How God restored my marriage

Wonderful indeed is the grace of God in its sufficiency for the needs which have been occasioned by mistakes, by ignorance, by even self-will. For in how great a multitude of marriages these things are evident. The believer is therefore not to despair, if he sees that in which he has been astray from Scripture in any of these various matters; but rather to turn freshly in faith and confession to the Lord, to lean utterly upon His grace, to seek His Divine intervention; and He may bring greatest blessing even out of ruins. If our God can say "O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself: but in Me is thine help" (Hosea 13:9), then certainly the same help is present for the individual believer. In fact, that grace alone is sufficient for sustaining and preserving His saints through all the experiences of married life, just as it is essential and sufficient for restoring where there has been failure. Blessed thus to feed upon the fruits of grace all our journey through.

When he had gone out Christina gave herself to tears, saying, "Oh, with what willingness I would have told the gentleman that it is my fault that you are so poor, for I had to leave all we possessed at my aunt's. But when I attempted to speak, the words seemed to choke in my throat, and I could say nothing. You, George, should have told him how I sinned against you and added to the weight of the cross you have had to bear." "All is forgotten now, my dear Christina;" I gladly answered; "all is forgiven and washed in the blood of Christ, who has returned to me a new wife, regenerated by divine grace, and made humble and meek by repentance;" — and I pressed her to my heart.

When we were somewhat calmed, the beloved fugitive told me how the evening before, while her aunt was at church, the wife of Seitz had come to speak to her heart and conscience, and told her that on the morrow I was going to leave Brumath never to return. "And," said Christina, "when Marguerite had gone it seemed that a mist had come over me and my heart beat violently within my breast. My conscience, whose voice I had tried in vain to drown, spoke louder and louder; my sins, like a great wall, seemed to enclose me. I remembered how I had tormented you because of that miserable cloak; how in the midst of your misfortune and trials I added to your sorrow, disobeying God's express command that the woman be subject to her husband as unto the Lord. I have sinned against the Holy Spirit; but God who reads my heart knows that though I did you so much evil, I did not do it with heart intent. Vanity and anger blinded me no less than fear of my aunt and Father Boniface. But my conscience gave me not a moment's rest, and I have come to seek you, my poor George, and here I am. — Will you forgive me? Did I not at the foot of the altar promise to be yours, your faithful companion, your helpmeet? Last night, my aunt may have suspected something, for she did not allow me out of her sight the whole evening; and I had not the courage to tell her I had seen my wrong and wished to return to my duty and to you. But, when she had retired, I attempted to flee from the house, but found the door locked. I remained awake all night and was able to confess to God freely all my sins, and ask His forgiveness and help in my misfortune. My room was on the lower floor, and the window opened out into the garden; at daybreak I wrapped our child in my mantle, and climbed the garden wall. I met the sacristan who was on his way to the church to ring the morning bell, and I opened my heart to the good man, for an inward voice impelled me to confide in him. He brought me to his house, to make soup for myself, and gave me milk for our child, and his son led me by a hidden path to the woods and would have accompanied me to Wendenheim, where I was sure to find you, but I saw the fire as we came along and you by it, dearest George! And now my good, my beloved husband," added Christina in a supplicating tone, "will you receive me again to yourself? Can you forgive me the injury and indignity I have done to you? Alas, all that I had brought with me from Hanau I had to leave in the house of my aunt, who surely will not return me anything. O George, I am a great sinner! — so to forsake you, poor and unfortunate as you are!"

In the painful case you name, we do not believe it to be the right thing for a son to “try and manage a reunion” between the father and mother. If the husband wishes to come back, the wife should receive him. This is clearly involved in 1 Corinthians 7:13. “The woman which has an husband that believes not, and if he be pleased to dwell with her, let her not leave him.” If he wishes to come back, it is tantamount to “being pleased to dwell with her,” and if she be told “not to leave him,” it is tantamount to being told to receive him. At least, so we judge. It may be the Lord is about to bring the husband to Himself. If so, it would be very sad if a Christian wife should prove a stumbling-block by failing in grace. No doubt, he has greatly failed in his duty as a husband by leaving his wife, even were there nothing more serious. But if he really desires — apart from any management or any influence brought to bear upon him — to come back, we cannot but judge it to be the duty of a Christian wife to receive him and to seek “by her chaste manner of life, coupled with fear,” to win him for Christ. Should she refuse and he be then driven away into sin or hardness of heart, she could never forgive herself. Back

Now I say as a husband, have I failed? What do I do if I have failed as a husband? Obviously the first thing to do is to get on my knees and confess my failure to the Lord in exactly the same way as I would confess any other failure. There is no difference. Let us be preserved from thinking that any failure in the home can be glossed over lightly because it does not reach the public eye. God sees us. We are under the eye of God. Any failure in the home must be confessed in exactly the same way as any public failure. And if the wife fails in any of her responsibilities she has exactly the same recourse for help and for blessing, to confess it. Then we must do something that we are not always prone to do, to confess it to each other that we might not fall into the same snare again and so avoid anything that would hinder the interests of the Lord. I believe with all my heart that Aquila and Priscilla would be such a couple, so concerned about doing what was right for the Lord that they would be harmoniously knitted together, united in the interests of the Lord. This is the attitude that governed their lives. What a delightful couple indeed.

Then the question of separation and divorce is taken up. The indissolubleness of the marriage tie had been declared by the Lord and is here confirmed. "What therefore God hath joined together, let no man put asunder." "And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery; and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery." (Matthew 19:6, 9). And so the Apostle writes that which is a command not coming from himself but from the Lord, that if a separation takes place between husband and wife, she is to remain unmarried, or be reconciled. The husband is not to put away his wife. How little heed is paid to all this among professing Christians in our days. The increase of unscriptural divorces is appalling.

But verses 9 and 10 are not simply Paul's advice, but the Lord's commandment. The wife is told positively not to depart from her husband. Of course, if he were unfaithful to her, this would be a different matter. If circumstances were such however, that a wife did leave her husband, she is told to remain unmarried, or to be reconciled to her husband. If of course in the meantime her husband had remarried, this would change things completely. She could then never be rightly re-united to him, even if his second wife died (Dt. 24:3,4).

But verses 9 and 10 are not simply Paul's advice, but the Lord's commandment. The wife is told positively not to depart from her husband. Of course, if he were unfaithful to her, this would be a different matter. If circumstances were such however, that a wife did leave her husband, she is told to remain unmarried, or to be reconciled to her husband. If of course in the meantime her husband had remarried, this would change things completely. She could then never be rightly re‑united to him, even if his second wife died (Deut.24:3,4).

"But to the married, not I enjoin, but the Lord, that wife be not separated from husband (but if also she be separated, let her remain unmarried, or be reconciled to her husband), and that husband leave: [or put away] not wife." (Vers. 10, 11.) Here it was no fresh direction from apostolic authority, but the ruling of the Lord Himself, already known, the general duty of man and wife, grounded on the indissolubleness of the tie. Wife was not to be parted from husband, nor husband to dismiss wife: if parted, she was to abide unmarried, or be reconciled; for, even if she were without fault; separation is a reproach and might be a snare.

This permission, however, and this direction which recommended Christians to marry, was not a commandment from the Lord, given by inspiration, but the fruit of the apostle's experience — an experience to which the presence of the Holy Ghost was not wanting. He would rather that every one were like himself; but every one had, in this respect, his gift from God. To the unmarried and the widows, it is good, he says, to abide as he himself was; but if they could not subdue their nature and remain in calm purity, it was better to marry. Unsubduedness of desire was more hurtful than the bond of marriage. But as to marriage itself, there was no longer room for the counsel of experience, the commandment of the Lord was positive. The woman was not to separate from the man, nor the man from the woman; and if they separated, the bond was not broken; they must remain unmarried or else be reconciled.

But there was a case more complicated, when the man was converted and the wife unconverted, or vice versa. According to the law a man who had married a woman of the Gentiles (and was consequently profane and unclean) defiled himself, and was compelled to send her away; and their children had no right to Jewish privileges; they were rejected as unclean (see Ezra 10: 3). But under grace it was quite the contrary. The converted husband sanctified the wife, and vice versa, and their children were reckoned clean before God; they had part in the ecclesiastical rights of their parent. This is the sense of the word "holy," in connection with the question of order and of outward relationship towards God, which was suggested by the obligation under the law to send away wife and children in a similar case. Thus the believer was not to send away his wife, nor to forsake an unbelieving husband. If the unbeliever forsook the believer definitively, the latter (man or woman) was free — "let him depart." The brother was no longer bound to consider the one who had forsaken him as his wife, nor the sister the man who had forsook her as her husband. But they were called to peace, and not to seek this separation, for how did the believer know if he should not be the means of the unbeliever's conversion? For we are under grace. Moreover every one was to walk as God had distributed to him.