Russel Moore: Divorcing an Abusive Spouse Is Not a Sin

Oh how I wish someone could explain how divorce is acceptable in cases of abuse, and I wish he had explained what he means by “abuse.” Verbal abuse? Spiritual abuse? Psychological abuse? Financial abuse? Physical abuse? Emotional abuse? Sexual abuse? I have heard wives fling all of these charges against husbands. Counseling would be so much easier if Moore was correct. “It is morally justified,” “it aligns with Christ’s heart,” and the support of “faithful Catholic priests” is hardly biblical reasoning. Someone please show me from the Scriptures that Moore is correct and I will be so grateful. In doing so, you must carefully exegete 1 Peter 2:18 - 3:6.

The thing that gives me pause is that in some circles, “abuse” becomes a word you can throw around as something of a “get out of jail free card”, sometimes quite literally. For example, my brother-in-law’s ex-wife would even say that one could not even ask a person what the abuse was—one was supposed to simply accept that the abuse was real, significant, and therefore you had to accept her version of things. No kidding.

(the worst abuse I ever heard of was that he would get mad when he was cut off in traffic….subsequent events that I won’t share persuade me that there was an abuser in the relationship, but it wasn’t my brother-in-law)

But if we think things through per Matthew 18, we can come up with, I think, a little bit more robust way of thinking of it. Let’s assume a wife/husband goes to the other because the husband/wife is beating her/him, or some other sin that needs to be cleared. OK, the other does not repent at that point, it goes to multiple people or to the church leadership.

Let’s say it’s physical abuse. The church moves one spouse out to make sure the other is safe, and tells the offender that he’s/she’s got some repenting to do. Unfortunately, the offender does not repent.

So at this point, what we have is a separation, or almost a de facto divorce, and that per Matthew 18, no? And in a very real way, what you have with unrepentant sin against a spouse is….abandonment, and quite frankly (my parents are divorced and I’ve watched this in many cases) the offender tends to move on relationally, and hence the issue really becomes adultery pretty quickly in a lot of cases.

So we might say that a generic “abuse” does not really meet Biblical criteria for divorce, but if we change the word “abuse” to “unrepentant sin against the spouse”, then we’re implicitly there. And obviously, there may be a serious need for churches to “up their game” in terms of how church discipline is done.

[Donn R Arms]

Oh how I wish someone could explain how divorce is acceptable in cases of abuse, and I wish he had explained what he means by “abuse.” Verbal abuse? Spiritual abuse? Psychological abuse? Financial abuse? Physical abuse? Emotional abuse? Sexual abuse? I have heard wives fling all of these charges against husbands. Counseling would be so much easier if Moore was correct. “It is morally justified,” “it aligns with Christ’s heart,” and the support of “faithful Catholic priests” is hardly biblical reasoning. Someone please show me from the Scriptures that Moore is correct and I will be so grateful. In doing so, you must carefully exegete 1 Peter 2:18 - 3:6.

Donn, in his article he references the latest accusation against JMac; that is, that JMac church disciplined a woman who’s husband was physically, verbally, (and later discovered to be) sexually abusive to her and her children. In that situation, what do you believe the wife’s response should be?

BTW, Wayne Grudem also came out in 2019 to support divorce to protect the spouse / children from abuse based on his review of 1 Cor 7.

When a divorce is initiated by one party, there is often an assumption of repentant sin. However, there could easily be unrepentant sin on both sides. By the time the lawyers get done and pit one side against another, there often is. Not easy to sort out.