Let No Man Put Asunder
In the first part of this series we traced the Elijah commission from Malachi 4 through the ministry of John the Baptist and into the work entrusted to God’s people at the close of earth’s history. We saw that Malachi joins two themes usually treated separately – a return to God’s law and a turning of hearts within the home – and anchors both to a definite point in time: before “the great and dreadful day of the LORD.”
We also noticed something near the end of that study. Malachi speaks of a restoration of relationships between fathers and children. But the estrangement of a parent and a child rarely begins there. Beneath it, more often than not, lies the breakdown of the relationship between a husband and a wife. A man cannot fully turn his heart toward his children while his heart is turned away from their mother, and children do not grow up secure in a house where their parents are at war.
If the Elijah work is the restoration of the family, then it must begin where the family begins – with marriage. This is part of the special work of God’s remnant people before the return of Christ. While the world increasingly moves toward the breakdown of marriage and family life, God’s people are called to move in the opposite direction: restoring love, faithfulness, reconciliation, and godliness within the home.
“In the time of the end every divine institution is to be restored… God’s remnant people, standing before the world as reformers, are to show that the law of God is the foundation of all enduring reform.”
Prophets and Kings, p. 678.2
Two Statements, Two Directions
Take a look at Ellen White’s assessment of the enemy’s strategy against the marriage institution:
“It was Satan’s studied effort to pervert the marriage institution, to weaken its obligations and lessen its sacredness; for in no surer way could he deface the image of God in man and open the door to misery and vice.”
The Adventist Home, p. 326.1
Not one of the surer ways. No surer way. If that is accurate, marriage is not a domestic side-issue attached to the gospel; it is close to its center – it is one of the principal battlegrounds on which the image of God in humanity is either defaced or restored.
And those with the most positive or negative impact are the husband and wife.
“No one can so effectually ruin a woman’s happiness and usefulness, and make life a heart-sickening burden, as her own husband; and no one can do one hundredth part as much to chill the hopes and aspirations of a man, to paralyse his energies and ruin his influence and prospects, as his own wife.”
Review and Herald, 2 February 1886, par. 21
The very closeness that makes marriage the greatest earthly blessing is what gives a husband and wife unequalled power to wound one another. No one else is close enough to do that much damage – which is also why the other side of this question is so hopeful:
“He referred them to the blessed days of Eden, when God pronounced all things ‘very good.’ Then marriage and the Sabbath had their origin, twin institutions for the glory of God in the benefit of humanity… That which the Eternal Father Himself had pronounced good was the law of highest blessing and development for man.”
Thoughts from the Mount of Blessing, p. 63.2
As a people we have spent considerable energy defending these Edenic institutions. But how have we looked at this in practical terms? It must not be as a matter of legislation, but as a matter of daily faithfulness in our own homes. It is “the law of highest blessing and development for man,” and that is still what God is able to make of it.
Three questions follow, then. What is the actual state of marriage today? What is the main reason marriages break down? And how do we guard against the things that destroy them?
The State of Marriage and Divorces
No-fault divorce arrived in California in 1969–70, in England and Wales in 1969–71, and in Australia in 1975–76 – each within six years of the others, and each followed by a temporary spike in divorces and then a much higher permanent plateau. These laws did not invent the change; they removed the last obstacle to a shift already underway.
Before no-fault laws, divorce was available only if one spouse could prove the misconduct of the other – commonly adultery, desertion, or cruelty. This produced a long public record of “reasons” for divorce, and that record is nearly useless as evidence of why marriages actually fail, because the categories were chosen for their usefulness in court rather than their accuracy. In the United States, cruelty steadily absorbed the complaints that had no other legal outlet until it accounted for the majority of divorces granted. In England and Wales, the Nuffield Foundation and University of Exeter study Finding Fault? found that petitioners frequently pleaded “unreasonable behaviour” not because it was true but because it was the fastest route to a decree – with courts accepting allegations as mild as having no common interests. The phrase served for decades as the British legal label for growing apart. Australia removed the question altogether in 1975, leaving no reason data at all, which is precisely why Australian researchers had to go and ask divorced people directly.
For a century, then, the law required a villain. The resulting record of why marriages ended is really a record of what could be proved in a courtroom.
What People Actually Say
When researchers stopped consulting court files and started asking divorced people themselves, a different answer emerged – and it emerged consistently.
The Australian Institute of Family Studies, in its Understanding Divorce research, asked divorced Australians to name the main reason their marriage ended. Communication problems and drifting apart together accounted for forty-eight per cent – nearly half of all cited causes – while infidelity was named by 20.1 per cent, less than half that share. Grouped more broadly, “affective” reasons accounted for seventy-one per cent of divorces, against sixteen per cent for abusive behaviours and thirteen for external pressures such as finances or health.
These are people’s own accounts of their own marriages, with the limitations that implies. But the pattern is not peculiar to Australia. Across every country with genuine survey data, estrangement-type causes outrank infidelity as the leading reported reason marriages fail, often by a wide margin.
That is the finding this study focuses on. Where are marriages failing? Not usually in one great catastrophe of infidelity, but in the gradual erosion of closeness – a slow detachment, a quiet growing apart.
God’s Design: One Flesh
Set that beside what God said at the beginning.
“Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.”
Genesis 2:24
The word translated cleave means to cling, to stick fast. Scripture gives a vivid picture of it in an unlikely place – the description of leviathan in Job, where the same Hebrew word appears:
“His scales are his pride, shut up together as with a close seal. One is so near to another, that no air can come between them. They are joined one to another, they stick together, that they cannot be sundered.”
Job 41:15–17
No air can come between them. That is the standard. Not two people sharing an address and a mortgage, but two people so joined that nothing can get in between.
Jesus quoted Genesis 2:24 and drew the conclusion Himself: “What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.” (Matthew 19:6).
We usually hear “put asunder” as a reference to the divorce decree. But sundering is a process, and the decree only ratifies what has already happened. Two people can be perfectly, legally married and already well advanced in putting asunder what God joined – living parallel lives, communicating logistically, no longer known to one another.
This is why the survey data is interesting to us. If estrangement is the leading reported cause of divorce, and estrangement is itself already a violation of the one-flesh union, then our concern for marriage as a church cannot just be at the point of separation or divorce. By the time a marriage reaches a lawyer’s office, the sundering is years old.
What Causes Estrangement?
The most substantial body of research on this question comes from Dr John Gottman, who began observing couples at the University of Washington in what became known as the “Love Lab.” This was not a questionnaire. Behaviour was coded second by second – facial expression, tone, speech, physiological markers – and couples were then followed for years to see which marriages lasted.
What his research team discovered is that certain patterns of interaction reliably distinguish marriages that endure from marriages that end. Four of them recur – and every one turns out to be a failure of something Scripture had already commanded.
1. Failure to repair after conflict
Couples do not drift apart because they argue. They drift apart because they do not return back afterwards each other to mend what the argument broke, so injuries accumulate untreated.
“Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath: neither give place to the devil.”
Ephesians 4:26–27
Unresolved anger and giving place to the devil are named in the same breath. The enemy does not need to introduce anything new into a marriage; he only needs the two people in it to go to bed without settling what happened.
The biblical sequence is not conflict, then avoidance. It is conflict, then a turning of the heart toward the other, then truth spoken in love, then repentance, forgiveness, and reconciliation. The second step in that chain is the Elijah work itself.
The research on how conflict begins is particularly interseting. In a study of 124 newlywed couples, each pair named an ongoing source of disagreement – and the most common topic, among people married only months, was feeling emotionally missed, misunderstood, or unloved. They then discussed that problem while researchers coded facial expression, tone, and content as positive display or negative. Every one of the seventeen couples who eventually divorced had opened their discussion with significantly more negativity than the couples who stayed married. Not after an hour of escalation. In the opening minutes.
Researchers found that wives initiate conflict discussions about eighty per cent of the time, and in marriages heading toward divorce the opening tended to be global criticism – “you’re lazy and never do anything around the house” – rather than a specific complaint – “you didn’t take the bins out last night.” The husband’s response was the second critical variable: in the same marriages, husbands tended to answer defensively and escalate rather than de-escalate.
Averages describe groups, not couples; in many homes those roles are reversed. What matters is the difference between the two openings. One names a behaviour; the other indicts a person.
2. Four destructive communication patterns
Criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling emerged as the strongest predictors of eventual separation. Gottman called them the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.” Let’s consider these.
Criticism attacks a partner’s character rather than a specific behaviour. “There is that speaketh like the piercings of a sword: but the tongue of the wise is health” (Proverbs 12:18). The alternative is not silence but Paul’s instruction to speak “the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15). We are often willing to do half of that: we tell the truth bluntly, without a thought for how it will land, and call the bluntness honesty.
Contempt is disgust or superiority: eye-rolling, mockery, sarcasm intended to wound. It was the single strongest predictor of divorce, and it is the pattern most directly opposed to the gospel: “in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves” (Philippians 2:3). A marriage cannot remain healthy once one spouse begins to look down on the other morally. And Scripture’s remedy is not mere civility. Husbands are to give “honour unto the wife” (1 Peter 3:7); both are “in honour preferring one another” (Romans 12:10). The opposite of contempt is not politeness. It is honour. A person who has genuinely seen his own heart has no vantage point left from which to despise his wife.
Defensiveness counter-attacks or plays the victim instead of accepting responsibility. It is one of the oldest reactions on record:
“And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.”
Genesis 3:12–13
Sin enters the world and blame enters marriage in the same breath – and Adam does not merely deflect onto Eve; he implicates God in the same sentence. But what is God’s way? “Confess your faults one to another” (James 5:16). Perhaps the most healing sentence available in a marriage is simply – I’m sorry. You are right. I was wrong; forgive me. Not “yes, but you…” Just acknowledgement.
Stonewalling withdraws entirely – shutting down, going silent, physically leaving. This is not the same as taking time to calm down and pray; that pause is often wise, since attempting to resolve something at the peak of emotion usually makes it worse. The danger is when withdrawal hardens into a habit. Sometimes it is nearly involuntary, as a person shuts down under criticism. Sometimes it grows out of settled disdain and is functionally closer to contempt – the partner goes flat, answers in single words, and communicates that the other is not worth arguing with. And sometimes it is deliberate: silence used as punishment.
“Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled.”
Hebrews 12:15
Resentment almost always has a history. Instead of bringing an injury into the light, the wounded party stores it – and stored injuries put down roots. Husbands are not to be “bitter” against their wives (Colossians 3:19); neither party is to hate the other in the heart or bear a grudge (Leviticus 19:17–18). Love, Paul says, keeps no record of wrongs. A marriage can experience abandonment long before anyone leaves the house
3. Life transitions handled separately
The third pattern is subtler and, for many long-married couples, the most relevant. Careers, children, illness, relocation, financial strain, ageing – every major transition can be met either as one unit or as two individuals managing adjacent lives.
The symptom is easy to recognise. Communication becomes logistical: who is collecting the children, who is doing the shopping, who is paying which bill. It is efficient, it is cooperative, and it is not intimacy. Couples in this state often describe themselves as having grown apart, and are usually surprised by how long it took them to notice.
Peter’s counsel is that husbands “dwell with them according to knowledge” (1 Peter 3:7) – not a task completed at the wedding. Marriage is not knowing whom you married twenty years ago; it is continuing to know the person your spouse is becoming. And Proverbs adds: a husband is to rejoice in “the wife of thy youth” and be “ravished always with her love” (Proverbs 5:18–19). Scripture does not envisage a season of life in which a husband and wife have finished delighting in one another.
4. The little foxes
Adultery, abuse, addiction, and abandonment can devastate a marriage. But Scripture repeatedly directs our attention to the small and constant things: “He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much” (Luke 16:10); “Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines” (Song of Solomon 2:15). It is a striking emphasis, and the Testimonies press it in the same direction:
“God tests and proves us by the common occurrences of life. It is the little things which reveal the chapters of the heart. It is the little attentions, the numerous small incidents and simple courtesies of life, that make up the sum of life’s happiness; and it is the neglect of kindly, encouraging, affectionate words, and the little courtesies of life, which helps compose the sum of life’s wretchedness.”
The Adventist Home, p. 108.2
We must not take this as condoning hypersensitivity. Some small things ought simply to be overlooked, and overlooking them is itself a kind and loving act; a marriage in which every minor failure is registered and raised will not survive its own vigilance. The principle concern here is what we give, not what we demand. A cup of tea made without being asked costs almost nothing, and yet can communicate a tender thoughtfulness. So can putting your phone down when your spouse begins to speak, warming the car on a cold morning, taking care of a chore you know they dislike, bringing home something small you know they enjoy, sending a thoughtful message during the day, noticing that they are tired and stepping in to help, giving an unhurried hug, saying thank you for something they do routinely, making their favourite meal, asking about something that matters to them and genuinely listening to the answer. None of these things is dramatic. Most cost little or nothing. But repeated over time, they say in a hundred ordinary ways, I care about you. I know you. I love you.
Who turns the hearts?
Malachi prophecies that the remnant work of Elijah will turn hearts. Hearts that have turned away must be turned back, but that is a work of repentance and grace before it is a work of method.
And we should remember who does the turning. On Carmel, Elijah spoke plainly, exposed the error, rebuilt the altar, and prayed – but his prayer was that the people would know “that thou hast turned their heart back again” (1 Kings 18:37). Elijah could call the nation to choose. Only God could restore its affections. The same is true in every marriage that needs restoring, including our own.
The Work in Practice
If we are called to work in the spirit and power of Elijah, that work begins in our own homes, this week, in ordinary ways.
- Repair quickly. When there has been hurt or conflict, do not let distance settle in between you. Go back to one another. Talk, apologise where needed, pray together, and ask God to soften both hearts. Ephesians 4:26
- Speak about the problem, not against the person. There is a great difference between saying, “I felt hurt when this happened,” and saying, “You are selfish” or “You never care.” One opens the door to understanding; the other makes your spouse feel attacked. Ephesians 4:15
- Replace contempt with honour. Sarcasm, mockery, and moral superiority have no place between two people God has joined. 1 Peter 3:7
- Confess rather than defend. “I was wrong, forgive me” ends a quarrel that “yes, but you…” would have extended for years. James 5:16
- Return after you withdraw. Taking time to calm down is wise; making silence a weapon is abandonment. Colossians 3:19
- Face transitions together. Children, work, illness, and age all change a person. Keep learning who your spouse is becoming and face life together during those transitions. 1 Peter 3:7
- Guard the little things. The small courtesies may seem small, but they are often how love is actually experienced day by day. Song of Solomon 2:15
Conclusion
The prophecy closes where this study began.
“Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD: And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.”
Malachi 4:5–6
The restoration of the family is not a side issue of the last days. It is one of the signs that a people are being prepared for the coming of the Lord – and it does not begin with our children. It begins between a husband and a wife, in the small daily work of turning toward one another rather than away.
What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder – and let us not do slowly, through neglect, what we would never dream of doing at once.
