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Have you ever looked at a situation you’re facing in utter disbelief and thought, "How will I ever get over this?" Lysa TerKeurst understands. After years of heartbreak and emotional trauma, she realized it’s not about just getting over hard circumstances but learning how to work through what she has walked through. Now, she wants to help you do the same. That’s why Lysa teamed up with her personal, licensed professional counselor, Jim Cress, alongside the Director of Theological Research at Proverbs 31 Ministries, Dr. Joel Muddamalle, to bring you "Therapy & Theology." While Lysa, Jim and Joel do tackle some really hard topics, you’ll soon find they're just three friends having a great conversation and learning from each other along the way.
Lysa TerKeurst:
Hi, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Therapy & Theology with my friends, Proverbs 31 Ministries’ Director of Theological Research, Dr. Joel Muddamalle —
Joel Muddamalle:
Hey, Lysa.
Lysa TerKeurst:
Happy to have you today. It's going to be an amazing discussion ... and Licensed Professional Counselor and also my personal counselor, Jim Cress.
Jim Cress:
Thank you.
Lysa TerKeurst:
Before we get into our conversation, I want to remind you about the Listener Guide we're making available for each episode of Season 3. We know these episodes can be a lot to digest, so this is a resource my team created to help you practically apply what you learn. Whether you're listening to Therapy & Theology podcast or watching us on the Proverbs 31 Ministries YouTube channel, we've linked the free Listener Guide for you in the show notes.
Now, in this installment of Therapy & Theology, we're going to cover some really major topics. And I want to say right upfront that we're going to be talking about hard things, hard relational dynamics, and some of what we're going to be covering is divorce. Now, the reason I want to say this right upfront is because I loved being married, and I am very pro-marriage the way God designed it. I think it's amazing, and it shattered my heart into probably a million pieces to walk through a divorce, which I refer to, Jim gave me this verbiage, as the death of a marriage.
So I want to clearly state upfront here: We are going to be talking about some hard topics; if there are little ears listening, you may want to entertain them another way. So we're going to dive right in, and we want to take a biblical look ... it's not just going to be an experiential look, but we are going to really take a deep biblical and theological look at some really hard relational dynamics. Today, we're going to be talking about divorce. And, Joel, the reason I'm looking at you —
Jim Cress:
And I'm looking at you too.
Lysa TerKeurst:
Is because I think one of the number one questions that people ask when they're in incredibly hard marriage dynamics, not just marital difficulties, because if you put two sinners together to try to manage kids and finances and life, you're going to have marriage difficulties. And those are good reasons to study some good resources, go to counseling, get some wise advice. But when that shifts into some destructive patterns, some behaviors that are far apart from God's design of marriage, then sometimes people start asking, “What are the biblical grounds for divorce?” I know this is a big topic and a heavy subject, but I'm really thankful that we have your theological wisdom.
Joel Muddamalle:
Well, I think, first, one of the things that we need to first establish is, what is marriage? And what is God's ideal, His intent for marriage? And one of the things, Lysa and Jim, that I've noticed is over the course of time, and there's actually some historical proof connected to the Bible and translations and really good godly people that want to value marriage in a high way. But at times, here's the challenge that can happen: Sometimes we can take the institution of marriage, which is a godly, really good thing, but the institution of marriage is built upon two image bearers, a man and a woman, who reflect the image of God, which means that they have inherent dignity and worth and value.
And unfortunately, I think what's happened is we've taken the institute of marriage and we've actually at times elevated it above and over these two image bearers that are supposed to reflect the value and worth of God. And when we do that, and we take the institute of marriage and we leave it at a higher place than the actual image bearers that are within that marriage —
Jim Cress:
Wow.
Joel Muddamalle:
— and the consequence of that is actually a dishonoring of both what God intended marriage to be and also the image of God that these two people bear. And so I think that's the first thing that we kind of need to start with.
And now the second question is, what are the grounds for divorce? Well, there's a rich Old Testament context that really gives us a lot of information that ancient Israelites had verses in the Bible that they taught. One of them, if you're taking notes, Deuteronomy 24:1-4 is one that we'll spend a lot of time looking at. But I'm going to start with this, that marriage is the Hebrew word beriyth, which is also translated as covenant. Here's one of the challenges that takes place. When we hear the word “covenant” ... I don't know, I'm going to throw you guys on the spot. What do you think of when I say covenant?
Lysa TerKeurst:
I think of a really significant and important contract.
Joel Muddamalle:
And when you think about the Bible, typically, what are you thinking about covenanting relationship to?
Lysa TerKeurst:
Between God and His people.
Joel Muddamalle:
Perfect. OK. This is —
Jim Cress:
And I always think of the seriousness of a blood covenant, which is actually in the sexual part of marriage as well, if you look at it.
Joel Muddamalle:
Yeah, exactly. So here it's so interesting. What we've done is we've actually conflated, Lysa, to your point, we've conflated a covenant that is unilateral between God and man, and we've imposed that view of covenant onto the marriage covenant between two imperfect humans, and this is dangerous, right? So what we need to do —
Lysa TerKeurst:
Because between two people, it's bilateral.
Joel Muddamalle:
It's bilateral.
Lysa TerKeurst:
It's not unilateral. So wait, I want you to pause here because I think this is important. Why is this important? Why does this matter?
Joel Muddamalle:
Because God's ability and His character and His perfect nature allows Him to forgive in a way and to always leave room the possibility for reconciliation to pursue these things. Because God is love, He is righteous, and He is just.
Lysa TerKeurst:
So, God [makes] reconciliation possible —
Joel Muddamalle:
Possible.
Lysa TerKeurst:
Possibility, no matter what.
Joel Muddamalle:
No matter what, because He's God.
Lysa TerKeurst:
But in a bilateral relationship —
Joel Muddamalle:
It's conditional.
Lysa TerKeurst:
— reconciliation is conditional.
Joel Muddamalle:
Conditional. And this is why it's important. That word for covenant, the best English word that we probably should use, which people are like, "Oh, is that the best?" But it is the best translation; it's actually “contract.” And this is how the ancient world understood marriage. They would actually write a marriage contract in the same way that you'd have two parties that come together, and each party has a responsibility. They've got roles. They've got stipulations, and catch this, there are consequences if those stipulations are unmet on both sides.
Jim Cress:
There we're back to boundaries again. A boundary without a consequence is a mere suggestion. That's interesting.
Joel Muddamalle:
That's exactly right. And so now we get into this question of, well, what are the grounds for a biblical divorce? Because sometimes divorce happens, and it doesn't follow these biblical guidelines. But I want to talk about what the rabbis, the teachers of the ancient Israelites ... how they categorized the grounds for biblical divorce. There are three categories that they would use, and underneath that we can flesh out different distinctions. But these are the three categories: The first one is unfaithfulness. Unfaithfulness. Now, it's really interesting, and this is what I do for fun, last night I went through Ancient Near Eastern contracts as many as I could.
Lysa TerKeurst:
Yeah, because you know what? Just what I want to do on an evening at home, I just want to go through Ancient Near East contracts.
Joel Muddamalle:
That's right.
Lysa TerKeurst:
That's how I want to spend my —
Jim Cress:
Do you do that while you're watching basketball? It [inaudible] —
Joel Muddamalle:
I was going to say, Jim knows me really well ... I was watching the Lakers game last night, to watch the number two all-time greatest player of all time, LeBron James. But the interesting thing about many, many, many Ancient Near Eastern contracts and even many Greco-Roman ... so when I say Ancient Near Eastern, I'm talking about Old Testament. When I talk about Greco-Roman, I'm talking about New Testament. What is the commonality? It’s [that] unfaithfulness is almost always not present.
So we ask why? Why is that? It's because it's assumed. It's like the oxygen that we breathe. I am thinking about breathing and doing the breathing without actual intentionality. It's just a natural response. In the same way when these marriage contracts were written, unfaithfulness is a given. So if you are unfaithful through adultery, that instantly breaks the marriage contract, and it breaks the marriage vow.
Lysa TerKeurst:
OK. What do you mean it was a given?
Joel Muddamalle:
It was understood in that time. It was a normal, ethical obligation and responsibility.
Lysa TerKeurst:
So in other words, you're saying that they expected it or they —
Joel Muddamalle:
They expected faithfulness.
Lysa TerKeurst:
They expected faithfulness.
Joel Muddamalle:
And so in the presence of unfaithfulness, they understood that unfaithfulness broke the contract of faithfulness. So it's almost like, why would I need to write in something that is already present as the fabric of our society?
Jim Cress:
Are you saying it was instantly ... so it was understood that if there was unfaithfulness, infidelity, that it instantly broke the contract?
Joel Muddamalle:
It broke the contract. Absolutely.
Jim Cress:
You didn't have to say, "I'm breaking it," or ... it broke it.
Joel Muddamalle:
It broke it. It broke it.
Jim Cress:
Wow.
Joel Muddamalle:
Absolutely. Now, there are two other categories that are really important and the rabbis teach on this. One of them is material neglect, and the other one is emotional neglect. So you've got these three umbrellas, and underneath it can be played out in different ways. Material neglect, now I'm talking about an ancient world that was patriarchal. We can't get around that. And so there are social kind of responsibilities that a man and a woman would have.
But even in this setting, super amazing, super important that there was this idea that both parties, both man and woman, because they're made in the image and likeness of God, required their dignity, value and worth, which means they both had a responsibility to each other. So the husband's responsibility from a material standpoint is to provide food, to provide clothing, [and] from an emotional standpoint, to provide love, to provide the necessity of emotional intimacy, sexual intimacy in that area. And the same was true for the woman back to the man that these things were supposed to be there. Now, the ancient rabbis understood that if material neglect was present —
Lysa TerKeurst:
And you're not talking about just like, "Oh, I wish we had a bigger house."
Joel Muddamalle:
No. No.
Lysa TerKeurst:
We're talking basic material needs, right?
Joel Muddamalle:
Basic material needs. I mean, I'm talking about, is there food on the table? Is there a safe place to live? And so you have —
Jim Cress:
By the way, I thought I heard you say, I'm sure this needs to be edited out, because I must have not been listening. They were required, men were, patriarchal, not to provide some kind of emotional connection.
Joel Muddamalle:
Oh, yeah. We don't have to edit —
Jim Cress:
Did I hear that.
Joel Muddamalle:
— that out. That is absolutely true. And so they understood. And actually we'll look at a different passage in Exodus that understood these three things. That love was a requirement. Love was a requirement.
Jim Cress:
Gracious. Wow.
Joel Muddamalle:
So love is emotional. It's so we're seeking this duality. It is both physical and emotional. Now, where does a divorce ... when is it valid? The rabbis understood that one of the things that is really important is this thing called a certificate of divorce. So if you go to Deuteronomy 21:1-4, it talks about having a certificate of divorce. Why is this really important? Because in this society and in this understanding that in order for a divorce to be valid, that the man or the woman has to be able to show, "Hey, one of these three things has taken place: unfaithfulness, material neglect or emotional neglect."
And in the presence of that, the rabbis would step in almost like a legal system and say, especially for the woman who's oftentimes the most innocent and vulnerable and the victim in this situation, she needs protection here. And so they would step in and actually put a penalty on the husband until the husband actually gave a certificate of divorce; the certificate of divorce ... by handing it to the woman, it gives her dowry back, which is financial stability. That's what they came into the marriage through. And it made it possible for the woman to get remarried if she chose to get remarried.
Lysa TerKeurst:
So —
Jim Cress:
Wowser.
Lysa TerKeurst:
— this is —
Jim Cress:
Wow.
Lysa TerKeurst:
— new and deep, and I'm so thankful you've done the theological heavy lifting so that we can better understand this. So here's my fear when you say this, because remember I am pro-marriage, I think —
Joel Muddamalle:
Mm-hmm.
Lysa TerKeurst:
— we all are, very pro-marriage.
Jim Cress:
Absolutely.
Lysa TerKeurst:
And pro-God's design for marriage. So the unfaithfulness seems pretty crystal clear. What feels a little squishy to me —
Joel Muddamalle:
Material and emotional neglect.
Lysa TerKeurst:
— is the material and emotional ...
Joel Muddamalle:
I know.
Lysa TerKeurst:
Because I think there's a lot of talk around the need for us to acknowledge emotional abuse, and I 100% agree with that. Emotional abuse exists; it is devastating. And because our trauma not only happens to us, it happens in us, so it can also really come about with physical consequences, emotional abuse. And so I know that it exists, and I'm so glad that we are addressing it here. But there's a big difference between somebody being emotionally abused and somebody just saying, "I don't really feel that loved."
Joel Muddamalle:
"I'm distant today."
Lysa TerKeurst:
Yeah. And so I just want to make sure how are people quantifying this or qualifying it? What is the parameter? Because it feels like that could get people into the mindset, "Well, he doesn't make me feel loved the way that I want to feel loved."
Joel Muddamalle:
That's right.
Lysa TerKeurst:
And then quickly peace out on a marriage.
Joel Muddamalle:
So let's read this. So in Deuteronomy 24:1-4, this is what Moses says, "If a man marries a woman, but she becomes displeasing to him because he finds something," and if you're highlighting, taking notes, "because he finds something indecent," the Hebrew word is 'ervat dãbãr, "about her." So what is this indecency? This becomes a big question. "He may write her a divorce certificate, hand it to her, and send her away from his house."
Now this gets to the very question, Lysa, that you're asking, what is the context of this emotional neglect? And what is the context of material neglect? Now, the rabbis, and I'm going to get to Jesus, because really we need to filter everything at the end of the day through how Jesus understood this. So we're going to start with the rabbis in this first century, because Jesus understood the background that the rabbis established in oral tradition and in the practice of the people of Israel.
Then Jesus comes in and actually defines exactly how we ought to think about this. This is really interesting. For unfaithfulness, for adultery ... for unfaithfulness, the marriage contract was broken. So that was kind of clear-cut. Now, Deuteronomy 24:1-4, the way the Hebrew is structured, and this is really important for Jesus later on, the way the Hebrew is structured is neutral. It could say that he may get a divorce, or it could say that he must. One is an allowance —
Lysa TerKeurst:
And there's a big —
Jim Cress:
Wow.
Lysa TerKeurst:
— difference.
Joel Muddamalle:
And there is a huge difference. Now, this meant that different rabbis and different teachers had to make an interpretive decision about that. And so then what happened for the rabbis is, the way they separate emotional and material neglect is that the first option for them in the presence of these things was not the contract broken. They actually established financial penalties in the presence of this.
Lysa TerKeurst:
So we are talking, they were taking steps.
Joel Muddamalle:
They were taking progressive steps.
Lysa TerKeurst:
Steps, not leaps —
Joel Muddamalle:
Not leaps.
Lysa TerKeurst:
— to divorce.
Jim Cress:
That's a good way to put it.
Joel Muddamalle:
And they put the onus on the offender.
Lysa TerKeurst:
OK, so, Jim, I want to get back to what you're talking about, but, Jim, I know what it feels like to sit in your office and to be wrestling in the deepest part of my heart, my soul, with acknowledging that I was in a marriage that there were things happening that were not honoring of God's design for marriage. There was infidelity, and there were other things that were present that were extremely hard.
And at the same time, I remember very much sitting in your office and thinking two thoughts. "I don't want to be a divorced woman." And "What will this do to the future of my family? I don't want to lose my family." And at the same time, I was having to acknowledge this is not sustainable. And so I would imagine you see women, and maybe even some men, because I don't want to think it's always just the woman who's crying, it could sometimes be the man that's heartbroken in their marriage.
Jim Cress:
It happens, absolutely.
Lysa TerKeurst:
And so just speak to the heart of that person from a therapeutic standpoint, any wisdom that you would have.
Jim Cress:
Actually the words of St. Paul come to mind, and I'm going to borrow them. So even if it's a little out of context, I'm going to borrow, "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith." As we talked about my term, it's often, divorce is the death of a marriage. Lysa, I want people to try to work their way out of the marriage if they're going to be getting out of a marriage. To me, you are a perfect example of that.
And here in North Carolina where we live, the state wants you to take a year, actually a year and a day, slow things down. Post-divorce regret is very, very high, and indeed work your way out of the marriage. That also gives the spouse, even if they're what we often call the offending spouse or the addicted or unfaithful spouse, a chance to say, "Hey, are you going to go do your work? " Certainly, which we've talked about, "Are you going to truly repent?"
I like that word metanoia in Greek; it means, I don't just stop, I stop and I turn 180, and you see me moving back toward health. Psalm 51, you'll see it, a broken and contrite heart and spirit, God will not despise. By the way, I believe that it may be implied that He does despise the opposite of that. So you say, is there a brokenness? Is there a willingness? Any gives some time, because if a person is unfaithful, in my experience more anecdotally, if they're in addiction, experientially, within a few months, you'll find a telltale sign. They'll go back to it, because they can hold their breath for a month or two. So giving —
Lysa TerKeurst:
If they're not completely broken and contrite. And —
Jim Cress:
That's right.
Lysa TerKeurst:
— truly walking a healing road of repentance. So I do think it's also important to state that with my experience, and I'm not putting this on anybody else, because I don't want to tell you what to think. I want to give you a lot to think about. And that's really what we always want to do here with Therapy & Theology, is just to give you some things to think about and answer some questions to the best of our ability. But this is not a prescriptive episode for you. This is us giving the facts. And in my experience, I wanted to leave room for God to move. That's just —
Jim Cress:
I witnessed that with you.
Lysa TerKeurst:
And that's just what I felt was really important for me. It was for me. And —
Jim Cress:
Can you say more about that? That is a stunning, powerful comment. Because I think the average human mind, at least at one level could go, even what I was setting up, "You're doing that for a spouse." And you said, "No, I was actually doing that for me." Would you ... I want to hear more about that.
Lysa TerKeurst:
Yeah, because I remember you saying, "Lysa, the rate of post-divorce regret is really, really high." I didn't want to carry the weight of regret, and I knew what would comfort me if the divorce happened, and it did wind up happening. I wanted on those nights where I laid in bed and I was so intensely lonely and sad and wondering if there was any kind of a future for me at all, I needed to know that I had left room for God to move, that I left no stone unturned.
Now did I do that? In close proximity to this person? No. There was a separation. And separation sometimes can be a wise and possibly even healthy choice. We talked about taking steps, not leaps. And for me, being separated created a different kind of stability for me, because there was infidelity involved. And because of that, I was constantly getting triggered if I was in close proximity to this person. And so it was crucial that there was some space so that I could give myself the ability to regulate, to take a step back, and to not constantly live in high-intensity trauma mode.
Jim Cress:
Well, you just, very importantly, read my mind about the actual power, the necessity of that separation versus "Get out; I don't want to be with you"; in a sense, there can be trauma bonding that goes on. I can be confused. It's a trigger-rich environment that I lose myself. I lose my healthy thinking. By coming over here and separating for solitude, therapy, counseling, biblical counseling to be over here and to kind of just get my wits about me.
Because, let's face it, sometimes if a person's been in a relationship that long, my log I use, they're either being lied to, the person's omitting stuff. "I wonder if they're telling the truth?" Or gee, they're being gaslit or gaslighted. That's that sacred space to come over here. And I just want to make this even as much from a therapy standpoint than a theology standpoint, although I do believe it's theologically accurate, I want to be aware if someone is out, and want to use that word, right? Sin.
If they're out in darkness, if they are out in, who knows, even strongholds or being influenced, believe it or not, even demonically, that if they're coming back in your house and bringing that in, whether you have children around or not, that energy, that whole vibe of them coming in, sometimes it's like, "I don't want to be around that particular ... If they're just activated and acting out in their addiction and/or infidelity, I don't want to be around that."
And you touched on this lightly. I want to be, of course, very clear to say, because I've seen this a ton. To say to women, and they may feel, "Well, he repented one night, or he seemed better," is if there's been infidelity, and I'll say that whether the woman's been in has infidelity, which happens, or the man, then there should be a time, certainly, I mean talk to the CDC of sexual abstinence. And saying, "Well, it looked like everything he repented or she repented one night," because then you're dealing with STDs and STIs, and that can be incredibly dangerous.
Lysa TerKeurst:
And I know this can feel hard, devastating, maybe even sometimes impossible. And I remember thinking, "I don't want this," and it feels so complicated and so impossible. I mean, I'm a Christian Bible teacher, and I'm thinking about having a separation. I mean all of it felt impossible.
Jim Cress:
Of course.
Lysa TerKeurst:
There's always going to be circumstances that make it feel devastating, and it should feel devastating, because a marriage is that precious to God. But at the same time, just like Joel was saying, I'm an image bearer of Christ, and so it was really crucial to me to have a separation, so that I could get my wits about me.
Also, I think what can feel complicated in this is when Jesus said we're to forgive 70 times seven," and we're going to touch on this in another episode, the whole principle of biblical forgiveness. What is it, and what it is not? But well, here's what I want to say. When Jesus is giving us that instruction to forgive 70 times seven, because I know Jesus is about preserving life and caring for the individual. Jesus would never have taught that in the context that we're to stay close to someone who's devastating us, brutalizing us, hurting us.
In other words, we are required to forgive, but maybe we need to create enough distance between us and the person hurting us or harming us so that from a distance we can forgive 70 times seven, even if that person doesn't change. And we can still be safe. And we can still be just able to move forward in our day without the constant devastation of the actions of another person we can't even control. So we can forgive from afar. Reconciliation, like you said, is conditional.
Joel Muddamalle:
Yeah, I think that's so important. And I want to circle back on what both of you were talking about in terms of leaving space and taking steps and not leaps. Really, and I said earlier, I want to get to Jesus. And a lot of people will take a passage like Matthew 19:7-9, where the Pharisees come to Jesus and they ask Him about divorce. And Jesus has some very specific things that He says.
Jim Cress:
Isn't that a gotcha question like you see in press conferences?
Joel Muddamalle:
Yeah. It's like a gotcha question. But first I think we need to realize that Jesus is rooted in a specific social and historical setting, just like you and I are. We live in North Carolina. There's a social constriction even that's placed upon us in the area of marriage and divorce. Jesus is in the same situation.
After the rabbis had come together, by the time of Jesus, there are two trains of thought that were taking place when it came to divorce. One was the school of Shammai. And the school of Shammai understood that divorce was only a matter of indecency. This is the Deuteronomy 24:1-4 verses. And that indecency is adultery; it deals with sexuality, sexual impropriety.
Lysa TerKeurst:
And what is indecency?
Joel Muddamalle:
Adultery. And I'm going to talk exactly about what adultery is in the Jewish context, but it's cheating on your spouse. But there's another school, and the school is the school of Hillel. The school of Hillel understood indecency as two things, as both indecency but also any matter, because technically that Hebrew word could mean two things.
So what they said was, "Yeah, sexual sin, for sure, but also any matter." So they actually progressively pushed divorce as a possibility for any situation that you want. In fact, there's one study in the Mishnah or writing in ... The Mishnah is basically all the oral tradition of the rabbis put together. And this is wild. The Mishnah says that a divorce could be sought even if she, this is the quote from the Mishnah, "spoiled a dish."
Lysa TerKeurst:
OK, so does this get corrected?
Joel Muddamalle:
Yeah. Jesus corrects it. That's exactly what He does.
Jim Cress:
Is that the one where you burn the toast too?
Lysa TerKeurst:
I want to hurry up and get to the part where Jesus does correct it, because we are not endorsing —
Joel Muddamalle:
We're not, no.
Lysa TerKeurst:
— that.
Joel Muddamalle:
But I want to point that out, because this is where scriptures get weaponized. This is where things go sideways. And what Jesus does in Matthew 19:7-9, I'm going to read the verses, and then we're going to get exactly into what Jesus says about divorce and what we should do or how we should go about it. But He says, this is [when] the Pharisees asked Jesus, "'Why then,' they asked him," now notice the words, "'did Moses command us to give divorce papers and to send her away?'" (CSB).
This is a quote from Deuteronomy 24. And then, "He told them," Jesus told them, "'Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because of the'" — now this is an important phrase — "'because of the hardness of your hearts, but it was not like that from the beginning.'" So what Jesus is doing is, He's actually correcting the Hillel view, that for any reason you can just go ahead and do this.
And Jesus is saying exactly what both of you said, "Don't make leaps; start with steps." So He says, "Moses doesn't say that you must in this situation, but he allows it for the sake of protection." But the linchpin phrase here is, and I think this gets to some of this question, and I know, Jim, you're going to have a lot to say about this from a therapeutic standpoint, but how do you know when enough is enough? What does that look like?
Well, when Jesus uses this phrase, "the hardness of heart," this is actually connected to the Hebrew phrase in Deuteronomy 24:1 with indecency, and it's also connected to Jeremiah 4:4, which talks about stubbornness. So when Jesus says "hardness of heart," what is He actually talking about? He's talking about unrepentant sin. He's talking about an individual who doesn't just sin and then does turn a shoe in Hebrew, which is to repent and to return back to God. But He goes, "I'm good with my sin. I'm happy to live in my sin. And in fact, all of y'all better deal with it."
Lysa TerKeurst
Or they live a double life.
Joel Muddamalle:
Or they live a double life. There's a —
Lysa TerKeurst:
Where there's an extreme repentance here, and secretly they're still acting out over here.
Joel Muddamalle:
That's right. So what this means is, what Jesus gets at in this text is, Jesus leaves room for divorce in the case of the defender, who is showing a hardness of heart, who is unrepentant. And the unrepentant is persistent and stubborn sin.
Jim Cress:
Can I look to ... real quick that I've never asked you this whole time I've known you, but Matthew 19 happens to follow Matthew 18, which is a classic church discipline passage. And you talk about, we talk about slowing down the steps if someone sins against you, "Hey, we need to talk about this. If not a couple of witnesses, which we know goes back even to the Old Testament, and then take it to the church. If not, treat them like a nonbeliever."
But there are steps in Matthew 18 not tying that directly [inaudible] to divorce, but there's a premise there —
Joel Muddamalle:
There's a process.
Jim Cress:
— of being able to go there and say, "Hey, will you change? Will you do that? Bring it to the church." I understand there were house churches and all that; that's different or smaller groups probably, but there's something there that if you need some steps to look at, I think that's a good example, don't you?
Joel Muddamalle:
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Lysa TerKeurst:
I think that's really good, Jim. And I want to ask you about this hardness of heart, because again, this is an area that can get kind of squishy. And I think it would be good for you to tell us some phrases that are indicative of a person's hardness of heart. I'll throw out a couple.
Jim Cress:
Yeah, please.
Lysa TerKeurst:
One is, "You're making this so much of a bigger deal than it really needs to be. I mean, my goodness, it was one time." Or, "Why do you keep bringing this up? It happened. I said I was sorry. Why do you keep bringing it up?" And again, that points to the reality that there may be a fact of what happened, but there's always an impact of how that impacted you. And it's in that impact, of course, the person hurt; it costs them something emotionally, and it maybe even cost them physically or sexually.
So I think ... when the sin is minimized to quickly get over it, I think that could be a problem. Now, we certainly don't want to keep berating somebody. If somebody is repentant and they are humbly seeking restoration, then berating them is not the answer either. But some of those statements I feel like are such an indication that there's a hardness of heart that is just not going to be good for this situation.
Jim Cress:
I like that. Even as you're talking, I'm seeing steps yet again. And before there is repentance, I see no other evidence otherwise; then there needs to be confession. That Greek word we've talked about on this podcast before, homologeo, to say the exact same thing as, I'd like to say, quite frankly, even if there's use of pornography, I've committed adultery in my heart there. I want to name that. The confession of saying, "This is what I've done." Well, I don't know if I would call it that. So forget repentance, we can't even land the plane on confession. "This is what I've done."
I also of all places, you know I love Nehemiah, to go back to when Sanballat and Tobiah were coming; they're just rebuilding the walls. It's a very simple point, almost like it just sneaks into the text, which is, it said, "They're going to come and try to harm us. Sanballat, Tobiah, the armies, they're going to come try to kill us and harm us." Then this line slips in, "and to cause confusion among us." So that is an issue. If you see someone trying to mess with your mind, you know the truth, "I found the evidence," or, "I've seen it." "Well, it's not" which is classic gaslighting, "what you've seen," or, "It really wasn't that." Or, "I only did it one time."
And sometimes many wives I've worked with, especially, will have basically empirical evidence. "No, we caught you," or, "You're doing this, I know." And the person says, "Well, it's not what you think it is." So the smoke and mirrors thing to cause confusion. And I think for our viewers and our listeners to be able to think, do you feel like for a moment, "I know what's gone on here. I'm pretty sure this has gone on," and even evidence-based, but this person, the offending party, is trying to cause confusion. I think that's a sign of a nonrepentant heart. And I think it's more than just nonrepentant. I think, quite frankly, Scott Peck wrote a book about this; I think it's actually evil.
Lysa TerKeurst:
And what's so complicated about that is even when you see evidence that something isn't right, you taught me that, where there's smoke, there is a fire. Because my heart so desperately didn't want what I thought I was seeing evidence of to be true.
Jim Cress:
Of course.
Lysa TerKeurst:
I wanted him to say, "Everything's OK."
Jim Cress:
You were faithful to your side of the contract.
Lysa TerKeurst:
Yes.
Jim Cress:
It's a breach of contract when this stuff goes ... Let's talk contract. It's a breach of contract. So your operating system, and I've said to you, you know this, many times, "Lysa, you are such a woman of integrity. It's one of my favorite parts of you." Wholeness, not parts alienated off, that wholeness is really what integrity means to me. And so with your walking in integrity, you are doing that. And if there's a breach of contract, I watched you hold up. It doesn't mean you're perfect. That's not the point. But you held up your side. I've seen so many times this person says, "I'm really holding up my part of the contract, and they're not." So even that gets rather slippery.
Joel Muddamalle:
And some people might be like —
Lysa TerKeurst:
Yeah, it's just confusing.
Joel Muddamalle:
— "Wait, wait. Does God do this? I don't think God does this." I just want to point out, God divorces Israel throughout the Old Testament. Look at the book of Hosea.
Jim Cress:
Does that mean what it says —
Joel Muddamalle:
I mean, yes.
Jim Cress:
— He divorced Israel?
Joel Muddamalle:
I mean, look, Deuteronomy 32:8-9, the after-impact of the Tower of Babel in the midst of rebellion, even before Israel was in Israel, He divorces the people and allots them to different places. And so this is language and this is an understanding that is consistent throughout the Scriptures. And yet, God's tendency, His heart is this acceptable endurance with the hope and with the vision of actual repentance and actual change.
Lysa TerKeurst:
And we remember that it's God's capacity for forgiveness and —
Joel Muddamalle:
Unilateral.
Lysa TerKeurst:
— redemption and reconciliation is unilateral, but with people it's not, it's bilateral, which we already talked about. And so our reconciliation is very conditional. But I remember the day that we were sitting at my kitchen table, and you said, "Lysa, you do realize that God divorced Israel." And it hit me like a ton of bricks that I had been carrying this resistance to divorce that I don't even know where it all came from.
I hope out of a pure heart, it came from how serious I was when I took my marriage vows. But there was this heaviness that I thought, "If I divorce him, I am going to carry the weight," almost like the Christian Scarlet Letter. And when you —
Jim Cress:
Wow.
Lysa TerKeurst:
— said that, it lifted something in me. And I just thought, "I think God loves me enough to have provided a way out when I am in this devastating relationship."
Jim Cress:
Love that.
Joel Muddamalle:
Absolutely.