Can Christians Divorce?
1) Direct Answer
No. God’s will is one man and one woman for life. A Christian is not to divorce. If separation must occur, the believer is to remain unmarried or be reconciled. Remarriage while a living spouse remains is adultery.
2) Scriptural Explanation
- From the beginning: “They two shall be one flesh…what God hath joined together, let not man put asunder” (Genesis 2:24; Matthew 19:4-6).
- God hates putting away (Malachi 2:16).
- Jesus restored the original standard: “Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so” (Matthew 19:8).
- The “exception” Jesus named is fornication (Matthew 19:9; 5:32). Now notice, Scripture itself shows what that means: Joseph “being a just man…was minded to put her away privily” when he thought Mary had been unclean before they came together (Matthew 1:18-19). That deals with discovering unchastity at the start of the union—not granting a license to dissolve a consummated marriage.
- After marriage is joined, Jesus said plainly: “Whosoever shall put away his wife, and marry another, committeth adultery” (Mark 10:11-12; Luke 16:18).
- Paul confirms: “Let not the wife depart… but and if she depart, let her remain unmarried, or be reconciled to her husband” (1 Corinthians 7:10-11). A believer is “not under bondage” to force an unbelieving spouse to stay (1 Corinthians 7:15), yet this does not open the door to remarriage; he later says, “The wife is bound by the law as long as her husband liveth” (1 Corinthians 7:39; Romans 7:2-3).
- Leadership standard: an overseer must be “the husband of one wife” (1 Timothy 3:2). That’s why men who came into the faith already with more than one wife were received as believers but not placed in church office.
3) Simple Clarifying Logic
- God joins; man must not tear apart what God joined.
- Moses permitted divorce because of hardness of heart; Jesus lifted it back to God’s first intent.
- If divorce were allowed for any later offense or convenience, Jesus would not have called remarriage “adultery,” nor would Paul have commanded separated believers to remain unmarried or be reconciled.
- If an unbeliever departs, the believer is called to peace; but Scripture still binds the marriage bond while the spouse lives.
4) Short Reinforcing Statement
Come as you are, repent of past wrongs, and walk clean from now on. Don’t break up more homes. If you’re already entangled, stay as you are and live faithfully to Christ; but do not seek remarriage while a living spouse remains. God honors His Word and heals where we submit to it.
Ask a Follow-up Question
What did the Laodicean Church Age (our age) Angel (- messenger) Say about this?
Ranked passages from the local William Branham sermon and Church Age Book database. Relevance is relative, not a statement of doctrinal certainty.
Marriage and Divorce
65-0221M §31
...said to Him, "Can a man put away his wife, marry another for any cause?" And Jesus said, "It wasn't so from the beginning." Then they said, "Moses suffered us a writing of divorcement," and to put her away for anything they wanted to. He said that Moses did that because ... (let that straight a while) ... because of the hardness of your hearts, but from, or at, the beginning it wasn't so. The question,
Sir, we would see Jesus
63-1112 §35
A little story, here not long ago, of a family, a lovely little family was breaking up. A man and his wife, they'd come to a disagreement and they were going to have a divorce. And the lawyer told them, said, "Now, if you don't want the courts to kind of take everything you've got, you should go down there, and between you, and divide the spoils up, from your family, your union." So they go down to the home, and they met on a certain day. They went into the living room, and they fussed and they stewed about everyth...
Elijah and Elisha
54-0304 §17
Oh, their morals there are so far beyond ours, till ours is not even in the shadow of them. That's right. We have... The biggest divorce root in the world is in America. Said, "You want to teach us how to divorce our wives and call it Christianity? How to have whiskey stores on every corner, get drunk and carry on? You call that Christianity? Well, we're better off as Mohammedans." Morally speaking, they are; morally speaking. When Christianity is the most cleanest, holiest thing there is this side of heaven. But i...
Questions and Answers, Part 3
64-0830M §99
But now on the case of marriage and divorce, I've asked you like a brother, hold your peace until you hear from me. Hear? Just go right on as you have lived. (I'm taking up too much of the time there.) "We were married twenty-one years ago (yeah) ... justice of the peace." Sister, dear, Brother dear, one time a salesman was telling me he walked into a church (he was a Christian) up in Connecticut or somewhere up there, great big church, just went in to pray. It wasn't---he was a Pentecostal, but he went in there to...
Marriage and Divorce
65-0221M §81
Now, in the sex act... See, the school's got those two things mixed up. Therefore you can't do it. You've got to bring it back to the truth of it, in the beginning. And at the end there will be one Lord Jesus and His bride many---singular. You get it? There was one David on one throne, one king after God's own heart, with five hundred wives! Jesus, sitting on His throne (Hallelujah!) in the Millennium, with a wife like it was at the beginning, created out of the earth by the hand of Almighty God in the resurrection...