It may seem odd to you, but biblical counseling and marital separations is not my first-choice topic. It’s not my first choice for many reasons, but it seems to be a prominent issue for which we have many questions and for which we have uncertainty about how to approach it. It was a popular issue. Biblical counseling and marital separations is not a topic that I would choose because it’s not one that’s exactly exciting for me. In fact, as I sat down to reflect over the couples that I helped through separation and some in reunification, I was reminded that, out of the eight different couples that I can remember over the past eight years, it wasn’t always scenic, it wasn’t always beautiful, and the reunification picture wasn’t always a Disney-themed, song-playing-in-the-background-as-they-just-embraced-and-loved-each-other experience. I was reminded that the marital separations that I’ve interacted with were everything from the flat-out physically and/or emotionally abusive, violent situations to those that erred on the side of being overly critical or being unloving and having a cold relationship.
I’ll never forget one couple whom I met with about 6 years ago. The first meeting I had was just sitting with the wife to hear her perspective. We met actually via FaceTime or Zoom over the computer. As we get to the presenting problem, as any good biblical counselor would do, I asked, What’s the presenting problem? Why are we here? What brings us together? What is the presenting problem? The presenting problem was that she described her husband as being verbally abusive. As you know, verbally abusive can mean a whole range of things from threatening life or limb, to being critical, to tone of voice, to being cold in one’s communication. She said that her husband’s hyper criticality was like a verbal battery assault and that no matter what she did, she could not do right. She described that one night she put the backpack of one of her children in the wrong place and that for some reason her husband latched onto that and criticized and nitpicked. Then, that whole night was a downhill spiral because she put the backpack in the place where he didn’t think it belonged. This situation would ultimately encourage her to take their children and to leave him. I’m not saying that I sanctioned that. I’m not saying that I was endorsing that posture. However, his hyper criticality was enough impetus for her over the years to take the children to leave and to go stay with parents.
The other end of the spectrum is that I’ve met with those who have feared for their safety, those for whom it’s not only about their physical safety but what they would say would be emotional well-being. It’s most commonly the wife that is the one who is sinned against and the husband who is the sinner or the aggressor. There are multiple occasions where I’ve talked with wives who have said that their husbands are too smart to hit them and that their husbands would stand in their way and they as wives would be forced to walk around or to step around. One wife described it as that her husband would never hit her, but that he would stand in the doorway so that she couldn’t get out of the doorway without him touching her or without her having to maneuver her way around him. One time, she even went from the front door to the back of the house just simply so that she could get around her husband as he would use his large, physical presence to intimidate her. In another instance, a wife described to me how her husband suggested that she was going crazy through inadvertent suggestions like, “Well, maybe this is your disorder,” “Maybe this is what the doctor was talking about,” or “Maybe you’re remembering this incorrectly because of what you’re facing right now.” Her husband had her questioning her own sanity. She used the term gaslighting.
I’ve also been in other situations where the husband is just flat-out miserable. One wife described for me how her husband hadn’t talked to her in months and they lived in the same house. They hadn’t talked in months.
All of those are potential moments, friction points, or areas where separation is ensuing and is on the cusp of taking place. Whether or not you’ve thought it through or faced it in your counseling ministry so far, these types of counseling cases are moving towards separation. Some will be with the endorsement of spiritual leaders, a wise biblical counselor, or elders; some will be of their own accord because they’re just sick of it and they’re going to move on and separate for an indefinite time.
I want to first make a few comments. I would like you to just hear a couple of things as we’re preparing to talk about this. If you’ve been involved in marital separations, these are the harsh realities and part of why I don’t ooze with joy in talking about marital separations:
1. Things must be rough if you’re talking about separation to begin with. Things aren’t rosy. Things aren’t super easy. This isn’t the highlight of your marital bliss. Things in your marriage must already be difficult if separation is a part of the conversation.
2. Separations are necessary. I’m going to argue for you today that there are certain cases where, as a biblical counselor or spiritual leader, you cannot but encourage a person to separate and that you might be reckless if you encourage that person to stay in the same geographic location, the same home, as the spouse. Separations are necessary. They can be a tool of restoration in a marriage.
3. The reality is that separations often do not work and the trajectory of destruction is continued even though separation occurred. If a marriage is already on the brink of destruction, if it’s necessary for separation to take place, and if a separation does occur, separations do not work in the sense that they do not help either restore the marital union or provide effective protection and support to the one that is separating. The first observation out of that is that, out of the eight cases of different couples whom I have counseled and met with who have separated, no more than two, as I can recall, actually reunified. No more than two of those. The rest led to divorce.
Oh, how I would love that we could promise that separation was the tool for restoration by God to that person in their marriage, but that’s simply not the case. The case is that you have a marriage that’s on the verge of destruction, and you have to enter into a time of separation for the goal of restoring that marriage, but that may not work and the marriage may continue towards destruction and dissolution.
4. This may come as a shock to you—biblical counselors often encourage either separation or reunification, but rarely get to be a part of the actual separation and reunification. More commonly a pastoral spiritual authority or spiritual leader is part of the separation and reunification. That’s a good thing that, if you are a biblical counselor who is not in a place of spiritual leadership within your local church, most likely you are serving as a consultant to the spouse who’s asking, Should I separate? The reality is that when you are serving in that capacity, you are most likely not the one who is going to the house to help get the person’s things. Most likely you are not the one who is informing the spouse that the person is leaving. That’s where good pastoral effort comes into play.
As I had the opportunity to serve in the counseling center, I met with those who were asking the question: Should I stay? I was able to biblically share with them a perspective of what they should do, but I was not their spiritual leader or spiritual authority, and we needed a pastor or an elder to double back with them and their spouses and to help ensure and broker that actual separation. Most of us as biblical counselors will only consult or counsel about separation and very few of us will participate in the separation.
I would also argue that would be true for the reunification. Most of us as biblical counselors will not have the privilege of bringing the couple back together, but only meeting with them as they’re coming back together.
5. We’re ministering to two sinners and the person you are trying to help may turn blame onto you. There isone more observation that I think is helpful to hear because, at times when we talk about separation, we envision ourselves to be the rescuer of the one who’s being sinned against. We envision it as if we are the ones that are willing to run into the fire and get shot to protect this person, that we will risk our own safety and livelihood to ensure that the one being sinned against is swooped up and taken out of a destructive marriage for an indefinite period to only be restored back to the spouse. But you recognize that you’re ministering to two sinners. Here’s what I mean by that. I do not mean that both are the reason why there’s marital conflict right now. I don’t mean that. In my history and my counseling experience, it’s typically the husband who is repeatedly sinning against his wife. I wholeheartedly affirm that one person can be the sinner and one can be the sinned against. Yes, I affirm that wholeheartedly. I am in no way putting guilt on victims. Yet, a victim is still a person who is touched by sin.
When you care for any type of sinner, it will not be neat and tidy. Here’s what I mean by that. Of the eight different couples that I’ve helped meet with for marital separation, I can think of three of those where the wife doubled back against me or the church or the counseling center and blamed us for trying to destroy her marriage when we were protecting her, when we were offering her resources, when we were helping follow through on her requests. Oh, how I wish that the church was praised or that the center was praised or that I was thanked, but that’s not the way that it worked out. What took place is that the husband snuck his way back into the relationship and blamed us for the problems that they were facing, blamed us for the separation that they were going through, and blamed us for the reasons why their marriage was unhealthy at that point. The wife, maybe unbeknownst to her, believed him and ostracized us. I have no doubt that there are opportunities for us to improve, but what I want you to be mindful of is that you are interacting with people that have been sinned against for years and the reality is that they’re going to struggle to know who to trust. That’s just the reality. They’re going to struggle to know what is true. They’re going to struggle to understand their spouse’s intentions. Don’t be surprised in the process of facilitating separation if you turn out to be accused as being the bad guy because you were part of the separation process in some way.
To recap:
- things must be really rough;
- separations are necessary but they don’t always work;
- as a biblical counselor, you’re typically not going to be at the house packing the things or reintroducing the couple; and
- sometimes you will also become the bad guy by the one you were seeking to help and to minister to.
DEFINITION
What is a marital separation? A marital separation is when one spouse physically leaves the home for a period of time—I haven’t qualified that with a definite period of time—with the goal of distancing himself or herself from his or her spouse. I haven’t mentioned anything about children in this. Obviously, if children were a part of the picture, children would go with the departing spouse in most instances.
Marital separation is for the sake of removing one spouse from the presence of, from access to, from the control of, or from the punishment of another spouse. That’s marital separation at its core and that is what we’re talking about today.
When we talk about marital separation, it doesn’t mean that the person is sleeping in another room. It doesn’t mean that they haven’t talked in a while. We mean that in some way the spouse has left the home in which he or she would reside with his or her spouse and is living somewhere else. The person is staying with a sister, mom, dad, or whomever it may be. The person is removing himself or herself from his or her spouse, not from the home, but intentionally from the spouse. There is a level of distance that is increased for the sake of getting away from the spouse.
It’s a definition. Let’s use that just as a working baseline as we continue to move forward.
REASONS AND TRIGGERS FOR SEPARATION
When you think of separation, I want you to know that there are reasons that obviously motivate separation and that are going to trigger whether a separation is advisable or not advisable. First of all, I’ve tried to lump the primary reasons for separation into two overarching categories for the sake of just helping you to know when that trigger has occurred that you need to say, “Yes, being there is not a good idea.”
1. General Safety
Proverbs 22:3 reads: “The prudent sees danger and hides himself, but the simple go on and suffer for it.”
This is echoed in Proverbs. What we see here is that, yes, there are those that suffer, there are those that are prudent and see danger, and it is completely legitimate to say, “This is not a healthy, safe environment for you to be in; you need to remove yourself from that environment.”
I know that I’m frequently going to use the wife as the one who was sinned against and I’m not saying that because I believe that all women are sinless—just so you know—but in my counseling experience it is typically the wife that is the one who is being sinned against and it is typically the husband who is the one who is sinning against her.
When the wife is being sinned against and she is in an unsafe place, it is entirely legitimate for us to say, “You should hide yourself and remove yourself from that situation.” But if we’re counseling with an adult, the counselee has to make that decision. To be a wife, you have to be an adult. She has to make that decision. We cannot make that decision for her. But if she has minor children or stepchildren that are part of the home, or if she’s the guardian of someone and there are minors in that home, it is no longer an issue of “You can” or “I recommend.” In those cases, it is now “You must.” If this is an issue of physical endangerment and there is a minor in the home, “You must.” However, right now when we’re speaking of marital separations, it’s “You can” and “You should.”
When you think of physical safety, for biblical counselors, it’s really straightforward. If there’s physical violence taking place, that’s a no-brainer. If there’s physical violence, you must separate. I don’t know of anyone who would argue otherwise. It starts to be a little bit more difficult to parse out when we’re talking about emotional well-being or emotional safety. Those terms kind of make me uncomfortable, maybe because they’re not directly biblical, maybe because they can be used to house a myriad of different circumstances.
Later I’m going to talk about unrepentant sins, but go back with me to the scenarios that I described earlier. The husband never touches the wife but makes her think that she’s going crazy and blames her for everything. I would argue for you that even though that husband has not been physically violent, he is emotionally mistreating his wife. I would argue that in that instance, when a wife is made out to think that she’s going crazy or that it’s her fault, we’re starting to get close to the grounds of separation.
Therefore, when you hear safety, of course there’s physical elements to that. Of course, if there’s violence, we’re encouraging separation. No one disagrees with that. We’re also saying that in the case of mistreatment, reviling, lying, sinning against, those are going to be emotional issues to where the emotional stability of this wife is starting to be jeopardized.
If you’re wrestling with the emotional well-being of the spouse, there is a very helpful tool called the “wheel of power and control.” It’s basically an evaluation to be able to see how control manifests itself in an abusive relationship. There is obviously going to be violence that’s part of that, but there’s going to be control as in controlling finances and not giving proper financial support to the spouse. There’s going to be asserting one’s male privilege. There’s going to be degradation of or speaking down to the spouse. There’s going to be isolation. When we’re talking about safety and we’re saying to look for triggers, that wheel of power and control is going to be a helpful evaluative tool for you to say, “Hey, am I seeing these things in this relationship? And if I am, then we’re getting on the grounds of or we’re coming close to a reason to separate.” I would include those in the overarching category of safety. When you’re hearing those things, that’s a safety issue.
2. Unrepentant Sin
I want you to grab your bible and go with me to 1 Corinthians 7 because the next component that I’m trying to communicate is going to be what I would categorize as unrepentant sin or unrepentant sins. I don’t want to make it out that every spouse has a multitude of sins, but maybe there’s one particular sin that they’re refusing to change in. That sin can potentially be grounds for separation.
Let me offer to you just a little bit of clarity here. First Corinthians 7 has been used in varying biblical counseling contexts to provide a framework for marital separation. I’ll share the text and then let me offer to you just a brief analysis.
Verse 1 reads: “Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: ‘It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.'”
That was the question from the Corinthians, but Paul’s comments are in the next verses.
Verses 2-5 read: “But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.”
Hear me out on this. In this context, Paul is speaking about sexual abstinence; he is not talking about a marital separation. He’s answering the question: Is it okay to engage in sexual relations? The answer is, yes, you should engage in mutually enjoyable sexual relations with your spouse. That’s part of God’s design for marriage. In verse 5, if you abstain from sexual intercourse and you’re doing so in a mutually agreed upon way for the sake of spiritual reasons (prayer), you may come back together again.
It’s important to hear that this is not a one-for-one in talking about marital separations. Paul’s not talking about the abusive husband in 1 Corinthians 7:1-5. He’s talking about sexual immorality. He’s talking about sexual purity. He’s talking about the sexual obligations of husband and wife.
Let’s go a little bit further. Go down to verse 12.
Verses 12-15 read: “To the rest I say (I, not the Lord) that if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her. If any woman has a husband who is an unbeliever, and he consents to live with her, she should not divorce him. For the unbelieving husband is made holy because of his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy because of her husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy. But if the unbelieving partner separates, let it be so. In such cases the brother or sister is not enslaved. God has called you to peace.”
The entirety of chapter seven is about remaining in the state in which you were called, meaning remaining in the same state as when you became a believer. If you were a slave, don’t seek to be free. If you were married, don’t seek to divorce. Let you remain in the state as per verse 17, which says: “Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him.” Were you circumcised? Don’t seek circumcision. Were you not circumcised? Whatever it is, remain in that state.
Verses 12 through 15 are no different. What Paul’s arguing is that if you have an unbelieving spouse who consents to live with you, then you, as a believer, should not seek to divorce the unbelieving spouse. You should seek to live with your spouse in peace, and your presence with your spouse is a sanctifying presence. That’s what he means here by the phrase “made holy because of his wife. Otherwise, your children would be unclean.” He’s saying that you have a sanctifying presence when you are ministering to your unbelieving spouse by being a Christian in front of your spouse. Think of the danger of removing the Christian from the unbelieving marriage. There’s no longer the sanctifying presence. Your spouse is not seeing you go to church, is not hearing scripture, and is not hearing hymns and songs, singing about the goodness and the faithfulness of God. That sanctifying presence is a blessing and an influence upon those who would remain an unbeliever even in their marriages.
But there’s something that’s important to pick up on. This is why I’ve said unrepentant sins: “not consenting to live with.” Back to verses 12 and 13, if “she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her. If any woman has a husband who is an unbeliever, and he consents to live with her, she should not divorce him.” That phrase for “consenting to live with” has significant ramifications. What we are saying is that the unbelieving spouse is willing to live with the believing spouse and to honor the marriage covenant, but they may not be doing that because they love Jesus. Conversely, there are times when the unbelieving spouse is unwilling to live with and not consenting to live with his or her spouse according to the marriage covenant. That is now going to be another potential for a separation. Let me explain.
In a biblical counselor’s process, you’ll think through, Should I encourage this person to separate or should I not? I’m suggesting that safety is obviously going to be an issue where if that’s triggered, you must encourage the person to separate. But if you are counseling a person who is unrepentantly engaging in the same sin over and over, tugging at the very essence of the marriage, I’m suggesting that now we are getting into a “consenting to live with” issue. I’m suggesting that this person does not have carte blanche to live with his or her spouse in any way that he or she wants to and that the person who is a believer is not stuck because the unbelieving spouse says, “I know what you think. I know what you want. I don’t care. I’m going to do whatever I want. I’m going to spend however I want. I’m going to talk to whoever I want. Stay out of my business.” If a spouse is not consenting to live with, we are bumping into unrepentant sins. What’s noteworthy here is that this is in reference to an unbelieving spouse in verses 12 and 13. Paul is thinking that if this unbelieving spouse is not consenting to live with the other spouse in a way that honors the marriage covenant, we are getting to the point of “not consenting to live with.” That is an issue. That is an unrepentant sin, but he is referring to the unbelieving spouse.
What about the believing spouse? What about the professing Christian? What if the spouse is engaging in a sin and it’s not changing and it’s not different? Last year was just like this year. There’s no help and it feels like you’re stuck. The reality is that that’s why church discipline is so important. That’s why it’s so important to be part of a godly church that practices membership and that, out of love and a desire to restore, practices church discipline. That means that if you’re engaging with a believing spouse who you think is not consenting to live with, then you have to be willing to say, “Well, God has given checks and measures to that believing spouse in church discipline so that I need to, first of all, go to the spouse and let the spouse know what the problem is.” Then Matthew 18 tells me that I need to bring someone else with me. “Hey honey, I talked to you. You totally blew me off whenever I said that you can’t talk to me, you can’t yell at me, you can’t stand in the doorway and intimidate me. You can’t do those things and you blew me off. Now I’ve brought so-and-so along with me.” After you go through that process and the spouse refuses to listen to you and your friend, or refuses to listen to you and your spiritual leader, then you take it to the church. The church gets involved and the church seeks to help restore. The church should be a measure of protection for those that are victims. The church should be the safe place. Church discipline should be a rod of restoration for those that are wayward. If there is a Christian who is engaging in unrepentant sin, the answer is, first of all, to handle this through the means of church discipline. If the Christian who is sinning in an unrepentant capacity, if that spouse is unwilling to repent, Matthew 18 says, “Let them be to you like a Gentile or a tax collector.” There is an excommunication. There is an identification that that person is not a believer.
Then, and only then, would verses 12 and 13 begin to refer to that Christian, that person who formerly professed Christ but now is declared by the church to be an unbeliever. Then we could say, “Yes, maybe you are an unbeliever who is not consenting to live with your spouse.” Or, if the person has never been a Christian, never professed or declared to be a follower of Jesus and is not a member of the church, then we would say that person is already the unbeliever in verses 12-13. Now we’re evaluating what it means for that person to live in a way that honors the marriage covenant, to consent to live with.
Let me give you unrepentant sins that are starting to tug at “consenting to live with”:
- Reviling
Reviling is the biblical way of describing verbal abuse where you’re constantly putting another person down. You’re putting your spouse down, you’re insulting your spouse, you’re embarrassing your spouse. In front of the kids or in front of your family, whatever it is, you’re reviling your spouse and you won’t stop. That would be an unrepentant sin. - Controlling and manipulative behaviors
You need to know every movement of your spouse. You don’t give your spouse adequate financial support. You isolate your spouse from friends and family. You burn every relational bridge that your family has. You yourself do not have significant friendships because you marginalize and push people out. Those would be controlling, manipulative behaviors. - Angry outbursts
When I say angry outbursts, you’re automatically thinking explosive, punch the wall type outbursts. For most of you, that’s where your mind goes when you hear “angry outburst,” and I would say, “Yes, that’s part of it. That’s a safety issue.” If the husband explodes, punches the walls, screams at his wife, yes, we’re talking about a safety issue. However, I also want you to hear that there are husbands that will use their silence as a weapon against their wives. They weaponize silence. They ignore them. They ignore them as if the wives don’t exist. The anger is not that they blew up and punched the wall. They know that’s going to get them in trouble. They know that that’s wrong. Now what they’re doing is they’re weaponizing their silence. They will ignore their wives for days on end until the wives have done enough penance or said the right thing or until the husbands feel like they’re ready to enter back into the relationship. That would be an example of an unrepentant sin and of not consenting to live with. - Financial misdealings as opposed to financial withholdings
In my counseling experience, it is very common for the husbands to be the ones that run the finances, and for the wives to have limited access, for whatever reason, to those finances. What takes place is the wife does not have a significant source of income. The husband has the significant source of income, but he does not give the wife adequate financial access. I don’t mean vacations in Paris. I don’t mean that they’re cruising every weekend. What I mean is that there is simply no money or no access to money without the husband giving the thumbs up for it. That would be financial misdealings if the wife does not have equal access to the money to spend it as she sees fit in the same way that the husband does. - Isolation
This final one is a trigger or a potential sign that should be a concern to you. I’ve mentioned isolation under controlling and manipulative behaviors. When you look at a marriage and one spouse is trying to isolate another spouse—”Hey, we should move.” “Hey, you shouldn’t talk to your parents. They’re bad for you.” “Hey, you know, I really don’t like that friend. I don’t like it when you spend time with that person.”—and the common theme in all of that is the person wants the spouse to be around him or her and only him or her, we’re starting to run into the question of whether it is an issue of “consenting to live with.” When I hear that in the marital context—when I hear that the husband has zero meaningful friendships, that he doesn’t like the wife’s family and the wife’s family struggles to like him, and that he doesn’t like his wife’s friends—what I’m hearing is not that he’s this really godly, loving guy; I’m hearing that potentially he is the disagreeable one that is seeking to isolate his wife from all of her support network and all of her community.
What we’re thinking is that, if there are reasons for separations, typically they’re finding themselves somewhere among these that I’ve mentioned.
There are safety issues. In my mind, as a biblical counselor, those are easier for us to diagnose. Then there is the reality that there are unrepentant sins that accumulate over time. If you are a reviler, according to scripture, and you are refusing to change the way that you talk to your wife, that may be a potential reason for separation because you are not allowed to talk to your wife like that. To do that in an ongoing, repeated way is going to be grounds for me saying, “Hey wife, you should remove yourself from a man who’s going to insult you all the time. You should remove yourself for the sake of being restored back to him.”
Those are our primary reasons for separations. As you think more about this, there’s not one specific biblical text that’s going to isolate marital separation. It doesn’t exist. However, there are more theological realities that help frame when a marriage should get to the point of being willing to separate for the sake of restoration. Let me give you at least five of these realities.
THEOLOGICAL REALITIES THAT FRAME MARRIAGE SEPARATION
1. The covenant of marriage as being sacred and holy
Hebrews affirms that the marriage bed is holy and undefiled. Genesis 2:24 has the covenant language of “bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” and “becoming one flesh” because you’re re-prioritizing the spouse over the parents. The covenant of marriage is a holy and sacred covenant, that we, as spouses, are not allowed to do whatever we want because we have entered into this promise before God and man that we would treat our spouse in a particular way. The sacredness and the holiness of the covenant of marriage is one of the theological realities that frames the separation because if the marriage is not being treated in such a way, then it is potential grounds for us to separate for the sake of restoration.
2. The divine calling of roles in marriages
I counsel regularly that a husband or a wife needs to fulfill his or her role whether or not the other spouse is doing so. Yet, we recognize that if one spouse has completely shirked any obligation, any responsibility, any fulfillment of his or her role, we are not just going to stand there and say, “Well, that’s up to you. You do what you want to do.” We are going to expect the spouse to be who God has called him or her to be. We’re going to be godly. We’re going to be faithful. We’re going to respond in a way that honors the Lord. If Ephesians 5, 1 Peter 3, and Colossians 3 are all part of the divinely inspired word of God, then we’re saying that you have a role that you should be fulfilling and we are going to expect of you that that role be fulfilled. That’s a theological reality that frames separation.
3. Requirement of a pastor to protect the flock
This is something that I was taught in my counseling ministry. I learned it later on. A former lieutenant in the local police force said that the shepherd has an obligation to protect the flock and that he was willing, as a shepherd, to protect the wife against an abusive husband. I learned from that that according to 1 Peter 5, shepherds are willing to address aggressive, unkind, manipulative, controlling men. If a pastor is willing to be a pastor, then part of that requires that he must be willing to address the wolves to protect the members of his flock.
4. Excusing unrepentant sin is not an act of love
God uses the consequences of our actions to restore us back to faithfulness. If a wife is saying, “I’m just going to pray for him, I’m not going to call the police,” she is not being helpful. I understand her desire to want to help her husband. Addressing the unrepentant sin and providing consequences for the unrepentant sin is an act of love and restoration.
5. Church discipline
This is where one spouse is being sinned against repeatedly by another professing believer, and what takes place is that the spiritual authorities need to be informed about what’s taking place. We’re going to trust our spiritual authorities to help us make a decision in this case. If they say, “Yes, you should not tolerate this; this is a matter of church discipline; we need to talk to your husband,” then the wife should say, “Got it; talk to him; I respect that you’re put over me as leadership and I submit to that.”
Those are the theological realities that frame a separation.
ADDITIONAL CONSIDERATIONS
How do we get to separation? I just want to give you a couple of considerations. There’s no one biblically-inspired way, but there are a couple of ways that I think are unhelpful.
The first clarification that I would offer is that when you are getting to the point of saying, “I need to separate,” that’s a decision that should not be made in a vacuum. When you, as a spouse, are thinking that you need to get away from your spouse or that your marriage is not healthy or dynamic, that is a significant life-changing decision that you should make with the help of a spiritual leader. I’m using the term spiritual leader because it doesn’t have to be a pastor; it can be another godly, mature, biblically-sound believer. This is where a biblical counselor would be ideal. You should consult with a biblical counselor or with one of your elders before deciding to make that decision. You don’t make that decision unilaterally; you’re willing to say, “I need help making this decision: Should I separate? Or should I not separate?”
Once you’ve made that decision, what’s now taking place is, Do I do this in a quiet way? Or do I do this in a public way? If there are no children involved, typically the quiet way is going to be preferred. You’re not lambasting. You’re not making this known. The people who know your family well are going to see that you’re driving separate cars, you’re not sitting next to each other at church, maybe you’re temporarily attending another church, but as best as you can, you’re only telling those that need to know.
Public is when children will be involved. Unfortunately, when you’re relocating, when you have to change schools, when children are now at different teachers, when they’re in a different Sunday school class or they’re going to youth group at a different church, it will be public very quickly that the marriage has separated. That will be a very difficult thing to keep quiet.
Here is a recap of some things to consider for an actual separation:
- Don’t make the decision unilaterally.
- Keep it as quiet as possible with those that need to know.
- Set the expectations from day one that reunification is the goal. You don’t know when that reunification may be, but right now you are separating for the goal of reunification.
- If it’s a safety issue, be as quiet as possible and the spiritual leader should take the wife to a location unknown by her husband. The spiritual leaders don’t want him to know where she is at right now, not until they have a chance to talk with him.
When you think about what’s taking place while separated, let me just share with you my own error. Instead of approaching this like marital conflict, we’re approaching this as a time for intensive personal growth on behalf of the sinner (the one who is sinning against the other spouse to the point that it is necessary to separate). This is not the time for James 4:1-3 about both spouses having desires that are waging war within them. This is not the time for Matthew 7 about both spouses having a log that each needs to pull out of his or her own eye. Please don’t go to those passages. I went to James 4 in a counseling case, and I’m pretty sure that was the moment that I lost the wife when I said something along the lines of “You both have passions that are waging war in here.” I didn’t believe that she was deserving of her husband’s hyper criticality. I didn’t believe that. I didn’t say that. But that’s the way she heard that. She heard that the way that he was talking to her was partially her fault.
In the time of separation, you are working on intensive personal growth rather than marriage conflict. For the sinner, that means that the person needs to demonstrate repentance, and repentance is qualifiable. I don’t buy the garbage that “You can’t force me to repent” or “This is phony.” No, when you are truly repentant, we will see it in you. Everyone will see the fruit that corresponds to it according to Matthew 3. That repentance should be demonstrative to spiritual leaders who are familiar with the circumstance, not only to the spouse. Did you catch that? There are multiple occasions where you’re going to be with the spouse that has been manipulated and controlled for years, and she’s going to say, “Oh, he’s being so kind to me. He’s being so loving. I’ve never seen this side of him.” You’re going to have to say, “We are so thankful that he’s doing this, but we need to wait and see how this demonstrates over the long term.” We need spiritual leaders and authorities. We need that neutral third party to say, “Yes, I agree with you. He seems like a changed man.'” Don’t let spouses be manipulated back into the relationship.
I call this “affirmed change” by spiritual leaders who are familiar with the circumstance, not just when the spouse says, “I’ve never seen him act like that. He’s being so kind.” No, no, no. When the spiritual leader says, “Yes, I agree with you. I think he’s a changed man. From everything that we’ve seen, he seems repentant.” That is the goal of the sinner: to demonstrate repentance that is affirmed by the spiritual leaders.
For those who are being sinned against, I would encourage a time of spiritual nourishment. Let me explain that. If you have lived in a dry and weary land for years, all you need at this point is spiritual nourishment and refreshment. I would encourage you to set up the wife who has been sinned against with another biblical counselor who is not there to help her excavate bitterness. She’s not there to help the wife repent of something. She is just simply a shade, holding some water and nourishing this malnourished wife. Let her acclimate to what life is like without being constantly criticized. Let her acclimate to what life is like without trouble and turmoil. If there is any hint of temptation towards bitterness or unforgiveness, yes, that might come up, but that’s not the main thrust. The main thrust is you need someone to come nourish you. That’s the first focus.
The second encouragement for those who are being sinned against is a time of discernment: learning to trust others who are trustworthy. When you’ve been sinned against in such ways over such a long time, you don’t know who to trust. You don’t know if you should trust the biblical counselor or the pastor. This spouse must learn to discern who she can trust and be willing to trust them sometimes over her own judgment because there are going to be times when she thinks her spouse has changed, but her spouse hasn’t changed, and everyone else can see it, but she can’t see it. She’s going to have to say, “I trust what my pastor is saying. I trust what my biblical counselor is saying. I’m going to go with what they say over what I’m immediately feeling.” We’re trusting others who are trustworthy. I’ve had to make the appeal to individuals to say, “Look at what we’ve done to serve you and to help you. You’ve got to trust me on this one.”
Instead of saying, “You guys are going to get back together at the end of the year or in 6 months,” you should establish benchmarks for the one that has sinned against the other. For the husband that has repeatedly sinned against his wife, he doesn’t need to know a timeline. He needs to know that growth and repentance is the goal, and when growth and repentance have taken place, then reunification will take place. We recognize that this is more of an evaluation of progress than a strict timeline for growth. Because if a husband knows that all he has to do is fake it for 3 months, 6 months, 9 months, and he’ll be back home, he can schmooze his way back into the house, but it does not mean that he has changed. But if he doesn’t know when that time is going to be—even more intense, if he doesn’t think it’s going to happen—then we will truly see his colors. We will truly see if he’s committed to pleasing the Lord and if he’s repentant or not. Establish benchmarks rather than a strict timeline.
Thirdly, you’re encouraging the spouse who has been sinned against to have a posture of being open to reconciliation, while expecting that things must change. While separated, the spouse who has been sinned against should be saying, “I am very open to being reconciled to my spouse.” The person must hold that posture. That is the biblical posture to hold, but things must be different. “I can’t be talked down to, I can’t be yelled at, I can’t be financially withheld from. Those things have to change. I’m not going to be okay with that.” As a biblical counselor, if you see that progress is being made and those benchmarks are being met, then you reintroduce. Typically, what will take place is there will then be marriage counseling and individual counseling, and the couple begins to date each other and court each other. As that progress sustains, you get to the point of reunification.
METHODS OF REUNIFICATION
I’ve only seen this work once out of the eight different couples. The methods for reunification are:
- By all means, do not move back in until spiritual leaders and authorities and biblical counselors have recommended to do so. You should be given the green light not by your own conscience, or by your own feelings, but by spiritual authorities—people outside of yourself that you can trust.
- As you move in, you are both, in mutual accountability, continuing in marital and individual counseling for the indefinite future. There is an ongoing emphasis on both individual growth and now marital restoration.
The one time that we have seen the couple come back together and be sustained, they got back into the same church, she moved back into the home, the children went back into the home with her, he was in accountability and under individual counseling, and they were both meeting together for marital counseling.
That’s the method of reunification. Reunification is not the final point. They are continuing under care. They are continuing under leadership. They are continuing under the authority of God’s word as they restore, and that’s particularly important for the person who was the aggressor, who sinned against the other spouse, and who caused the trouble to begin with.
GOALS
I’m finishing with just a few thoughts about your goals. Sometimes marital reunification and separation is discouraging because we’re evaluating it based off of: Is this person getting back with the spouse? Did the marriage work?
The number one goal of marital separation and reunification is to glorify and honor the Lord. That’s the number one goal. Hopefully, the marriage can be restored, but our number one goal is that Jesus Christ would be honored and pleased.
Secondarily, our goal is that, in the separation, there would be an individual growth in holiness, greater repentance, and greater change in each spouse and that they are responding in a faithful way.
Thirdly, our goal is that the marriage would be restored. The goals are in that order. The marriage is restored when a person is seeking to please the Lord individually and his or her spouse is doing so too. Then the marriage will be restored.
However, remember that the marriage may not reconcile. You have to understand that. Your number one goal is not that the marriage would be reconciled. You could compromise and make foolish decisions to encourage them to reunify when that could just flat-out be dangerous or unwise. Your goal as a biblical counselor is to minister effectively to them to help them glorify God individually. If they’re doing that, that is a success. They can learn to trust the results of the separation to God. They can’t control that. All they can control is their part, which is honoring and pleasing the Lord. Therefore, our number one goal can’t be reunification because if that’s the case, we may compromise things that we need to hold a line on. No. Marriage reunification is the result of two people who are seeking to please the Lord and prioritize their marriage. That’s the goal.
When you’re doing your best to minister, it’s murky. It’s never going to be neat and tidy. As much as we would love to be the rescuers, we are ministering to a messy, difficult situation. By the way, that doesn’t include the children that are connected or the adult children, the family, or the parents that are part of your church and part of the ministry, who are all caught up in this marital separation.
All you can do as a biblical counselor is hold fast the line of expectations. That’s all you can do. Make it clear for the one that you’re ministering to that all you can do as a biblical counselor is to be faithful. When you speak the truth, you must be willing to entrust to the Lord the way your counselee determines to utilize that. If she ignores you and gets back with her unrepentant spouse, that’s not something that you can control. You have to evaluate whether you were faithful. If God used you to restore marriage and preserve a covenant, praise God. What a beautiful thing. You have literally been an instrument in preserving a family. There are children and grandchildren that will forever be affected by your ministry. Praise God. But it wasn’t you. It was you being faithful. When we understand these principles, it settles us. I’m not trying to be anybody’s rescuer. I’m not trying to be anyone’s redeemer. I’m trying to be faithful and I’m trying to encourage you to act in a way that is faithful too.
It’s never neat and tidy. Don’t pretend that it is. Yet, you can be faithful in a messy situation, and that’s the goal.
This is a transcription of Dr. Gifford’s Breakout Session [1] at the ACBC annual conference in 2020.