The Legitimacy of Divorce

The Christian Pundit has published a valuable and necessary post on the legitimacy of divorce. Too often women (and sometimes men) are wrongfully and unbiblically encouraged to remain in a marriage because of a lack of understanding of Scripture.

The author writes...

In the well-known passage on marriage and divorce found in Matthew 19:1-9, with its corollary in Mark 10:1-12, Jesus clearly retains the abiding legitimacy of divorce for marital unfaithfulness–as he had already done in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 6:32). .....When the faithful spouse decides to divorce the unfaithful one because trust has been so shattered that he/she believes the marriage cannot continue, that is biblically legitimate. The primary criteria is not that the marriage can potentially be salvaged. The primary criteria is her God-given freedom to choose which route she thinks is wisest, taking counsel from believers who know and love her. ...God hates treacherous divorce, yes (Malachi 2:14-16). He hates adultery, abuse, and abandonment. He does not hate godly divorce. He has provided the opportunity for a way out of a violated covenant for the innocent party. He is just, holy and good. He is a father to the fatherless, and a husband to the widow.

Please read and try to understand the awful dilemma many women are placed in today by receiving unbibilcal advice cloaked as God's Word on divorce.

The Marriage Bond

  And he left there and went to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan, and crowds gathered to him again. And again, as was his custom, he taught them.
    And Pharisees came up and in order to test him asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” He answered them, “What did Moses command you?” They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to send her away.” And Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment. But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”
    And in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. And he said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her, and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”
    (Mark 10:1-12 ESV)