When Freedom Is the Righteous Path
I was walking across the church after Sunday evening service when my theological world got turned upside down.
Most everyone had gone home, but she was still there, talking to someone near the back pews. A young woman in our congregation whose husband had been unfaithful for over two years—though he kept denying it. We all knew what was happening, but in our very legalistic world, there had to be proof. Without proof, our interpretation of Scripture said her hands were tied.
Then something incredible happened. In a moment of rage during a conversation with me, her husband inadvertently blurted out the truth he'd been hiding. He admitted what he had been lying about for two years, then realized what he'd said and began stammering, knowing he was busted.
But as I looked across that nearly empty church at this precious woman, as clear as a bell, I heard Holy Spirit say: "Tell her to get a divorce."
I stopped dead in my tracks. Whoa, whoa, whoa, I thought. I thought God hates divorce.
Then came the follow-up that changed everything: "Sometimes divorce is the righteous choice."
Wrestling with What I'd Always Been Taught
This moment launched me into the most intensive biblical study of my pastoral career. If God hates divorce—as I'd been taught my entire life—why was the God who supposedly hates divorce telling me to tell this woman to get a divorce?
I had been raised in an extremely conservative environment regarding divorce and remarriage. Early on, I was taught there were never grounds for divorce. If you divorced for any reason, you must remain single for the rest of your life, or you would commit adultery and couldn't be saved.
Later, my understanding evolved to allow divorce in cases of sexual unfaithfulness (the porneia clause in Matthew 19), then if an unbeliever left a believer. We started looking for biblical loopholes—what about a man who doesn't provide for his family? Scripture says he's "denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever" (1 Timothy 5:8, NKJV). Did that free the wife?
But we were still thinking legalistically. Everything was about legislation, finding the right combination of verses to unlock permission for divorce in specific circumstances.
The Malachi Revelation
That clear word from Holy Spirit sent me digging deeper into the foundation of our "God hates divorce" theology—Malachi 2:16. What I discovered shattered my legalistic framework entirely.
The verse we've all been taught says something like: "For the Lord God of Israel says that He hates divorce" (NKJV). But when I began studying the original Hebrew and consulting Old Testament scholars, I learned something shocking: that's not what the text originally said.
The early church theologians, the church fathers, and Hebrew scholars had consistently translated Malachi 2:16 to say that the man who hates and divorces his wife commits violence and treachery against her. The modern translations—beginning particularly with the King James era—shifted to make it an anti-divorce verse instead of an anti-treachery verse.
This wasn't just a minor translation difference. The Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered in 1948, contained fragments that took decades to carefully translate. When the Malachi 2:16 fragment was finally translated in 1998, it confirmed what the ancient scholars had said: the verse condemns the man who "hates and divorces"—it's about treachery and violence, not about God's attitude toward divorce as an institution.
From Law to Life
This discovery forced me to reconsider everything I thought I knew about Scripture and divorce. But more than that, it began to shift my entire hermeneutical approach—how I read and interpret the Bible.
Jesus said, "Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, permitted you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so" (Matthew 19:8, NKJV). I began to understand that many things interpreted legalistically in Scripture don't actually reflect the heart of God. They reflect accommodations to human hardness of heart within specific cultural contexts.
When Jesus addressed divorce in Matthew 5 and Matthew 19, He wasn't establishing universal laws that would eternally bind all Christians to specific divorce criteria. He was confronting the hard-hearted men of His day who were using legal loopholes to excuse their treacherous treatment of wives—exactly what Malachi had condemned centuries earlier.
Jesus wasn't giving us another law to replace the law of Moses. He wasn't taking us from the Mosaic tree of knowledge to the Christian tree of knowledge. He was taking us to the tree of life—to Holy Spirit partnership in discerning what love looks like in specific situations.
The Dangerous Legalism of Formulas
I learned this lesson the hard way through years of pastoral counseling. I remember one pastor who actually set up his wife to commit adultery. He knew she had struggled with lesbian tendencies when she was younger—something she had confessed to him. While traveling, he deliberately placed a woman with similar tendencies in their home and manipulated circumstances to provoke a sexual situation.
Why? So he could trigger the porneia clause and have "biblical grounds" for divorce.
This is what happens when we turn Scripture into formulas. We create ways to manipulate God's word to get what we want while appearing righteous. We focus on meeting the technical requirements rather than seeking God's heart in the situation.
God's Heart vs. Human Systems
What I began to see was the difference between God's heart and human religious systems. Religion wants neat and tidy categories. Religion fears loss of control, so it creates rules and formulas that can be applied universally without requiring spiritual discernment or Holy Spirit partnership.
But God's Kingdom operates differently. In God's Kingdom, we're called to "submit to one another out of reverence for Christ" (Ephesians 5:21, NIV). We're called to love sacrificially, to protect the vulnerable, to pursue justice and mercy.
Sometimes—and I want to be very careful here because this can be a slippery slope—sometimes divorce is the righteous response to treachery, abuse, and covenant-breaking. Sometimes telling someone to stay in a destructive marriage is actually enabling sin and perpetuating harm.
God loves the institution of marriage, but only when it reflects His character—love, honor, mutual respect, and mutual submission. When marriage becomes a cover for abuse, manipulation, and control, it's no longer reflecting God's design. It's become what Malachi condemned: using a legal arrangement to "cover violence with a garment" (Malachi 2:16, NKJV).
The Pastoral Dilemma
As pastors and counselors, we face an incredibly difficult challenge. How do we help people in destructive marriages without either:
Becoming too quick to recommend divorce, or
Keeping people trapped in harmful situations by misapplying Scripture
There are no easy formulas because every situation is unique. But here's what I've learned:
We must partner with Holy Spirit to discern God's heart in each situation. We must understand that protecting the vulnerable and pursuing justice are core aspects of God's character. We must recognize that sometimes the most loving thing we can do is help someone get free from a relationship that has become destructive rather than life-giving.
Moving Beyond Formulas
The religious world I came from would say I've fallen into error, that I'm being anti-scripture and anti-family. But I've never loved Scripture more than I do now, and I've never been more committed to healthy families.
The difference is that I no longer treat Scripture like an operations manual with rules that can be applied without wisdom, context, or Holy Spirit guidance. Instead, I see Scripture as revealing God's heart for human relationships—relationships characterized by love, honor, mutual submission, and the protection of the vulnerable.
When Paul outlined guidelines for church services in 1 Corinthians 14—"let two or three prophesy," "let one interpret tongues"—he wasn't creating binding operational rules for all time. He was providing wisdom for that context while establishing principles of order and mutual participation.
Similarly, when Jesus and Paul addressed divorce, they were responding to specific cultural situations while establishing principles of covenant faithfulness, love, and justice that we must apply through Holy Spirit wisdom to our contexts.
Hope for the Broken
If you're in a marriage where you're experiencing emotional, financial, or physical abuse—where you're walking on eggshells, where your voice has been silenced, where you're living in fear rather than love—please hear this: God's heart is for your safety and flourishing.
That doesn't automatically mean divorce is the answer. But it does mean you deserve help, support, and the freedom to make decisions about your life and safety without manipulation or coercion.
God hates treachery. God hates violence. God hates when the strong oppress the weak and when covenants of love become tools of control.
A Word of Caution and Hope
I want to be clear: I'm not advocating for casual divorce or suggesting that every difficult marriage should end. Marriage is sacred, and working through challenges with professional help, prayer, and commitment can lead to beautiful restoration.
But I am saying that sometimes—sometimes—the most righteous response to consistent covenant-breaking, abuse, and treachery is to acknowledge that the marriage covenant has already been broken and to pursue legal recognition of that reality.
The woman I was told to counsel toward divorce? She eventually did get divorced. Today, years later, she's flourishing in life and ministry. Her children are healthy and thriving. She's found healing from the trauma of those years and has been able to use her experience to help other women recognize abuse and find freedom.
That's the fruit of listening to Holy Spirit rather than following religious formulas. That's what happens when we choose the tree of life over the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
God's heart is always for redemption, healing, and the flourishing of His children. Sometimes that happens through marriage restoration. Sometimes it happens through finding freedom from relationships that have become destructive.
The key is learning to hear His voice and trust His guidance, even when it challenges everything we thought we knew.
If you're in a situation where you're questioning whether your marriage is healthy, please reach out for help from trained counselors who understand both biblical principles and the dynamics of abuse. Your safety and flourishing matter to God, and they should matter to those who counsel you.
Blessings,
Susan 😊