure a church can follow in dealing with marital tangles of this kind? Yes, I think there is.

1. When someone presents himself for membership, the church should ask whether he has ever been divorced. That question is necessary not only to determine his fitness for office, but also to secure justice for possible victims.
2. If the answer is, yes, the church must determine whether the person is blameworthy, either because he initiated the divorce or remarried afterward.
3. The church should require someone blameworthy in either way to confess his sin before joining the church. Confessing it privately before the pastor or other leaders of the church would, I think, be sufficient.
4. The church should also require a blameworthy person to make reasonable restitution. That is, if he forsook a former spouse, for whatever reason, and that former spouse desires the marriage to be renewed, he should go back to it. In my opinion, he need not go back if the former spouse has remarried.

It is easy to see justice in simple cases like the ones I have described. But sometimes a church must handle far more difficult cases. Then it must rely on the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

To determine a person's marital history, the church need not investigate in depth. It is generally sufficient to proceed on the basis of what an applicant for membership says about himself. The burden is upon him to tell the truth—about his past, about his relationship to Christ, and about anything else relevant to joining the church. If he lies, the blame falls upon him. Yet the church should not neglect any other facts at hand. Nor should it neglect to pursue the customary letter of reference from a previous church. If a former spouse of the prospective member still has a reasonable claim upon him, the church can trust that God will bring the truth to light.

1. Why should a pastor refuse to officiate at the wedding of a divorced person?
2. What two offices does Scripture deny a divorced and remarried man?
3. In Paul's day, the requirement "husband of one wife" excluded what two kinds of men?
4. What implication in this requirement allows a remarried widower to hold office?
5. Why do most churches bar a single, divorced man from leadership?
6. For what two reasons did Paul want leaders who had not been divorced?
7. How do we know that "husband of one wife" refers to divorce and remarriage as well as polygamy?
8. How do we know that Paul expected the church to admit divorced persons?
9. For what two reasons should the church admit them?
10. Where does Jesus acknowledge that a second marriage has some legitimacy?
11. What do we call the attempt to right a former wrong?
12. This lesson tells the story of a second marriage that the church properly decided to tolerate. Why was preservation of this marriage better than the alternatives?
13. Why would it be wrong for a church to admit a remarried person automatically, with no questions asked?
14. How do the stories in this lesson illustrate the need to consider an applicant's past?
15. What steps should a church take before admitting a divorced person?