84. Freedom in Marriage Part 3 w/ Jim Newheiser

Welcome to the For Freedom Podcast. This podcast exists to bring the freedom of the gospel for everyday Christians with everyday issues. Now here are your hosts, John Holyfield and James Saifert. Everybody, we are here at the For Freedom Podcast. We are working through our subject for the month of February on marriage. And this is our first guest that we are having for the new year. And he's a returning guest. And we recorded an episode with Dr. Jim Neuheiser last year. And it's been a really great episode performing for us for the podcast. And it was on the subject of Help, I Need a Church. Dr. Neuheiser has pastored for over 25 years. He's the director of the Christian Counseling Program and professor of Christian Counseling and Pastoral Counseling at RTS Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte. He's also a board member with the ACBC and the BCC, the Biblical Counseling Coalition. And he also serves as the director of the IBCD Institute for Biblical Counseling and Discipleship. And Jim, Dr. Neuheiser, it's always a thrill and a joy to have you with us. And we appreciate the time that you've taken to talk to us about this subject of marriage and your book that you wrote on the subject. So how are you doing today? I'm doing well, although when you told me all this stuff, I'm in charge of or involved and I got tired just listening to all that. Now I know why I never get done with all my stuff. I'd say so. I'd say so. But we're beneficiaries of your service. And while we're not, James and I are not students there at the seminary, we've both been students of yours through the IBCD. James actually has just submitted his exam papers for completing the IBCD training. And once upon approval of that, he's going to seek to start his exams with ACBC. Wonderful. Yeah. So we're thankful for all of the – and our church is actually starting – we did the church partnership with IBCD. And they're going to start doing the courses. I'm going to do a group class on Sunday evenings at our church, walking them through there. Great. Well, I'm glad I've been there now. I can picture that. Yeah. Yeah. It's really going to be serving as sort of like a small group leader prep. But if anybody wants to continue and go through the further training for biblical counseling, they'll have that part of it out of the way. Yeah. I think people learn more like with the IBCD certificates, even if they can't go all the way through ACBC when you have to take a little test and talk about what you learn with church leadership. So I hope many of them will do that. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Well, we're going to talk about this book and about the subject of marriage today. And, you know, really this book is called Marriage, Divorce, and Remarriage by Jim Neuheiser. And it is published by Presbyterian – PNR, Presbyterian Reform Publishing, which I quite enjoy that publishing house. I find myself reading a lot of what comes from there. But, you know, honestly, Jim, this is like a textbook. It's like a college course textbook. I mean, I've read other books on marriage and even the subject that covers divorce, marriage, remarriage. Think of Adam's book or maybe MacArthur's Divorce Dilemma. What got you to decide to write this book or maybe they asked you to? But, I mean, you really cover just about every question. This is what I was thinking of when I was reading it, when I was looking through it. It's like, okay, somebody may read Adam's book or read MacArthur's book or read some other book. And then there's – okay, okay. But what about this? And I feel like that's where your book comes in. It's like, what about all the what-if questions after you've covered the subject? Right. So, thank you for that. So, I think I should explain the format of the book before I explain why. Because you said it's almost like a reference book. It can be. And so, it's in a question and answer format, which is something I really enjoyed. I've also done a book on finances that does the same thing. And so, it's got 40 chapters with, you know, an important question, try to give a biblical answer. And so, you may look up and say, well, what does the Bible say you should do if there's been unfaithfulness in marriage? And you can't. Here's a chapter that talks about that. Does abuse grounds for divorce? Well, chapter 34 talks about that. And so, for some people, they may want to read straight through. But for other people, they can kind of look up particular questions or topics as they come up. But I also think it's important for people to recognize the first half of the book is positively about marriage. Now, maybe where it's a little different from Adam, I've been married for over 43 years. I've been doing marriage counseling most of that time. And so, I've even suggested PNR the possibility of like having a mini book or a small book on the first half, which is just marriage. You know, some of them are kind of questions that are a bit interesting theologically and biblically. What constitutes a valid marriage? You know, can, does the government have to be involved, et cetera? Even polygamy, you know, homosexual marriage. But then there's a section entering into marriage. How do you know who to marry? Whether you're ready to be married? Why cohabitation is wrong? And then there are 10 sections on just really the best things I've learned and teach about marriage in terms of keys to preserving and strengthening your marriage. Obviously, roles of husband and wife. How to work things out. Sex, money, communication. You name it. And the second half of the book does try to deal pretty comprehensively with questions about divorce and remarriage. And before Jay Adams died, I would see him now and then. And I was, I brought a friend to meet him. And then I told Jay how, you know, in front of the front, I said, it seems like Jay, that you've mellowed a bit over the years. And he said, yes, I've mellowed quite a bit. You can steal my title and I won't get mad at you. His book is Marriage, Divorce, and Remarriage. Mine has a subtitle, which is Critical Questions and Answers. And on the Divorce and Remarriage section, from my standpoint, I did read the books you referenced. And I think from the reformed, kind of in the reformed Westminster tradition of how do you approach divorce and remarriage, John Murray wrote a great book in the 60s. It deals with the biblical principles in particular cases. And then Jay Adams wrote a book, I think, in the 80s, where, you know, as culture changes, new questions are being raised. The Bible never changes, but new questions arise. And Jay did a great job with that book. And one reason why I, you know, wanted to approach it in, you know, this decade is that there are new issues and new questions being raised that need to be addressed. I'll give you two examples. And these are things that Murray and Adams didn't really have to deal with much, or they certainly, you know, they didn't deal with it much. One would be, on one extreme, the number of people now who take a permanence view of marriage. And there are well-known people like John Piper, a little less well-known people like Jim Ellis, and writing about this. And some people take the view a Christian can never initiate a divorce. Some would say if you've been divorced for any reason whatsoever, I mean, your spouse could have been beating you, raping you, and unfaithful all the time. And until they die, you can't remarry. So the permanence view is just, there are prominent people in the biblical counseling movement who take the permanence view. And so I wanted to really understand their arguments, but also explain why I thought they weren't biblical. And it is kind of a scary thing. Jesus said, what God has joined, let no man separate. And so, on the one hand, I don't want to encourage people to leave a marriage or to be remarried if it's adulterous for them to do so. But on the other hand, if a woman abandoned by her husband has gone off to be with another woman, and here she is, a young woman at 43 years old, if the Bible gives her the freedom to remarry, which I think it does, it would also be a travesty to say, no, you can never remarry for that woman. So, I mean, it's like a tightrope where you don't want to fall off one side or the other, or maybe a narrow bridge, and you don't want to fall off one side or the other. Anyway, so the permanence view would be one kind of newer thing I interact with more than others. And then another would be, David Enstone Brewer has written, and he's been influential in many circles, where it kind of goes to the other extreme, is that any failure to keep the covenant is grounds for divorce. So it's broadening. So you had narrowing on one side, broadening on the other. And in one sense, I would agree with John Piper when he writes about Enstone Brewer. It's like, well, we'd all be divorceable because none of us have adequately kept the covenant. And so, you know, trying to, you know, create the right narrow bridge between forbidding what God allows or allowing what God forbids, interacting with those views, and then building on the good work done by Murray and Piper before. MacArthur probably would be pretty similar to Piper. I read all this stuff. There are a lot of really great resources for this. I also think the question and answer format is helpful to people because, like I appreciate you said, I tried to be comprehensive in terms of the different situations that have come up. One way I've been able to do that is that 40 years of counseling, I've seen a lot. And so you get new situations, and it makes you think things through. Actually, I'll give you an example that when we were in Saudi Arabia, I became aware of the divorce laws in the Philippines. And we had a girl in our church, a lady in our church, who had been married, and her husband, after, let's say, five years of banning the marriage. And he's now living with another woman, not married, having kids, totally broken off from our lady. And in the Philippines, the law is you can't divorce. Now, there is a procedure by which you can annul, but the divorce is forbidden by the government. And so here's the question. Can she remarry? And I've reached the conclusion that the Bible never gives the government jurisdiction over marriage. And so there's a sense in which I think she could regard herself as divorced. And I think this is where, with the consultation of the church and affirmation of wise counsel, could legitimately enter into a new marriage with a believer who is also eligible for marriage because the Bible allows her to do so. And so there's a general principle when the government forbids what the Bible allows, we have the freedom to disobey. You want another concrete example of that? Yes, absolutely. Okay. Actually, I'll do one that relates to marriage. So in the South, some places in the South, generation ago, you could not have interracial marriage. But I believe the Bible allows interracial marriage. Yeah. So, you know, I fall in love with an African-American gal and I'm in South Carolina in the 1930s. The government has exceeded the authority God has given it to forbid me from marrying her. And I think I can enter into a covenant of marriage with her without a license from the government or, yeah, which is probably what I'd have to do. It would be a marriage that God would recognize and his people should recognize even if I didn't have the state license. I'm not telling people never buy a marriage license, although a marriage license has become a lot less meaningful in a day when the government calls anything a marriage. Another example, which would be for a married couple, when I was in China, they had had this one child policy for so many years. And I met a couple that had two kids. I said, how did you do that? Well, we did it in spite of the government. We had to hide the pregnant, whatever. And I believe the Bible gives us freedom to have such children as we want. And the government doesn't have the right to forbid us. And so if the government makes the law, you shall not have more than one child. I believe I'm free to disobey that law, although it may cost me. And like even in the Philippines, in the case of this lady, she finally remarried somebody outside of the Philippines. And that's that. But I think we are we when the government tells us to sin, we must sin. When the government uses its authority legitimately, we must obey Romans 13. When the government exceeds its authority. And I would say they have exceeded authority in various ways with reference to marriage that we are free to disobey. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. By the way, that's an example of the kind of thing I address. And if you're not interested in that, you can skip that bit. Well, I think it's important, like you said, because we are it seems like every day as we go along, we're faced with new things coming up in the news with the degradation of morality and culture today. That that's bringing on new questions, new challenges. How do we approach that as biblical Christians? And especially in the area of of of the foundation of marriage. You know, I mean, when I have youth coming to me in our church to you, two, three years ago that say, you know, they're going to school and having friends at school that are saying we're identifying this way. And they come to me and say, well, why is that a problem? But what's so what's the big deal about two people that just want to that love each other and want to be together? You know, and these are the things that are coming at us and these types of questions that are being fielded. And so I think this is important for Christians to be able to know what answers to give and the scripture to go with it. Yeah, I mean, a couple of things I try to do in the book. One is I wanted to be absolutely saturated with scripture. And so I ask a question. I'm going to have lots of Bible verses to back up anything I say. Like what constitutes a valid marriage or is cohabitation permissible or is marriage only a man and a woman that I'm going to you'll be able to see where in the Bible we get that. Another thing. That is, I get older, I guess, is that we also need to be humble. And so there could be sometimes where I will walk through the arguments on two sides of an issue or the considerations and say, this is as far as I can go with this. We can't. And even personally, I think we can't always get an absolute and definitive answer. And let me give you an example when it comes to spousal abuse. Okay. That I think, I believe the Bible teaches when 1 Corinthians 7 says if you're abandoned by an unbeliever that you're free. Correct. That abuse falls under that category as a form of marital abandonment. I try to make the case for that. But not every issue is absolute clear cut. It's like there's some situations where there's horrible mistreatment. Absolutely. Please get out of there. Get safe. Correct. There's some situations where someone is waving the victim flag just because they feel like they married a guy that doesn't have a lot of potential. They want to move on. Where there is nothing that you can call abuse going on. And there's some cases where you're not quite sure. It's, you know, you can't say you must stay. You can't say you must go. You just have to say you have a choice to make. Right. I can't tell you definitively what you must do. I think you have that freedom. And so that would just be an example. But in general, I try to walk through this, well, with some measure of humility in terms of here's how to think this through. Even here's why I believe this. Acknowledging in some cases that there may be, you know, people for other reasons. I try to give the reasons on the other side in a way that if a permanence view guy were reading the book, you would say, well, I don't agree with Jim. But I at least agree that he represented our side fairly instead of torching a straw man. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm glad you brought that up because the abuse aspect can be very, very tricky, especially in a marriage because there may be an abuse tendency, but there may not be full-on abuse going on. And then we know that there's many domestic abuse situations that may not be violent. And we're also in a time where the secular world is trying to label, like, anybody that takes a biblical headship is equating that as domestic abuse. And... Right. Yeah. So there's a lot of nuance. And like you said, I think humility among either a counselor or a pastor that needs to be taken with that. You know, James and I just did an episode talking about the marriage roles. And I had this, I said, listen, we, we, I'm just going to preface this by saying we're talking about if abuse is not present in the marriage, because if we don't, we're going to be nuancing every single thing we're saying and we're not going to be able to get through anything. Yeah. Yeah. I think on the issue like of mistreatment in marriage, that criteria would include kind of how intense is what happened. There's a difference between a raised voice and screaming at somebody and cussing them out and hitting them. And how frequent is this? Is there a pattern of this? Or was there an event? And I guess kind of the duration in terms of does this bad behavior last a long time? So, you know, what degree did this happen? How long did it go on? How often does it happen? And there is a nuance. One thing that when I, again, the book isn't, it's a one chapter dealing with that question, but when I read books about identifying abuse, the hardest thing for me about reading those books is I see my own sin to some degree. My wife has never regarded herself as abused, never accused me of abuse, never thought about me that way. But when I read that, I see those things in myself. I see my own selfishness. I see I do things to get my way and it's convicting and hopefully the Lord is helping me to be a man of grace. So, yeah, these are very challenging issues. But like you, I think you've mentioned, too, is not all abuse involved the shedding of blood and bruises and broken bones. There can be horrible, horrible mistreatment and oppression in a marriage where there's not physical violence. That's one of the ways we've learned and grown in recent years. And so another passage I think that is significant on this question that I brought in is 1 Corinthians chapter 7 when Paul says in verse 10, To the married I give instructions, not I but the Lord, the wife should not leave her husband. But if she does leave, she must remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband and the husband should not divorce his wife. And so here's Paul saying, I'm telling you, don't leave him. But if you do leave him, either remain single or be reconciled. He doesn't say if you leave him, we're going to discipline you. He talked about discipline two chapters earlier. He still seems to be speaking to someone who's a Christian who for some reason, I assume some reason they're very miserable in their marriage. They want to get out. And if it doesn't rise to the level of being biblical grounds for divorce, he's still foreseeing some situation in which you're getting away or certainly not biblical grounds for remarriage. And so there are situations where I can say to somebody, I can't tell you you have grounds to leave, but I also couldn't discipline you if you chose to leave. If it's not, I said, this is really a hard marriage. Different people can handle different degrees of suffering in marriage. And you have a choice to make here. General broad statement. We all agree that some people are called to stay in hard marriages. We all should agree that some marriages are so hard that a believer has the right to get safe. Now, where we draw those lines gets complicated. Yeah. And there are people today that if you say some people are called to stay in hard marriages, they'll call you an abuse enabler. And if you say some people are called, are free to leave, they'll say you don't honor marriage. You'll catch flack from both sides. And we should be careful about where we are drawing those lines and like the abstract and the conversation because there's unique situations all over. Right. And so, you know, there's unique circumstances and individuals. And so, therefore, I think that, you know, that it's folly to try to sit there and have, you know, clear cut blanket statements down to the minutia when it comes to this subject. And I think people are different, too. Yeah. One of the analogies I use in a blog is the game battleship where some ships have two holes and three holes and four holes or five holes. And that some people can, you know, the analogy being like torpedo hits your battleship in the game. And some ships are sunk with not many torpedoes and some it takes a lot of torpedoes to sink them. And I think there are some people, usually women, in an abusive situation where they can hang in there a long time. They can take four torpedoes. They still haven't sunk. And there are others that can handle less. And I'm not going to judge the person who's genuinely being mistreated who at least decides they need to be safe. Actually, there'd be another area where, like, Jay Adams in his book on marriage, divorce, and remarriage would say that he was against separation. And what the party was saying I would agree with in that if a couple just isn't getting along and they start living separately, bad things can happen in that they could, hey, this is easier being away from her than being with her because when we're together, we're fighting. There also could be sexual temptation. And you kind of get used to being apart and it tears you apart. So I understand, generally speaking, while separations, back, especially years ago, there'd be trial separations. And I understand that's generally a bad idea. But the idea of separating for safety, which Jay doesn't really address, I do think is legitimate. There are several cases where the woman doesn't want a divorce. She wants it to get better, but she realizes that they need to be a part for her or for the children to be safe. With the hope, he will repent and they can rescue the marriage. Yeah, absolutely. Well, we're getting close. I want to sort of shift. I think we've talked about some important things, but I want to shift just a little bit and talk about the aspect here. You start off in the book about the foundation and then a section really for those in the engaged stage and the foundation entering into marriage. But then you talk about having a successful marriage and then challenges in marriage. And I'd like to sort of finish our conversation today talking a little bit about some good scriptural and practical help for those that may be listening, saying, you know, I don't think we're in divorce stage, but there just seems like the same old problems keep rising up and keep we're stuck or, you know, the typical responses. But, you know, what are some what tend to be some of the challenges, typical challenges that that creep up in marriage? And what are some key helps that maybe could could be could help those give them hope and help in that situation? Yeah, I think the last few years when I've had a chance to speak at a wedding, I've chosen a passage. I realize in all the history of the church, the passage I'm choosing for weddings may have never been chosen before by any other pastor. But the passage I've chosen is. And I've done it twice in the last few years, Proverbs 24, beginning in verse 30. I passed by the field of the sluggard and by the vineyard of the man liking sense and behold, it was completely overgrown with thistles. Its surface was covered with metals and its stonewall broken down. When I saw, I reflected upon it. I looked and received instruction. A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest. Then your poverty will come as a robber and your want like an armed man. And the point of the parable, I'm using it illustriously, is that you go in the country where I am or where you are and you can see fields and some fields like neat rows of corn. And, you know, everything's all just the way it should be. And then you'll look across the street and there's another field where the farmer hasn't been caring for it. And just through neglect, now overgrown with, you know, brush and weeds. And maybe you can see a little bit of corn kind of trying to pop up from previous years crops, but it's just overrun. Say, well, how did, you know, this, the one to the right used to look like the one to the left. What happened to the one on the right? And it wasn't like somebody came and planted weeds. It wasn't like somebody bombed the thing. It's just neglect. And the most common problem I find actually mostly more than with pastors marriages actually than any other, but it's many marriages, is marriages where they don't pull the weeds and they don't plant the flowers. And over time and through neglect, the marriage deteriorates. And there's not unfaithfulness and there's not violence and abuse. There's not drugs and alcohol. It's just, he gets all wrapped in what he's doing in his career and she gets all wrapped in her job or her hobbies or her kids. And they have taken each other for granted. And so what began on the wedding day as a field, all, you know, ready to be fruitful through neglect. Now there's, there's bitterness, there's distance, there's, you know, and again, the, the weeds, I would say symbolically would be things that never get resolved, never get dealt with and take over and just the lack of the crops or the flowers, whatever you'd want to see. And so a lot of counseling for us is helping a couple to pull the weeds, which were often caused by neglect more than malice to confess their sin, confess that it's usually the wife who noticed before the husband that something's wrong here. And a lot of that is biblical peacemaking, you know, confession, forgiveness, but also the objective isn't just to have a bare field with no weeds in it. It's to plant the crops or the flowers and to invest time. I mean, when people are courting, they just can't talk enough. They can't be together enough. And then you get married and you get busy with life and just slowly, gradually, like the, the farmers feel this neglected. And so I guess if you're saying, you know, what hope or what would I give it? A lot of the counseling Carol and I do is with couples and we've seen the Lord do amazing things as they recognize. Sometimes I've seen a pastor. I read this passage and he says, I get it. This is my marriage. And he took responsibility that he thought he was serving God by always being at the beck and call of his people. But if he's not maintaining his marriage, then he's not qualified to be a pastor. And he had neglected his wife and she was heartbroken, quite frankly, but angry and bitter. And as he repented of his neglect and, you know, sought to make her a priority and she forgave, the Lord was able to reestablish and rebuild their marriage. And now they're actually teaching these things to other people. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's interesting. One of the things you brought out is that dealing with pulling the weeds with, with a couple and, and, and dealing with sin. And I've been reading Dave Harvey's book at the beginning of this year. I started it and, and just getting couples, I think to recognize because a lot of times they come in and they're, you know, this one is doing this and it's just, you know, and, and that's, what's causing conflict. But, you know, as I think I heard Paul Tripp, the biggest problem, Paul Tripp said, that's the biggest problem. And my marriage is me. Right. Yeah. Dave has a couple of books on marriage. Now, when sinners say I do, I think is the one to which you're referring. Correct. Yeah. The, the biggest sinner I know is me begins with first Timothy one 15. I am chief of sinners. Yeah. Cause in marital conflict, they usually can see the sin of the other person and they can't see their own. He's got another one called. I still do, which kind of builds on that one. And if there's somebody listening, who's not a reader, actually, you're listening to podcast right now instead of reading a book. Um, on ibcd.org, we have two audios by Dave for free, which summarize the first book. And so by all means, go buy the book and read it. But if you're not going to buy the book and you want some of the content, that's been tremendously helpful to me is just dealing with my own sin. And then also realizing of a sinner married to a sinner and dealing with my wife's sin according to grace and not law. Oh yeah. Yeah. That's a big one too. I was talking to, uh, our, our other pastor here planning for our preaching for the next year. And I said, what do you think? Uh, I said, I already have in my mind what I, what I want to go with, but I said, what do you think that our church needs from the pulpit going forward this year? Like, what do you think that we need to get at the pulpit that are just getting the feel of our congregation that we need? And he said, he said, I got two, but one of those is, is grace. And I said, grace is what I was thinking. I think that it seems like it's a subject that just needs to come back around ever so often and just get reacquainted with dealing with others with grace. And realizing that of, of treating someone with the grace that, that God treats us with, even though we fail so many times. Amen. Yeah. Yeah. Well, my yearning would be that my wife would look at me and say that is in some way how Christ loves me. Yeah. I know that. So I see her. Absolutely. Jim, I know we just talked about Dave Harvey's book and we're talking about your book, but closing us down, what would be maybe one, maybe two books on marriage that you would recommend to someone? I know we just talked, we've been told, we talked about two good ones, but what would be another that you would be a go-to for you? Yeah. So I have enjoyed Tim Keller's The Meaning of Marriage. And there's some quotes in my book I got out of that book. He writes it along with his wife. And I think it just has a lot of really good wisdom in it. You know, he thinks deeply. Um, my high school leader when I was a new Christian was Ray Ortlund Jr. Okay. Who was pretty newly married. And I remember as a 15, 16 year old seeing how close and happy they were as a young couple. And they're still close and happy now that they're in their seventies, I think. And, but he's got a little book on the gospel and marriage that I really appreciated as well in terms of grace and gospel. It's a small book. So that's a couple that come to mind. There are a lot of really good books on marriage. Absolutely. It is definitely a topic that is, uh, publishers enjoy getting resources out for. But, uh, I think sometimes it's, it's a, it's a chore to wade through which ones are good and which ones aren't. Right. Yep. Yep. Well, Jim, thank you so much for, uh, for taking the time out of your day and, uh, being with us. And, uh, and so, uh, to everybody listening, um, like you said, go check out ibcd.org. And, uh, and you can search resources, search marriage, uh, all of their audio resources are free. And, and then, uh, we'll put links for, uh, Jim's book, uh, Dave Harvey's book and the two books that he, uh, recommended there. And, uh, thank you for listening. Have a wonderful day. I found my new name. I found that good grace. I found that healing. And the tears fell down my face when I found my beginning. Has no ending. I'm that second chance. I'm my best friend. I'm my forgiveness. I'm my happiness. I've been singing ever since. I'm my freedom. Yeah. Thanks for listening to the for freedom podcast. If you enjoyed the content of the podcast, please do us a favor by liking, subscribing, or sharing the podcast on whatever podcast platform. You listened to. Thank you.

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