When a Marriage Falls Apart

I remember listening to a well-known pastor speak at a conference of Christian counselors. There were probably 750 to 1,000 people in the room. And to start, he began by confessing sin—which is, you know, not normal. But he shared his struggles, particularly in marriage. And he was confessing how awkward it was to speak in front of people that could see his struggles without him needing to confess. Have you ever talked to a counselor outside of a counseling office and just been like, "Oh, they know"? Like, that's what he's talking about.

And about halfway through, he stopped because people were laughing and he was being serious. And as he continued, it got real quiet really fast. And why were they laughing? I mean, part of it is we're conditioned to laugh, I think, at our idiosyncrasies in church. And we should laugh at each other. I laugh at myself all the time, and other people laugh at me even more. And we should make light of these topics. But one of those topics that is easy to laugh about is marriage, even when, when we talk about it, it could be really heavy and really challenging.

The Reality of Marriage and Human Weakness

You know, Amy and I do not have the perfect marriage. I mean, what does that even mean, truly? People say, "Oh, we have the perfect marriage." I'm like, okay, we were two young sinners, believers who were attracted to one another. We were frenemies. We were, by nature, fighters.

You know, there is a book written on the marriage of a well-known theologian in American history—probably the most well-known one—and the title is Marriage to a Difficult Man. And I've told Amy, "You could write the sequel, you know." And right, we're laughing. If we've learned one thing in our marriage, though, it's how to sin against one another. It's how to inflect our tone to maximize impact. Our marriage has revealed more about us and our sin than we ourselves really knew. And, you know, we know how to dagger each other, but we also know how to give each other joy. And we know how to make life easier. We know how to best serve each other. We can see when the other person is overwhelmed. We know how to relieve stress.

To still be in love and loved by someone who knows me for who I am is a sheer act of grace. Everyone here probably knows marriage statistics. No one gets married thinking they're going to get divorced. I mean, divorce rates in the US are at a 50-year low right now, and still it's 40% of all first-time marriages. And you know what? That doesn't capture personal cost—the cost to each person, the pain, the cost to the kids, the cost to your family, the damage that is done. Like, these things don't just resolve. Researchers have gone and tracked kids where, decades later, you realize that pain did not disappear even if the parents moved on.

How Marriages Disintegrate: Idiosyncrasies vs. Sin

And so how does a marriage dissolve? Some of it is just small things that seem built to annoy your spouse. I mean, sometimes I swear my marriage has been put together for maximum annoyance.

Just as an example, one time Amy and I sat down for dinner in Estes Park, and the question I had prepared ahead of time was, "Why do I think I am difficult to live with?" The answer to the question to my super organized wife was, I lose things and I can never find them. Is that a sin? No, it's just an annoyance. And so she's lived with this person for 23 years. Dinner's over, and we walk back to our rental car. I put my hand in my pocket, and the keys are not there. So we walk two miles back to the hotel in the dark in Estes Park. She was gracious. Those who know me well in this room know my weaknesses. My wife knows all of them. Living with someone leads to the unavoidable exposure of shortcomings. So sometimes it's just idiosyncrasies that build up over time.

Then sometimes it's sin, and little things become big things. Someone in the marriage can't stop looking at images on Instagram or TikTok, or you connect to a college friend you haven't seen on social media and you say, "Hey, let's just meet up and talk." Or someone in the marriage just begins to give themselves away emotionally. They are looking for a connection they think they need in order to fulfill themselves. They tell themselves, "I need this." And then it gets harder; then it turns into abuse or manipulation or abandonment, and in the end, adultery.

I'm telling these stories: some of you are the victims in this story, and some of you are the perpetrators of this story. Christ has something for both of you this morning, and I'll come back to you.

Looking for Loopholes

Now, we have been going through the Sermon on the Mount, and every week I'm like, "Jeez, Jesus." Jesus has just finished dismantling all of our excuses about anger and lust, and now he turns to marriage. This is not the totality of everything Jesus says about marriage and divorce. We get that further in Matthew 19, which we'll also read. But let's just again read it so we hear it:

"It has been said, 'Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.' But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, makes her a victim of adultery, and anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery."

Oh, man. So I'm just going to walk through this in three movements. First, we're going to talk about how we go looking for loopholes; second, the sacredness of marriage; and then, when sin tears it apart.

Loopholes first. Are you surprised that the first topic after lust and adultery is divorce? Notice how verse 31 starts: "It has been said." Where has it been said that you can do this? Where has it been said, "Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce"? Well, it comes from Deuteronomy 24. Moses had written a regulation for a man who divorced his wife because he finds something indecent with her, and that regulation required a certificate. It wasn't a command to do it; it was a restriction to keep men from discarding women on a whim and then reclaiming them later.

But by the first century, when Jesus is speaking, there were essentially two schools of thought. School of Thought 1 was: you can only divorce for sexual sin. School of Thought 2 was: if your wife burns dinner, you can divorce her. So essentially, very narrow, or pretty much anything. And the wider world was worse: either spouse, husband or wife, could dissolve the marriage unilaterally for any reason—no consent needed. And so Jesus, in this passage, is taking power away from men and stripping away the weapon that had been used for centuries to discard a spouse. He's shutting off loophole-seeking people.

Now, the loophole hunters come back in Matthew 19. I'll just read this to you. This time they're in person. The Pharisees and the Sadducees corner Jesus and they question him: "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?" See, there it is again. And then Matthew at the very beginning says it pretty plainly: They came to test him. Do you know in Matthew's Gospel, there are only two groups of people that test Jesus? The religious leaders and Satan—Satan in the wilderness, and the Pharisees and Sadducees here. And so these dudes are testing the Author of the Law.

Jesus responds in Matthew 19, verse 8, that Moses only permitted divorce because your hearts were hard. What does that mean? It means the opponents of Jesus had assumed that because the law addressed something, God must endorse it. Jesus says no, a restraint was given for what was happening. He was shutting down the loophole. So at the very beginning of this passage, Jesus is not so much getting at the issue of divorce and remarriage as he is getting at: are you a loophole hunter?

In Scripture, it's the difference between asking, "What can I get away with?" and "What does God intend for me?" See the difference? Have you ever done that with God—where is the line I can be up to and just kind of nudge it, instead of saying, "What does God want from me?" It's very easy to make the Bible say what you want. We're all experts in it; everyone in this room. We're all tempted to do it. Have you ever read a passage in Scripture and your first thought is, "That can't be right"? I mean, sometimes you think of other passages, but let's be real—sometimes you read it and you just go, "I don't know if that means what I think it means." We're experts at it.

When it comes to marriage, it's remarkable how good we are at convincing ourselves of a narrative that is half true. I've sat with couples and very proud spouses. It's usually the men who defend cruelty by citing Scripture. They bring the wife along, quoting Scripture to me while she's curled up in a ball so that I will fix her. What ends up happening is it's his hard-hearted use of the law that has brought him into the room, and he's not ready to repent. He wants me to wield a loophole against her. You can do that with any command. That's what people with hard hearts do: they look for loopholes. So this week, let's just put this topic aside: do you go hunting for loopholes when you read the Bible?

What God Has Joined: Covenant vs. Contract

Okay, that's the easy part, I think. So, what God has joined: in Matthew 19, we get this fuller picture of what Jesus is teaching on marriage. So we're going to go there, and we'll come back to Matthew 5. In Matthew 5, he's trying to get behind the intention of the law. He says something very quick and to the point. In Matthew 19, he shows us what that intention is.

Verse 3 of chapter 19: "Some Pharisees came to test him. They asked, 'Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?'" So there you have their heart. And Jesus replies, "Haven't you read that at the beginning?" He's not quoting the law; he's quoting Genesis. "The Creator made them male and female, and said, 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.' Therefore, what God has joined together, let no one separate."

To answer their question about the law, Jesus doesn't quote the law back; he quotes Genesis 2. Before there is a law about divorce, there is a design for marriage. The design is: a man leaves his family, a woman leaves hers, and something happens in the text that calls it "one flesh." This is why Jesus says in the end, "What God has joined, man must not separate." Marriage is a covenant we make; marriage is a union God performs.

The older translations of Genesis 2 say a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife. That is the essence of marriage: cleaving, covenant-making. God uses this exact same language, for example, in Ezekiel 16, where he says to Israel: "When you were of age, I covered you with my robe, I made vows to you, I entered into a covenant with you, you became mine." Malachi says your spouse is the wife of your marriage covenant.

In covenant, I bind myself to another person. The binding does not depend on how the other person performs. You either make a vow or you don't make it. And once you've made it, you are in something you did not invent and you cannot redefine. It goes deeper than physical. To be in a marriage means you have made yourself absolutely vulnerable on purpose, and you are loved and delighted in anyway. The permanence of marriage is what makes marriage safe. If you take that safety away, it's just a tryout. Covenant is provision; it's protection; it's faithfulness.

Just compare that to one corner of our culture from about 10 years ago. Remember the Ashley Madison website? Some of you are like, "No idea." Good for you. The tagline was: "Life is short. Have an affair." It was a website about secret flings, and they had 37 million members until hackers exposed it—with lots of Christian leaders on it. That is a contract view of marriage, not a covenant view. That is: there is an exit that we're selling, and millions of people are quietly doing the shopping.

Okay, back to Matthew 19. Jesus tells them about Genesis, and the Pharisees do what Pharisees do: "Why then did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?" Jesus corrects the verb. Notice the change. Now they say "command," and in the next verse Jesus says, "Moses permitted." See the difference? "Why did Moses command?" He didn't command; he permitted. He conceded.

When Sin Tears Union Apart

Matthew 19 shows divorce is not something that was in the original design; it is a tearing of what God has joined. Matthew 5 turns the camera and shows you what it does to everyone else. Matthew 19 is what it does to the person initiating; Matthew 5 is what happens to the victims.

"Anyone who divorces his wife," verse 32, "except for immorality, makes her a victim of adultery." That's Matthew 5. "And anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery." Now, there are three people in this verse in Matthew 5. Watch what happens to each one of them. The husband divorces his wife over something like burnt bread. He hands her a certificate that makes it look legal, and in his mind, he does this: "My hands are clean." The wife is now on her own. In the first century, if you're a discarded wife, there's no family to support you; you have to be remarried or you're going to die. So she does—not because she wants to, but because she has to. And Jesus calls that second marriage adultery, not because she sinned, but because her husband did. His paperwork didn't dissolve what God had joined. That is what it means when it says he makes her a victim. Hear the word: victim of adultery. She's forced into this, and you've made her a victim. Then the third person: the man who marries her is not marrying a free woman; he's joining in the adultery of the first. So it's just shrapnel everywhere.

Now, this is not a blanket ban on remarriage. It's a warning that the certificate cannot manufacture the freedom that someone is after. So the question for the married people in the room is: are you in a covenant relationship, or are you keeping score? Are you tracking what is fair? Who did the dishes last? Who initiated last? When's the last time she apologized for something? "I feel like I apologize all the time. When's the last time he apologized? I'm always the one initiating." If you're keeping score, you've built a law firm in your mind that is representing you in the condemnation of your spouse and preparing you for a loophole. A covenant asks different questions. A contract is about keeping score; a covenant asks, "What have I given?"

Let me give you one very stark example of this, a well-known one that happened a few years ago between two Christian leaders. In 1990, Robertson McQuilkin was president of Columbia Bible College and Seminary. At the height of his influence, his wife Muriel got Alzheimer's, and she had reached a point where she did not recognize him, but she became very distressed every time he would leave the house. So at the height of his influence, he resigned. Here's what he told the school: "She has cared for me fully and sacrificially all these years. If I cared for her for 40 years, I would not be out of her debt." He said the decision was actually made 42 years earlier when he promised he would love her in sickness and health till death do us part. He said, "I don't have to care for her; I get to." And he cared for her for 13 more years before she died.

Twenty years later, a well-known television preacher was asked on air by a man about his wife who had Alzheimer's and no longer recognized him. His advice to the husband was to make sure she has good custodial care, divorce her, and start over. It was on TBN; millions of people heard it. Same disease, same vow. One man read the vow as a debt he would be glad to pay. The other read his marriage as a contract that expired when the other party stopped delivering. You see the difference between a covenant and a contract? Both of those guys called themselves Christian leaders. So just ask yourself: if you're in a marriage, am I in a covenant or am I in a contract? Am I in a give, or am I in a take? Am I keeping score, or am I giving myself away?

Grounds for Divorce and Covenant Breaking

Jesus makes marriage permanent. Here's the exception he uses: "except for sexual immorality." If the covenant were simply unbreakable, he wouldn't have used the word except. Marriage on one hand needs to be permanent, and yet on the other hand, sin enters the world, and there are conditions by which divorce is the only way for a person to survive. So we have to take seriously both sides. There's a covenant that is made that is supposed to be safe and permanent, and on the other hand, it's possible to break it.

The Greek word there is porneia. It is the broadest term in the New Testament for sexual sin. It is not a narrow synonym for adultery, which is why your translations will differ on how to render this. And it is not limited to physical sin; Scripture uses the same family of words for unfaithfulness—to betray a covenant with a person not even in the room. So a man or a woman who gives his or her eyes and affections to images on a screen is not innocent of this. That's probably why—why do you think Jesus hits this topic right after talking about desiring something that is not your own?

Jesus knows there are people who will begin to say, "Ah, I deserve better," or "This is not the person I was marrying," or "I'm tired of the fact they don't seem to care." Eventually they'll say, "Did God really say...?" They tell themselves a story that leads them to a choice that leads to wreckage all around them, and then they're like, "What have I done?" We can harden our hearts really easily.

The Apostle Paul, writing under the same inspiration, adds a second thing in 1 Corinthians 7. He tells believers to stay in marriages to unbelievers. "Stay, stay, stay" is his command in multiple settings. If your spouse doesn't share your faith but is willing to stay, stay. But then he says if the unbeliever leaves, let it be so. A brother or sister is not bound in such circumstances; God has called us to live in peace. So desertion breaks covenant, and "not bound" means what it sounds like: it means that if there is a divorce, you are free to remarry.

Paul describes what a marriage owes to each spouse: regular intimacy, not abandoning one another, providing for a family. A spouse who is starved for provision, safety, and basic faithfulness is experiencing desertion. The covenant can be abandoned without anyone leaving the room. I say that carefully because I've watched people dress up irreconcilable differences as a costume for the hard-heartedness that Jesus is condemning. Not every disappointment is covenant-breaking. Not every hard season is desertion. Not every hard thing in your marriage means, "Oh, you broke the covenant."

But abuse, cruelty, and a refusal to provide for a spouse is not just a category of suffering; it is covenant-breaking. Churches in particular who say to a woman, "You must endure violence because Jesus only used one Greek word here in Matthew 19," are not reading Jesus correctly. I'll just be specific on this one because if you've been in a Christian church, you've heard some teaching on marriage—that the husband is the head, wives submit to the husband, and all submit to Christ. Okay, this is where submission gets twisted. If you have a husband who is cheating on you, submission is not staying silent. Submission is not allowing him to do whatever he wants. Submission is not staying with a serial liar. Adultery means that, though it doesn't mean you must leave—there are many examples and testimonies of reconciliation—the weight of the reconciliation is not on you. It's not the church's job to revictimize you and make his or her adultery about your need to forgive. If your husband is using you as a tool of addiction, submission is not doing whatever he wants. Christ does not call you to be abused or taken advantage of over and over again. And if he or she is physically threatening you and the children, submission is not staying. It's not staying silent.

This church should be a culture where people can come forward and not feel shame. And if you go, "Oh, that shouldn't happen in the church," you're crazy. There are sinners in here—all of you. Let me just camp on this to press it further down. Someone I know, an Old Testament professor now, once recounted her story of being abused by her husband, a leader in the church. People loved her husband, but at home: explosive anger and violence. She told us in a group one time that he got so angry he pinned her to the ground, and she thought he was going to kill her. Then the doorbell rang, and his whole countenance immediately changed. He got up, opened the door: "Hey, how are you doing?" It was people from church. The church didn't believe her. And when they did believe her, their response was, "Well, you have to forgive him." In that case, forgiveness was weaponized against an abused person who was in danger. We twist Scripture, don't we? We can weaponize the doctrine of forgiveness against people who are in danger and command them, "You have to forgive that person."

Now, the old King James uses the language "put asunder" when talking about divorce. That means the one-flesh union is amputated. It means it's drastic. It's the last resort; it's done for the sake of survival. You don't just get amputated for fun. So the exceptions do not mean you just walk away because it's hard or because of ordinary, disappointing things that every marriage has. The exceptions are very real, but they're not a loophole.

What's so hard and painful about this issue is that there are a hundred scenarios, and very few of them fit nice and clean into nine verses of the Bible. If I could summarize this issue in one word, I would summarize it with the word pain—deep pain. A wound that doesn't always heal; every time you press it, you go, "Oh, that hurts." And then once people start getting involved, there are all the opinions of everyone else to work through. Maybe Christians, if you've found yourself in this position, pelt you with Scripture that harms you instead of heals, and you get tired of having to justify yourself to others when you're just trying to protect your children from public shame.

Jesus knew that this text would produce all sorts of questions, because his own disciples—grown men—when he's done speaking, say this in Matthew 19: "If this is the situation between a husband and wife, it's better not to marry." Imagine hearing something from Jesus on marriage, and the men go, "Well, then no one's getting married! The bar is way high." That's 12 grown men, many of them married, hearing Jesus' words and saying, "That's impossible."

You know what Jesus says back to them? He doesn't make it easier. He doesn't soften the blow. In Matthew 19:11, he says, "Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given." They go, "It's better not to marry," and he goes, "Yeah."

Moving Forward: Prevention, Grace, and the True Bridegroom

So what does Jesus ask? I know this is a tender topic for some of you. Let's talk about prevention first. If you're going to be realistic about preventing the tragedy, heartache, carnage, and failure of the whole thing, you've got to recognize something fundamental: when a marriage disintegrates, it's usually not the result of some single, bizarre event. I mean, every once in a while I'm like, "Wow, that's crazy," but it's usually not like that. Usually, the ceiling caves in because there's been a slow leak in the attic for years and no one paid attention to it. No one's marriage collapses in a single decision. By the time something serious happens, sin has made perfect sense in someone's mind for months or maybe even years—a friendship online that fills a need you stopped bringing to your spouse, a colleague who listens to you: "You listen to me better than my husband or wife."

So I just say to the church as a whole, married or single: we're in this together. To be a safe community where people can come forward takes time—where people can prove they are trustworthy with hard things. Whether you're married or single, the marriages here are helped within the bounds of these walls.

To husbands specifically: I'll be honest, there's way more instruction to men than there is to women. Paul says in Ephesians 5 that marriage is patterned after Christ and the church, and husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the church. Now, just because you obey Jesus in this way, even if you were perfect in it, doesn't foolproof anything. But let me hold this up to you: what does that mean for you? It means things like Christ being the initiator of the relationship. How many women wish their husbands would initiate meaningful conversation? It is amazing the dumb things we're willing to talk about. How many of you have asked your wife, "What burdens are you bearing? How can I help you love Christ more? What pain am I causing you?" Those are different.

It means giving your life up for her, husbands. Are you giving things up for your wife? Can you be specific? Not, "Oh, yeah, I'm giving things up for her." No, no—what are they? If you ever feel this desire to dominate her for the sake of your personal fulfillment, then you don't understand the headship Christ has given you. Christ's sacrificial death is the heart of his love for the church, and we follow Jesus in a sacrificial life toward our spouse. It means being filled with grace, loving her in a way where you don't condemn her, marked by tenderness. Jesus is gentle and lowly; he does not break a bruised reed. From my own experience, women are experts at condemning themselves—you don't have to add to it.

It means loving without condition. Your disposition toward her is not dependent on her disposition toward you. Can you imagine if Jesus did that to you? It means nourishing and cherishing her—that's Ephesians 5:29. No wives ever come up to me in counseling and go, "He's loved me too much, Darren." You know what happens when you don't take care of your body, guys? Your life falls apart; you don't have the energy to do life. No one hates their own body; in the same way, you should care for your wife. It means listening to her until she's exhausted everything she's ever wanted to say to you in that moment. It means taking children out of the house so she can actually just breathe.

And wives, I've spent longer on husbands here because Scripture does, but a covenant is not one-directional. Proverbs says the wise woman builds her house, but the foolish one tears it down with her own hands. The quiet decision to stop respecting a man because he has disappointed you builds up over time until you let everyone else see it. So if you've been keeping a contract instead of a covenant, the question is the same one I asked the men: what have you given?

To the divorced, I'll just say: you're not a case study. You're not a cautionary tale for marriage to learn from. You're a person for whom Christ has died, and you're welcome all the way into this church—no asterisk by your name. And to the one who is married whose marriage is dying inch by inch: divorce is not commanded ever, not even in the case of porneia. It is conceded; it is permitted. Sometimes it's wise, sometimes it's the only option left on the table, but it's not the goal. I'm not asking you to reconcile with people who are unsafe. I'm saying the couples who do the excruciating work of rebuilding trust after a betrayal often end up stronger on the other side. There are people in this room who have carried hard marriages for a long time, and they're still here, and they can help carry yours.

And if you're the one who broke it—you broke the covenant, you know you did—I would just say that Jesus does not soften that, so I won't soften that. Yes, you broke covenant. But Paul wrote to a church full of people who had done exactly what you've done. After listing adultery, sexual immorality, and those who won't inherit the kingdom of heaven, listen to what he says to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 6:11: "And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God." You're never too far. There's always a path back. Don't wait to be found out.

So don't go chasing loopholes. Hold up the sacredness of marriage and concede that covenants can be broken. The last thing I'll say is: every marriage in this room is a shadow of a truer marriage. Paul says as much when he says, "Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church." Christ is the Bridegroom who does not divorce us, even though the only thing we bring him is unfaithfulness. The only thing I contribute to my salvation is my sin, and he goes to the cross for an unfaithful bride. The Gospel is a story of a Bridegroom who absorbs the cost of the unfaithfulness of the spouse. And so, yes—what God has joined, let no one separate. And where it has been separated, whether Scripture allows it or does not, there is a Savior who was separated from his Father so no one in this room would ever have to be separated from him. That is the promise of Christ in the Gospel and why we can all make it here today.

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