Ephesians 5 And Divorce

Once he opens the fifth chapter of Ephesians with instructions to imitate God in general, unspecified acts of righteousness and love, Paul lists several specific things to avoid afterward, including sexual immorality (which only Mosaic Law fully defines) and foolish talk (Ephesians 5:3-6), leading to his declaration to not be partners with the people who practice such things (5:7).  If one is not to be partners with them, one would not marry or remain married to them apart from one factor on the more righteous person's part to be discussed below.  There are ramifications of this for divorce that could easily go unnoticed or unacknowledged.  First, the scope of certain offenses Paul mentions needs to be recognized.  "Not even a hint of sexual immorality" (5:3), for starters, refers to far more than adultery or homosexual behaviors, although they unfortunately receive more of the evangelical spotlight than more serious sexual sins.

There is also, for instance, how greed is specifically stated in Ephesians 5:5 to be a form of idolatry, albeit in a looser way than the term is used in the Old Testament, where idolatry is plainly described as the creation or use of physical structures as if they capture the essence of an immaterial deity (Deuteronomy 4:15-19, Isaiah 40:18-20, 41:7, 44:9-20, 46:1-7).  Idolatry of the direct kind in fashioning an idol or regarding it as divine would already have to be grounds for divorce if mere greed, which is said to be idolatry, is among the things that legitimizes breaking off contact with someone!  Of course, such people who practice the outward kind of idolatry Biblically deserve to die as it is (Deuteronomy 13:6-11, 17:2-7), so if they were treated as they deserve, their spouse (if they have one) would be freed from the marriage anyway.  To divorce them could not be evil on this worldview.

Going back to Ephesians 5, Paul twice cites general/unclarified sin ("impurity" in 5:3 and people who engage in any kind of immorality in 5:5) as marking the people to avoid.  If one is to flee such people as those Paul mentions, how could one fulfill this while living with a marriage partner who has these traits?  There is always the option of mercy, but mercy is indeed optional intrinsically and universally.  A person/Christian who is obscene, greedy, idolatrous, or deceitful--and Paul goes so far as to say immoral (Ephesians 5:5), a word that encompasses so much more than just these things--is someone to not be partners with except out of mercy with rationalistic awareness of what this undeserved treatment is and is not.  What partnership, however, is more intimate than marriage (or close non-marital friendship)?  It would be impossible for someone to obey this demand to avoid such relations with greed-driven people, among other things, if one remains married to them thinking that this is not applicable to marriage.

Though Ephesians 5's nature would not be solely or even primarily related to marriage, its marital applications would not be the first time the Bible touches on divorce for general sin far beyond adultery.  However, it follows by necessity that the separation from unrepentantly wicked people Paul calls for would of course pertain to marriage and not simply other relationships.  Deuteronomy 24:1-4 says that indecency is a justification for divorce, or else the passage would not have described how to handle divorce in such situations and would have forbidden ending the marriages in question altogether.  There needs to be wrongdoing on at least one person's part, but divorce is Biblically legitimate in response to sin, whether that sin takes the form of legalistic impulses or physical/sexual abuse, material neglect, lack of love, or unjustified abandonment.  Yes, some of these are addressed in their own verses in Mosaic Law or even the New Testament.

For instance, Exodus 21:9-11 lists material neglect as permitting divorce.  1 Corinthians 7:15-16 says abandonment can release someone from their marriage.  Then, there are things like rape (Deuteronomy 22:25-27) where the offender, husband or wife, deserves to die no matter if the assault was within the marriage or not.  Their righteous execution would, once again, end their marriage anyway, and thus it follows that the other spouse could validly divorce them, especially if it was marital rape (or kidnapping or attempted murder, and so on).  One does not have to be the victim of spousal abuse to these extents to be allowed to divorce, however.  In the Torah and in Ephesians 5 of all places, enough is said that directly or by logically necessary extension that it is clear that the Bible thankfully permits divorce and even encourages or demands it (see Ezrah 9-10) for much, much more than adultery.