Biblical Grounds For Divorce

The Christian faith does not promote or encourage divorce. It does not casually condone divorce or take it lightly. But it does allow it in certain circumstances. What might those be? The creation image of “becoming one flesh” provides a clue. God intends a married couple to become so close physically, emotionally and spiritually that they are as “one flesh.” When something so serious comes between them that they can no longer be “one,” their marital bond has broken. This brokenness, is a harsh reality that the marriage is over. Many times, marriages end in brokenness even before someone decides to legally file for divorce. Fortunately, God provides truth in His word to help us understand Biblical grounds for divorce.

When Oneness Is Gone

When marital partnership dissolves—regardless of the issue—a marriage can feel like an empty shell that no longer honors God’s vision of “oneness.” Coming together, not drawing apart, is the whole reason for marriage, after all. If you are feeling more and more alone in your marriage despite your best efforts at resolving divisive issues, it may be worth considering whether your spouse has abandoned his or her duty to be “one” with you.

God established marriage to be a blessing, but often our human failings make it into an unbearable burden. That isn’t part of God’s design, and there are Biblical grounds for divorce when the oneness of marriage has broken down.

Three Biblical Reasons

A general search on the topic of biblically grounded divorce yields what are often referred to as the “3 A’s?: Abuse, Adultery, and Abandonment. If one’s spouse has been violent, has been stepping out sexually, or has simply left the marriage, and is unrepentant and unwilling to seek reconciliation, healing, and accountability, their spouse is left with a precarious situation.

Abuse

Control. Manipulation. Neglect.

Most often, we think of physical abuse. But it can be emotional and verbal as well. Does your spouse treat you one way in public, but another way behind closed doors? Does your spouse call you names, belittle or bully you? These are just a few examples of non-physical abuse. Conscientious couples will work to fix these problems, but persistent abuse can make a marriage unhealthy and unsafe. Repeatedly and unrepentantly harming a spouse—physically, emotionally, or verbally — is a violation of the “oneness” that God intends for marriage and if left unaddressed, can lead to brokenness.

Society generally thinks of hitting, punching, shoving, etc. as “abuse,” but there are other forms, which include emotional manipulation, control, and shaming. In recent years, there has been a profound increase in the number of husbands who are narcicistic in their relationships with their wives, controlling them through gaslighting, blaming, grandiosity, anger entitlement, and a lack of empathy.

These methods are certainly less than subtle, but one can also control food and money, isolate a spouse from friends and family, give his or her spouse the silent treatment, or undermine her authority with the children. He can call her pet names or refuse to name her at all.

A wife can leave the room when her husband disagrees or “jokingly” insult him in front of others. There are many unexpected methods of chipping away at a sense of worth and security in the marriage. These can be subtle forms of abuse that often fall under the radar.

Adultery

Adultery is one breakdown Jesus specifically mentions. Infidelity has destroyed marriages from ancient times to the present.

“If a man is found lying with the wife of another man, both of them shall die.”
Deuteronomy 22:22

“Everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality…”
Matthew 5:32

“Whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery”
Matthew 19:9

Adultery takes multiple forms also. There is the obvious “sleeping around” with multiple partners or escorts. One might engage in a long-term affair, or in uncommon situations, outright bigamy.

Emotional adultery involves engagement in a profound friendship, which does not become physical, but in which the spouse is more emotionally invested with a friend than with his or her spouse. Adultery can also involve the use of pornography or “sexting.”

Abandonment

Finally, brokenness can be a result of abandonment. Whether the abandonment is physical or emotional, when one spouse has checked out of their marriage vows, it isn’t required for the abandoned spouse to stay committed to their vows so that the marriage that was intended to be a blessing turns out to be a curse.

“If the unbelieving partner separates, let it be so. In such cases the brother or sister is not enslaved”.
1 Corinthians 7:15

Abandonment is not straightforward either. There is a physical abandonment in which one party literally leaves the other. With emotional abandonment, one spouse stops communicating with the other. They could live in the same house and yet feel completely separate. Clearly, there is overlap between some categories.

Addiction

Although not addressed specifically in God’s word as an acceptable grounds for divorce, addiction can be a major contributor to the other three grounds discussed above.

Without treatment, addiction will consume everything in its path. The addicted person is choosing drugs or alcohol over their marriage, children, and job. At some point, the spouse will have to make the difficult decision to protect themselves and their children and declare the marriage irretrievably broken. Marriage is meant to be a lifelong joy, not a sentence of life in “prison” with an addicted spouse.

Let Our Christian Counselors Help You Process What’s Going On In Your Marriage

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