Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of marriage in this address from The Gospel Coalition Sermon Library.
Don Carson: I’ve found there are people who claim abuse where, in fact, they are people who love to be victims. There is always a degree of something there, isn’t there? One of the things any good marriage has is the pattern of forgiveness. If you’re talking about Christians who are deeply committed to the lordship of Christ, then they learn also to repent before each other and say, “I’m sorry.”
If, in fact, you get one of those parties who will never, ever forgive under any circumstance and always will claim to be abused, at some point there is a pastoral decision to be made about whether this really is abuse or really an instance of a desperately unforgiving spirit that is claiming to be abused. There are judgment calls to be made there. If you have an unambiguous instance where everyone can see it’s abuse, then I would say there is another factor that has to be thrown into the mix here at least.
I am familiar with a case at the moment. I’m working on it a bit on the periphery where the man is going through some.… I won’t go into the whole background, but he’s becoming really very abusive toward his wife. She is one of these saintly souls who, the more you give her stick, the more she is determined to love you.
I mean, she is one of these really strong women who is deeply principled and wonderfully committed to the lordship of Christ, and the kind of stuff he is giving her constantly, constantly, constantly, would make some women crack, and for her, it just makes her resolved not to be the guilty party. There’s something wonderful about what’s going on in that woman’s life. What can I say? Do you see?
That would still be my first recourse, but on the other hand, I have seen some instances where the emotional, manipulative, condescending, hate-filled verbal abuse becomes so destructive it can actually lead to suicide, and at some point you have to say, “Enough of that! Get out!” You do have to. It seems to me that’s merely the gift of sanctified common sense.
I don’t think that’s the kind of issue that is being dealt with by these sorts of texts. It would be nice if every situation that came along could be handled by a mere appeal to an unambiguous text, but human lives are so complex in our motives, in our assessments, that pastoral wisdom and discretion, even once you’ve nailed down the principles, is required to see who has the right and the wrong of a situation.
For example, that one I told you about when I was pastoring.… The RCMP wife. Instead of just listening to the one side, I went and tried to deal with the RCMP man. He just would not listen. The thing was just so hard and negative that it became very clear to me where the rights and the wrongs were. It is important not to jump too fast and say, “Abuse! Abuse! Abuse!” and fail to realize there might be a lot more that’s going on. Having said that, in extreme cases of emotional abuse I would say get out.
Male: As I’ve been trying to follow where you’re going with some of these things, it seems, as an example Pastor Lutzer brought up, if there was a case of abuse or something like that, you’re saying the person could possibly pursue a divorce or something like that and then the porneia can happen after the fact of the divorce. I take it that’s maybe where you’re talking about being pastorally true. I’m still kind of wrestling with that if that’s really where Jesus was going with that or if porneia needed to be kind of the cause of the divorce. Is that what you’re saying? That it can happen after the fact?
Don: I’m saying, in reality, that is what happens very commonly today. Those are just the realities. Am I suggesting what we ought to do, therefore, is to just say, “Okay. This is a divorce I can’t take, but not a problem here. Porneia will come along in due course and that will solve everything.” You don’t want to start generating that sort of stance, do you?
On the other hand, realities are realities, and if you take a fairly simple case first.… Let’s say A and B get divorced for biblically illegitimate grounds (mere mutual incompatibility). B gets converted. Ten years pass. He has been honorable. He has been godly. He has been disciplined, wanting to please the Lord.
Meanwhile, A has gone through three marriages and is now shacked up with somebody to whom she’s not married and has three children by three different men. Now B wants to consider getting remarried. What do you say in that case? If you say, “Does Jesus actually envisage this concrete situation?” No! No!
Would he say there is porneia now of the sort that is not going to bring her back to him and no reconciliation is possible at this juncture and so on? Does he have grounds granted the exegesis at this point to remarry? I would say yes! On the grounds of the initial court-sanctioned divorce? No! So you’re forced to a kind of John Murray position. Do you see?
Once you’ve established that is sound reasoning, it’s part of biblical wisdom, it seems to me, granted the immutables of the exegesis, then you will acknowledge there are going to be some hard cases where you have to admit it’s going to take a great deal of wisdom and pastoral discretion and insight to see whether this is one of the legitimate ones or not.
Okay. Let’s admit there are hard cases about which we’ll disagree, but if you would say you wouldn’t allow this person to remarry then I would say you have some bigger issues to work on over the very nature of porneia.
It seems to me one of the things that has to be done in thinking these things through at the level of principle is deal with the straightforward cases, the relatively easy cases, first and then acknowledge when you get in close enough there might be some places where even people who have a similar exegesis may have some differences in pastoral application. Start with the straightforward cases.
Male: When there has been an example of unbiblical remarriage after divorce and that couple is interested in church membership, as a pastor what does …?
Don: Yes. That’s a really tough question. Another question that was brought up to me by someone, too.… Let me take his first and then sidle into yours. Let’s say A and B are Christians of some sort (members of one of our churches) and they get married fairly young, 21 and 22.
Five years later they’re both divorced, and three or four years later, one of them wants to get remarried, and their whole perception of what has come before has been, “Well, we were young. We made a mistake. God forgives sinners, so I have the right to get remarried.” What should your response be there?
That, it seems to me, is where you really have to be pastorally shrewd and say, “Do you confess Jesus as Lord? Is that part of what it means to be a Christian? Doesn’t that mean bowing to what Jesus actually says, and therefore, what he says in this whole area of divorce and remarriage? Therefore, if A has not herself been living with somebody else, now you, B, what right do you have to remarry?”
Then the person says, “Well, I don’t have any conscience about that at all. I mean, it was just a mistake, and God forgives our mistakes.” Yeah. God is a great forgiver, but on the other hand, there are entailments for the choices you make in all kinds of fronts. For example, if you murder somebody.… God doubtless forgives murderers too.
There are still entailments in terms of going to the police and confessing and so on. There are entailments in life, so I would want that person to be brought to the place where he is willing to think through what the Bible actually says about these matters and be willing to live with the results because this is what the Word of God says. That’s what I would want to see.
As I’ve already indicated, in my experience at least, 95 or 98 percent of such instances end up in a situation where porneia isn’t involved in any case. This is a society with lots of so-called recreational sex; nevertheless, having said that, you still want the person to see there was sin there in the first instance, and there are entailments to sin, and as a Christian if you submit to the lordship of Christ, that means also listening to what he has to say in this domain as well. If they can’t live with that and walk away from the church.… Sorry. That’s the way it is.
Now then, if you come to the kind of situation you’re dealing with where let’s say A and B have broken up on biblically non-concessive grounds. Then B has married C, and A has not been involved in anything else. All three of them are nominally Christian, and now they’ve moved into your patch and want to become members of your church, and you’ve sort of asked some questions about their background, may they become members or not? Is that the sort of thing you have in mind?
At one level you want to say they can’t undo the sexual union that now pertains, but I do want to find out if they’re saying, “Well, I repented and God forgave me,” and it’s merely nominal and there is no genuine commitment to the lordship of Christ in all matters of life and faith and practice. I confess I would push very hard at this juncture to see whether they are even beginning to understand what a principle submission to the lordship of Christ looks like in every domain of life.
I would want to be personally convinced that they see this, that they see what they have done (not only the initial divorce but the remarriage itself on biblically non-conceded grounds) as a wicked thing that defies God Almighty and his most Holy Word. I want them to see that and not merely some sort of formulaic kind of thing, which means the path into becoming members of any church where I’m pastor is going to be a little more difficult because I’m going to probe pretty hard.
Otherwise, what you really have.… This is just one avenue. It could be a whole lot of other avenues, too. What you really have are people who have not really, genuinely submitted to the lordship of Christ. I want people who are naming the name of Christ in principle to be personally, deeply submissive to the lordship of Christ, and that means bowing to his most Holy Word. That’s the test.
Obviously, it’s always a judgment call. Isn’t it? Of course. You don’t want to try to make the church a place where only nice people can become members, only people who are from socially approved strata can become members. It’s a great place for sinners, but for repentant sinners, so that’s what you have to check all the time it seems to me. It doesn’t make it easy, but it seems to me it makes it important.
Male: You have two believers who are married. One believer leaves. There have been times when the other believer has said, “I don’t think that person really was a believer to begin with.” It’s like you’re saying. How do we know? Where do you go with it?
Don: What I would say is, in one sense, it makes no difference. Supposing the person who is leaving really isn’t a believer, is it really a case of the Pauline exception? I don’t think it’s a case of a Pauline exception just because an unbeliever leaves. It’s because an unbeliever is leaving because the believing person has become a believer.
In other words, it’s the kind of situation you get in the Muslim world. It’s the kind of situation you got with the sex orgy out in California and so on. To try to appeal to the Pauline exception by saying, “I don’t really think he or she was a believer in the first place” to squeeze in a legitimate divorce strikes me as international class casuistry, playing with the rules.
It’s like the medieval church. In fact, even the Catholic Church today saying this is really a case of annulment and playing games with the rules in order to make the answer come out right at the end when we already know what the end has to be. In my judgment in practice that’s not going to work.
Male: In terms of some kind of sexual sin, is it true whether it’s the guilty party or the innocent party there is freedom to remarry on both parts? Obviously, we want to make sure, if we are dealing with the guilty party, that they are genuinely repentant, but by virtue of the fact that they broke up the first marriage, does that limit them in any way?
Don: In my judgment, no. There are some people who say only the innocent party does have the right to remarry. I find it difficult to think of a biblical text that sanctions that. That is to say when the sexual union is broken, the sexual union is broken. Historically that has been a pretty centrist position too. John Murray, for example, insists on that. You still want to make sure there is repentance and there is genuine conversion and all the right.… I understand all that, but at the same time, I don’t think remarriage after porneia is a concessive option only for the so-called non-guilty party. I don’t think that’s correct.
Female: With regard to the ideal that marriage is supposed to reflect the church and Jesus and the issue of exhortation or forgiveness and with the illustration of sacrificial love, can you speak to how that applies to marriage and divorce and remarriage?
Don: Yes. That’s very helpful. I’ve already said a wee bit on that front. I’m more than happy to say more. When husbands are told to love their wives as Christ loved the church, if that means anything, if that standard and comparison means anything at all, it must mean sacrificially and for her good because that’s how Christ loved the church.
Therefore, the thing you always want to ask of husbands who are feeling superior or autocratic or unforgiving or the like is what are you cheerfully, happily sacrificing of yourself and your priorities and your interests for her sake and her good? If you’re not, start with yourself. Shut your mouth. Start with yourself.
Where husbands start seeing themselves along those lines, an awful lot of marriage problems do go away too. What have you given up of your sports? What have you given up of your priorities? What have you given up of your business trips in order to self-sacrificially serve her? Likewise, you want to ask her what it does mean to show her respect and to submit to his leadership in the way the church is supposed to submit to Christ. How does that work out in concrete terms as opposed to merely hassling all the time?
That’s part of the huge structure of a slightly asymmetrical but, nevertheless, profoundly complementary death to self-interest for the sake of the other party. Granted, the fact that we are all sinners, each of us is simultaneously justified yet sinners still, then we have to learn how to say, “Sorry,” and how to forgive so where we don’t do that in marriage it probably is the case we’re not doing it elsewhere too.
That means it becomes part of a Christian counselor’s aim to develop the kind of reciprocity in forgiveness, repentance, forgiveness, repentance that builds a kind of integrity of cleanness in the relationship that becomes a way of life, a pattern of mutual forbearance and forgiveness rather than counting points.
Female: Let me redirect you to the issue of reconciliation … how we are to live now. You have this couple who are divorced. Neither are remarried. Rather than focusing on was it biblical or was it not and are you free to play the field, the obligation that even in your separation or in your divorce you are to pray toward, you are to work toward, you are to sacrifice toward reconciliation at some point through the divine intervention of …
Don: I agree with that entirely. If A and B divorce on biblically unsanctioned grounds and neither is playing the field, then I would say the aim should still be to try to bring them together.
Female: On biblical grounds?
Don: Supposing A and B divorce because A has been playing around with C. Yes. It is important to see that divorce is a conceded right. That is to say it’s not mandated. Therefore, where it’s possible to have genuine forgiveness and to build the thing up again, I would certainly try. Nevertheless, I have seen instances where A repents apparently and they get back together again and does it again with D and then repents. The serial problem here.… At some point, although the divorce is still a conceded right, I might start saying this is the best option.
Female: I understand that, but I guess I struggle with the whole Gomer/Hosea thing.
Don: The Gomer/Hosea thing, as you picturesquely refer to it, doesn’t find dear old Hosea going after, not only Gomer, but Petula and a whole bunch of others, which surely says something as well. You do want Hosea who goes after this woman and does forgive her. Yes. That does picture the way Christ comes after us.
Yet, nevertheless, you cannot start appealing to that in such a way as to actually undermine what Jesus says is a conceded right. It’s still a conceded right, so it becomes a question of pastoral judgment in some cases where the thing is so repetitive, so repeated, so unconfessed, that at some point it does become the part of wisdom to say, “Get out, for goodness sake,” but it’s still a pastoral judgment.
Male: First Peter, chapter 3.… First of all, the last part of chapter 2 says Jesus suffered for us, the just for the unjust. That’s not exactly the text, but that’s the whole idea there … that Jesus died for us. Then chapter 3, verse 1 says, “Likewise, ye wives, submit yourselves to your husbands.”
I know a well-known teacher whose name I will not give, but he has a vast influence in some circles, who teaches wives should submit to their husbands even if they are killed as Jesus was killed. That’s the model of submission. You know the context of the passage. I think most of us do. Would you speak to that, please?
Don: That is a huge amount of weight to rest on homoios, on likewise. Let me give another example. In 1 Timothy, chapter 3, verses 1 to 7, you have the biblically mandated characteristics of elders, bishops, and pastors. The word is overseers, but the three terms apply to the one office.
Verse 8 begins, “Likewise …” and then you have a list of qualifications for the deacons. Many of those qualifications overlap, so there have been a few people who have bled so much from the likewise in this instance that they want to say absolutely everything that is stipulated with respect to the elders, bishops, and pastors must also be stipulated for the deacons.
That is really bizarre because every time there is an elders list that comes up, for example, then always there is this category: able to teach. Never, when the deacons list comes up, do you have that category stipulated for deacons. It doesn’t mean the deacons can’t teach; it means it’s not some sort of essential and defining part of their job.
This in a book that also has things like James, chapter 3, verse 1: “Don’t be too many teachers knowing they shall receive the more severe judgment and so forth.” To try to say that likewise at the beginning of 1 Timothy, chapter 3, verse 8 brings absolutely everything with it, it seems to me is bleeding a likewise to death. In the context it means.… How does the first situation come up?
If somebody wants the job of an overseer, then this is the list of qualifications. Likewise, these are the lists of qualifications for the deacons if somebody is heading off for that sort of job. See? Likewise, I would want to say in 1 Peter 2 you have the uniqueness of Christ’s substitutionary death that is spelled out with all kinds of non-repeatable elements to it. Yet, in a broader context where there is an exemplary function to Christ’s death, Christ’s death, on the one hand, is penal and substitutionary and in that sense we can’t repeat it.
On the other hand, in the context of 1 Peter, chapter 2, it’s worked out in a moral framework that is saying, “Make sure, therefore, if you suffer you suffer like Christ innocently. If you suffer and you deserve it, then God have mercy on your head, but that’s not suffering for Christ’s sake.” To suffer for Christ’s sake means to suffer innocently. Therefore, Christ’s death becomes exemplary in our lives in that particular fashion, but it certainly does not mean we take on penal substitution for ourselves in the analogy that is being drawn.
One must then begin to ask how does the likewise function in the next pericope. Does it function to say, therefore, she has to be battered to death as Christ was battered to death? I would say you’re thrusting far too much on the likewise. It’s just a mechanical sort of exegesis that is not paying attention to the way rhetoric works.
Male: Assuming all the things were followed, whether the divorce was legitimate initially, but the person has proved himself, he has been married to the same woman for 15 or 20 years, they have wonderful children, do you think a divorced man under those conditions can be an elder?
Don: Yes.
Male: Okay. That’s all I wanted you to do … give a yes or a no.
Don: Do you want a rationale for that?
Male: Sure, if you want to give a rationale.
Don: There is no biblical text that makes divorce and remarriage the unforgivable sin. The issue, it seems to me, is credibility. You work through the list of qualifications in 1 Timothy, chapter 3, verses 1 to 7, and similar passages (Titus 1 and so forth), and what is striking is how many of them have to do with credibility, a blameless life the NIV has, irreproachable.
It does not mean sinlessly perfect. It means there is no obvious flaw that is so transparently public that everybody has to reproach the person for. Similarly, at the end, “a good reputation with outsiders.” The idea is not that he’s one of the boys and is really good for a Guinness down at the local pub. The idea is, whether he’s liked or not for his integrity, he’s trustworthy. He has a good reputation. There’s a credibility factor that is built into all of those qualifications.
Supposing then A and B are Christians (A is the guy) and they divorce. Let’s say he’s the one who shacked up with somebody and shouldn’t have. Now they’re divorced. Years go by, and he’s repentant. She’s gone off somewhere else. He’s remarried. I wouldn’t want to see this chap made an elder anytime soon. I sure wouldn’t, because there’s a huge credibility issue.
Or supposing A and B are married. A is a pastor. He has an affair. Then he’s repentant. A and B still hold together. The marriage doesn’t break up. Can he remain in the pastoral ministry or come back like Jimmy Swaggart after three months? The issue is, again, credibility, and I would say absolutely no way! Does it mean there is absolutely no fashion under God’s green earth whereby he could ever conceivably come back?
Well, I would say, if in five years, he wants to take on the bus ministry and clean some of the latrines and gradually rebuild his reputation, start off at the bottom and maybe give his testimony now and then in public, and he’s happy working on the railway as a worker selling insurance or whatever he’s doing and gradually rebuilds a reputation and everybody sees this is a man now of integrity.
He really has learned a huge lesson. There is a brokenness and contrition. The marriage is solid. Somewhere along the line somebody asks him to fill in on an adult Sunday school class and gradually he rebuilds some integrity. Twenty years down the road could he become one of the elders? Yeah. I don’t see why not, but even then I would say, because people have long memories, almost certainly he will not ever, if he was in the ministry, regain the kind of credibility he had at the beginning.
It’s just such a difficult thing. The denomination from which I spring in Canada (the Fellowship of Evangelical Baptist churches) is not a huge denomination (600 to 800 churches … whatever it is nowadays). A few years ago, one of the senior pastors did an analysis of all of the pastors in the history of the denomination that came together in 1953 who had ever been disciplined for adultery. What happened to them?
Some apostatized. Many repented and their marriages held together, but they never returned to pastoral ministry. In a number of instances (not a lot, because the fellowship has pretty strict rules about how you can get back in) with time they were allowed in slowly again. Some were tested over years and so on. What was found was in every single instance one of three things happened. (I have forgotten the exact breakdown, but it was really quite interesting.)
First, they struggled for a number of years in this kind of ministry but never really regained their credibility and left. Secondly, they did it again. Thirdly, they stayed in, but for the rest of their lives their ministry never achieved the kind of credibility, promise, or prominence it had before the disaster.
If you say, “Is there any possibility of coming back?” Yeah, but I’d say be discerning. It’s the credibility issue that is really huge. An elder is supposed to have an ability to teach, and if he has fallen aside as a Christian, the credibility issue hangs on and hangs on and hangs on and can only be restored, it seems to me, in measure with a great deal of time.
There are long memories in the church, and the more prominent you are when that sort of thing happens, the less plausibility there is for any restoration of the credibility that has been sacrificed. The issue is huge, but at the same time, I still do not want to simply say once you have committed sexual sin there is no coming back from it.
