People are no longer married when they are divorced.

Scripture teaches us (with some noteworthy contrasting texts) that marriage is a covenantal lifetime relationship between two individuals. When they marry, they make the most serious promise they can, to live together in holy wedlock as long as they both shall live.

Yet divorce has always been present. The law of Moses acknowledged its reality (Deuteronomy 24:1-3). Both Jesus and Paul used strong language in advocating the lifelong nature of marriage, while conceding the possibility of divorce (Matthew 19:3-12, I Corinthians 7:10-16).

Proverbs 6:1-5 reckons that sometimes people discover they have made a foolish promise they should not keep. If you made a bad vow, fulfilling it results in a bad fulfillment (Jephthah’s vow, for example, in Judges 11:30-39).

The strong weight of scripture urges us to find our way through a marriage’s rocky times. Yet sometimes a person will say, in emerging wisdom, “I now see I was wrong, in establishing this marriage. I’m only making it worse, by sticking with these promises I never should have made. I need to stop.”