Divorce: what about abuse?

Posted by on Apr 22, 2010 | Comments Off

After Pastor Rick’s sermon two weeks ago on the topic of divorce and remarriage, many were left asking the question, “What about abuse!?  Surely, God doesn’t want a woman in an abusive relationship to stay in the marriage!”
After a few email conversations with Bridgers, here are some tentative thoughts on this extremely sensitive and important issue…
  • The only two situations the Bible lays out as grounds for divorce are adultery and abandonment by an unbelieving spouse. Abuse is not mentioned as a reason for Biblical divorce.
  • The Bible establishes the government (Rom 13:1ff, 1 Peter 2:14, Matt 22:21) and the church as authorities over Christians.  Abuse is gross, illicit sin as well as illegal. Biblically, an abusive husband should be reported to both church elders for church discipline (Matt 18) and to the governing authorities for legal action.
  • 1 Corinthians 7:10-11 says, “To the married I give this charge (not I, but the Lord): the wife should not separate from her husband (but if she does, she should remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband), and the husband should not divorce his wife.”
    • This passage may be referring to other circumstances in which separation from a spouse is necessary, but not divorce.  Abuse would be that case.  I would advise a wife being physically, sexually, or emotionally abused by her husband to separate from the home without divorcing while she is following the previous action steps of reporting him to the church elders and governing authorities.
  • If a husband who claims to be a Christian continues in abuse after being confronted by the previous two authorities, a wife may need to permanently separate herself from living with him but not divorcing him. If, after continuing in the blatant sin of abuse and her subsequent separation, he initiates divorces with her, he should be treated as an unbeliever for living in open, unrepentant sin (Matt 18:17) and the wife should not feel guilt for the divorce.  She is free to remarry according to 1 Corinthians 7:15.

Again, these are broad and unclarified thoughts from Scripture, not across-the-board “rules”.  Relational situations are always best taken case-by-case and should be handled as such by the elders of a church, but these are some general guidelines from The Bible. I understand the personal pain and the depth at which thinking through this issue will effect some people.  I know your situation might not fit into a cookie-cutter interpretation of The Bible.  If you’d like to dialogue more about this, email me at josh.howerton@bridgesh.com

UPDATE: Pastor Rick dealt with this topic on his blog HERE.

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