What does “one flesh” mean? Mutual commitment? Or indissoluble union?

In this post I will show that “one flesh” cannot mean indissoluble union.

Genesis 2:24 says, Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. This verse is often called the creation ordinance of marriage. It is speaking about a stage when neither sin nor death had entered the world, so it makes no mention of the fact that marriage can end in death or divorce.

The word “join” is a Hebrew word meaning “be glued firmly”, suggesting a strong bond. However, the bond of marriage is moral, not metaphysical. Human marriage does not create a mystical “oneness of being” as a single entity in the heavenlies. A moral bond is not inseparable: it can be withdrawn, or un-tied, or broken by one of the parties. A commitment to the good of the other is the foundation of marriage. One cannot have a marriage without this commitment on both sides. In the case of abuse, the abusive spouse has no commitment to the good of the other, but instead, is committed to mistreating the other.

Jesus quotes the creation ordinance and adds a solemn prohibition: What God has joined together let not man separate (Matthew 19:5–6; Mark 10:7–9). He does this not to condemn all divorce, or to declare all remarriage invalid, but to rebuke those rabbis who claimed a man was allowed to divorce his wife for any reason that the man cited. The rabbis in Jesus day had perversely interpreted Deuteronomy 24:1 by saying it entitled men to divorce their wives whenever they wished to. Jesus should be understood to be saying: “The one flesh principle is God’s intention for marriage; if you men had properly recognized this text you would not have distorted Deuteronomy 24:1 so badly.”

Paul quotes the creation ordinance in Ephesians 5:31–2 and refers to a great mystery. The word mystery is the Greek word mysterion, meaning a secret or mystery, information knowable only by revelation from God or by explanation from His messengers. Paul explains that the revelation knowledge of which he speaks is the union of Christ and the church. This union, which unites in Christ both believing Jews and believing gentiles, had been hidden in God since the beginning of the ages but is now revealed in the church age (Ephesians 3:3–10; 1 Corinthians 2:7–8; Colossians 1:26–27). It is wrong to conclude that the mysterion is the relation between husband and wife, because that type of union was revealed since the days of Eden.

Ephesians 5 teaches that the way Christ loves the church is the way husbands ought to love their wives. However, an analogy must not be pressed too far. A husband ought to love his wife sacrificially, yet this does not mean a husband is the saviour of his wife: a husband cannot wash all his wife’s sins away. Likewise, “wives submit to your husbands as the church submits to Christ” must not be interpreted Pharisaically, or with misplaced concreteness. Paul and John both warned the church about false-christs, anti-christs, false gospels, and devils disguised as angels of light. Just as the church ought never to submit to a false-christ, a wife need not submit to a false husband or an anti-husband.

Paul also uses the “one flesh” text to say that having sexual relations with a prostitute makes the two individuals “one body” (1 Corinthians 6:16). In the days before contraception, when prostitution often led to the conception of children, the “one flesh” and “one body” idioms made practical sense if we think of those idioms as referring to families — kith and kin. Paul’s use of the “one flesh” and “one body” terms in 1 Corinthians 6 must be understood prudently. It would be absurd to suggest that when a man becomes “one body” with a prostitute, that man and the prostitute should henceforth maintain a permanent intimate relationship just as if they were married. Similarly, it would be absurd to say that an unmarried person who went with a prostitute could never marry someone else.

The indissolubility argument gives rise to absurdities

Imagine a woman who grew up in a non-Christian home where her father was manic-depressive and her mother was timid and ineffective. In her late teens she fell pregnant to her boyfriend and they got married — it seemed a good escape from her family life. The husband developed into a gambler and drug addict, showing little regard for the children’s welfare and becoming increasingly violent towards her. He compelled her to cooperate with him in crimes to support his addictions. After ten years, and pregnant with a third child, she managed to leave him for good. She then became converted and joined a local church. A few years later she met a Christian man who began to court her. The church told her she could not remarry because her first marriage “still existed in the eyes of God”. The poor woman might ponder her predicament: “If I had not married Jim, but only cohabited with him, I would have been free to marry this man who is courting me. But since I married Jim, they say my relationship with him is indissoluble. Is this the law of Christ, or the law of the Pharisees?”

The Bible never says divorced persons are “still married in the eyes of God”. If divorced persons were “still married” then they would be under obligation to grant all the privileges of marriage to each other, including maintaining regular sexual intercourse and living together despite their divorce.

The teaching of indissolubility compels “being alone” if a first marriage has failed, whereas God said it is not good for man to be alone (Genesis 2:20). It prohibits remarriage and thus tends to place people in sexual temptation for long periods, whereas Paul advised against lengthy abstinence because of the likelihood of temptation (1 Corinthians 7:5) and recommended remarriage to those “de-married” who did not have the gift of abstinence (verse 9).

Those who teach indissolubility usually tolerate the remarriage of a divorcee once that marriage has taken place. They say, “If you have already remarried, you should maintain that current marriage as God’s will for your life.” This is pastoral wisdom for individual cases, but it creates an overall double-standard. Those who remarried through either ignoring the Word or not knowing what it says, can stay in their new marriages — burdened, perhaps, with a sense of sin, but nevertheless, having the comfort of a marriage companion; yet if single divorcees are to avoid sin, they must stay alone forever. This is unjust: it makes some divorcees into eunuchs without biblical justification, and it imposes false guilt on those who have biblical justification for their divorce and remarriage.

Even worse are the few churches that have tried to get around this double-standard by preaching that a divorcee who has remarried should leave the second spouse because the second marriage is continuous adultery. I know one woman whose church convinced her to break up a very happy second marriage by such reasoning. The resulting mess nearly ruined her life, and it turned the second husband away from any interest in Christianity. The New Testament never tells us that a divorced and remarried believer should leave the second spouse and return to the first spouse, nor does it say children from the second marriage are illegitimate.

The total indissolubility argument is manifestly absurd. Consider the following proposition. “God’s design for marriage is that it be a lifelong commitment. Therefore, even if one of the parties persistently and grievously hurts the other party so the covenant is broken beyond repair, the marriage still exists in the sight of God.” This argument is as nonsensical as to say: “God’s design for Adam and Eve was for them to live eternally in the Garden of Eden, in unfettered communion with Him and without shame. Even though Adam and Eve broke God’s law and rebelled against Him, they still live in the Garden in God’s sight.”

God recognized the reality that Adam and Eve had sinned. He gave legal remedies for that sin: Jesus’ death upon the cross (the spiritual remedy) and the sword of the state to punish and restrain sinners (the temporal remedy). God recognizes reality when a sinning spouse has utterly broken the covenant of marriage. He permits a legal remedy for the betrayal of the covenant — that remedy is divorce with full freedom to remarry.

There is a grim similarity between the doctrine that a marriage is indissoluble and the words of an abuser. The abuser sets different rules for the victim than for himself. He denies historical realities about events in the relationship. He makes out that his behavior is consistent with his words. The indissolubility position says that the law about marriage is different from all other biblical law, it denies the historical reality that the marriage is shattered, and it makes out that its teaching is consistent with the Word.

Andrew Olsen is a Christian counselor in Perth, Western Australia. His article Divorce Theologies Exposed, which you can find here with a bit of digging, says (with minor modifications for readers’ who are unable to access the article):

Marriage was never either a unilateral or indissoluble covenant. Only God and lunatics make such covenants. Marriage is a parity covenant, not a unilateral or indissoluble covenant. Marriage is a contract between equal parties — an agreement entered into that includes promises to each other. Each party is expected to keep his or her promises and to be loyal to the covenant. A parity covenant can be broken, rendering it null and void. …

If I commit crimes of betrayal against the very foundations of marriage, like sexual immorality or desertion, to give two NT examples, our parity covenant is broken (by me) and my wife can remarry. Once I’ve broken it, my wife cannot break it.

If an abused woman thinks, “I feel like I should keep my covenant before God, even if he didn’t…” this is delusional piety, because the covenant is already gone. If she stays and reconciles for ‘covenant’ reasons, this is bogus thinking, usually disguising a fear of getting in trouble, being alone, or keeping her idol of marriage or this man. (She may, of course, stay and reconcile for other good reasons, but mixing in the covenant idea is obscuring at best.) …

God has hot contempt for neglectful husbands: “But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” (1 Timothy 5:8)

This post contains slightly updated material from my book Not Under Bondage: Biblical Divorce for Abuse, Adultery and Desertion [Affiliate link]. Other articles and posts on divorce can be found here.