Eyo came to see me on a Tuesday morning in the rainy season, and he was soaked through before he reached my office door. He had driven from the other side of Port Harcourt through flooded roads, and he sat on the edge of the chair with his car keys in his hand, as though he might need to leave at any moment.
“Pastor,” he said, before I had even offered him water, “my wife has left me. She has taken the children to her mother’s house in Old GRA. Three weeks now. She will not come back. I want you to tell her what the Bible says. The Bible says the wife should not depart from her husband. Is that not so?”
I asked him to tell me what had happened.
It came out slowly. He and Tamunotonye had been married fourteen years. He was a marine engineer who worked rotations offshore, a month away and a month at home. Over the past few years his drinking had grown. At first it was a few bottles with friends at the weekend. Then it was every night of his month at home. When he drank he shouted. He had punched a hole in the bedroom door. On the night before she left, he had come home at midnight, quarrelled with her in the car park of their estate, and smashed the windscreen of her car with a stone while their two daughters watched from the balcony.
“I did not touch her,” he said quickly. “I would never touch her.”
“And the windscreen?” I asked.
He looked at the floor for a long time. Then he said, very quietly, “Has she divorced me, Pastor? Is it finished?”
I have sat with many people asking some version of that question. Is it finished? And I have come to believe that one of the most helpful things a pastor can do is to help them see that separation and divorce are two different doors, with very different consequences, and that confusing them causes a great deal of unnecessary harm.
Two different doors
PunchlineSeparation and divorce are often spoken of together, as though one simply leads to the other. In practice, and in Scripture, they are distinct.
Separation means that a husband and wife stop living together, for a period of time, while the marriage itself remains in place. It may be informal: one spouse moves to a relative’s house, or the couple live in different rooms. It may be structured, with agreed terms and a clear purpose. In Nigeria, for statutory marriages, it may even be formal, because the law provides for judicial separation, which a court can order without ending the marriage. In every form, separation leaves the marriage standing. The door to reconciliation remains open.
Divorce is the legal and covenantal ending of the marriage. For a statutory marriage in Nigeria, it is granted by a court on proof that the marriage has broken down irretrievably. For a customary marriage, it is usually concluded through the families according to custom, often including the return of the bride price. Either way, divorce closes the door. The parties are no longer husband and wife in law, and they are free in law to marry other people.
The differences matter enormously. A separated couple are still married. Their obligations to one another, including faithfulness, remain. They can come back together without any ceremony or court. A divorced couple, if they wish to reunite, must marry again. Separation is often a pause. Divorce is an ending.
Many people in Eyo’s position assume that once a spouse has moved out, the marriage is over. Many people in Tamunotonye’s position fear that if they leave, even for safety, they will be accused of divorcing. Both assumptions are mistaken, and both can push people toward decisions they would not otherwise make.
What Paul said to the wife who departs
Eyo was right that the Bible speaks about a wife departing. But he had not read the whole sentence:
And unto the married I command, yet not I, but the Lord, Let not the wife depart from her husband: But and if she depart, let her remain unmarried, or be reconciled to her husband: and let not the husband put away his wife.
Paul is passing on the teaching of Jesus here: “yet not I, but the Lord.” The Lord’s will for married believers is that they stay together. “Let not the wife depart from her husband... and let not the husband put away his wife.” That is the clear starting point. Marriage is meant to last, and believers are not to walk away from it lightly.
But then Paul adds a sentence that many people overlook. “But and if she depart, let her remain unmarried, or be reconciled to her husband.” Paul anticipates that some departures will happen. He does not say that a wife who has departed is outside the grace of God or that the church should disown her. He gives her two options: remain unmarried, or be reconciled. In other words, he treats the departure as a situation in which the marriage is still in view, and the door to reconciliation is still open.
There is an honest question about Paul’s word depart. The Greek verb chōrizō simply means to separate, but in the Greek-speaking world of the time it was also used for divorce, because divorce often happened informally, by one spouse walking out. Some scholars therefore think Paul is speaking of divorce here, not merely of living apart. Either way, the force of his instruction is the same. A believer who leaves should not move on to another marriage, and reconciliation remains the hope.
Notice also that Paul addresses the wife first and then the husband, and he uses the same weight for both. The husband must not put his wife away. Eyo wanted me to quote verse 10 to Tamunotonye. He was less interested in the end of verse 11, which spoke to him. And he had not yet noticed that the whole passage assumes a marriage in which both spouses are seeking to obey the Lord.
Paul then turns to a different situation, one that Jesus had not addressed directly during His earthly ministry: a believer married to an unbeliever. “But to the rest speak I, not the Lord” (1 Corinthians 7:12). If the unbelieving spouse “be pleased to dwell” with the believer, the believer must not leave. The believing partner is not contaminated by the marriage. On the contrary, the unbelieving spouse “is sanctified” by the believer, and the children are holy (1 Corinthians 7:14). God’s presence in one partner sets the whole household apart for His purposes.
“But if the unbelieving depart, let him depart. A brother or a sister is not under bondage in such cases: but God hath called us to peace” (1 Corinthians 7:15). Here the departure is not the believer’s choice. The unbeliever walks out. Paul tells the believer not to fight it, not to cling, not to make the rest of life a campaign to drag the other person back. The believer is “not under bondage,” a word related to slavery. Christians differ on how far that freedom extends. Some understand it to include freedom to remarry, since the marriage has in effect been ended by the one who left. Others understand it as freedom from the obligation to maintain a marriage the other person has abandoned, without permitting a new marriage. Either way, Paul’s emphasis falls on peace. The believer is not required to live in endless turmoil trying to hold together what the other has walked away from.
Then Paul adds a tender question: “For what knowest thou, O wife, whether thou shalt save thy husband?” (1 Corinthians 7:16). Some read that as encouragement to stay where staying is possible, in hope that the unbelieving spouse will come to faith. Others read it as release: you cannot be sure your staying will save him, so you need not cling to a marriage he has left. Both readings agree on one thing. The believer’s conscience is to rest in God, not in anxious striving.
These verses show that the New Testament does not treat every breakdown in the same way. A believer who walks out on a faithful believing spouse is in a different position from a believer whose unbelieving partner has deserted. And neither situation is quite the same as a spouse who has fled because the home became unsafe. Careful pastoral counsel begins by asking what has actually happened.
What Jesus said about putting away
When Jesus spoke about divorce, He was speaking about a man who “shall put away his wife” (Matthew 19:9). In Jesus’ world, putting away was divorce: the husband gave his wife a certificate and sent her out of his house, and both were then free in law to remarry. The Pharisees asked whether that could be done “for every cause” (Matthew 19:3).
Jesus answered by going back to the beginning. “What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder” (Matthew 19:6). Moses had permitted divorce “because of the hardness of your hearts,” Jesus said, “but from the beginning it was not so” (Matthew 19:8). And then came the ruling that whoever puts away his wife, “except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery” (Matthew 19:9).
Christians understand that verse, and the related passages, in three main ways. Some hold that marriage cannot be dissolved in God’s sight while both spouses live, so that separation may be necessary but remarriage is not permitted. Others hold that Scripture permits divorce, with freedom to remarry, for sexual unfaithfulness and for desertion by an unbelieving spouse. Others again see those grounds as examples of serious covenant-breaking and include abuse and abandonment among them. These views have all been held by careful, godly students of Scripture, and the previous article in this series set them out more fully.
For our purposes, notice what Jesus was condemning. He was confronting men who ended their marriages casually in order to marry someone else. Jesus’ words about putting away were spoken against that practice. They do not tell us that every spouse who moves out for a season has thereby committed the sin of divorce. Separation without remarriage, undertaken to protect someone or to create space for repentance and repair, is a different act from the casual putting away Jesus forbade. The ending of a marriage is a much weightier thing, and it should never be done lightly or quickly.
NuggetSeparation pauses a shared life while the marriage still stands. Divorce ends it. Confusing the two can push people toward an ending neither of them intended.
When safety comes first
Before any long pastoral conversation about the future of a marriage, one question must be asked: Is anyone in danger?
When Eyo described the smashed windscreen, the hole in the door and the shouting, I did not hear a simple marriage disagreement. I heard a pattern of frightening behaviour that was escalating. He had not hit his wife yet. But he was using violence against objects in her presence and in front of the children, and that is often how worse violence begins. Tamunotonye had done what Scripture commends:
A prudent man foreseeth the evil, and hideth himself; but the simple pass on, and are punished.
She had foreseen the evil and hidden herself and her daughters. That was prudence, not faithlessness. And no pastor should have told her to go back until the danger had passed.
Here I want to be very plain. If you are being physically hurt, sexually coerced, threatened, intimidated or controlled, leaving for safety is not sin. It is not the same as divorce. It does not break your covenant with God, because the covenant has already been violated by the one who made the home unsafe. Whatever view of divorce you or your church hold, no faithful reading of Scripture requires you to stay where you are being harmed.
If you are in that situation, get to a safe place. Tell people you trust. Contact the police, a doctor, and the domestic and sexual violence response services in your state. Seek a qualified counsellor and, where needed, a lawyer, who can explain whether a protection order or a formal separation would help you. The longer questions about the marriage can wait. Your safety and your children’s safety cannot.
To pastors and family elders I would say: never treat a separation for safety as rebellion. Do not pressure the person who has fled to return. Put your energy into helping them stay safe, and into confronting and helping the person whose behaviour made the separation necessary.
Peace as far as it lies with you
Paul gives a principle in Romans that is especially helpful for separated couples:
Be of the same mind one toward another. Mind not high things, but condescend to men of low estate. Be not wise in your own conceits. Recompense to no man evil for evil. Provide things honest in the sight of all men. If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men.
“Be not wise in your own conceits.” A separated spouse is tempted to become certain that every fault lies on the other side. Paul asks for humility first. Then: “Recompense to no man evil for evil.” Separation is fertile ground for revenge: the cancelled school fees, the bitter voice note, the story told to the in-laws with the worst details sharpened. Paul forbids all of it. Then comes the next verse, which is wonderfully realistic. “If it be possible.” Peace is not always possible. “As much as lieth in you.” Your part is your part, and you are not responsible for what the other person chooses. A separated spouse cannot force reconciliation. But each of them can refuse revenge, speak honestly, keep promises about the children, avoid slander and leave the door open to repair where that becomes safe and right.
The psalmist puts it in active language:
Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it.
Seek peace, and pursue it. Peace here is not passivity. It is something you go after. For a separated couple, that may mean choosing to communicate through a pastor or counsellor instead of shouting down the phone. It may mean paying school fees and maintenance faithfully even when you are angry. It may mean refusing to recruit the children, the in-laws or the church to your side. It may mean praying for the other person by name every day. And sometimes, especially where there has been abuse, pursuing peace means keeping a safe distance while the other person faces what they have done.
A separation with a purpose
Not every separation is the same. Some separations simply happen and then drift, month after month, until the couple are effectively divorced without ever having decided anything. Others have a clear purpose. Scripture itself recognises that there are seasons in life:
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak.
“A time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing.” “A time to rend, and a time to sew.” There are seasons when distance is wise, and seasons when what was torn can be sewn together again. Even within marriage, Paul allowed couples to abstain from intimacy “with consent for a time” so that they might give themselves to prayer, and then “come together again” (1 Corinthians 7:5). A season apart is not automatically the end.
Where there is no ongoing danger, a separation can be shaped toward healing. That kind of separation usually includes a few elements:
- A clear reason. Both spouses, and those helping them, should understand why the separation is happening and what needs to change.
- Help. A qualified Christian counsellor, and where relevant specialist help for addiction, anger or mental health. Individual counselling usually comes before joint counselling.
- Agreed boundaries. How and when the couple will communicate, whether they will meet, how the children will see both parents, and how money will be handled.
- Faithfulness. A separated person is still married. Separation is not permission to begin a new relationship.
- Accountability. A pastor or mature couple who check in regularly and are told the truth.
- Patience. No rushed deadlines, and no pressure on the injured spouse to return before real change has been seen.
None of these things guarantees a restored marriage. But they give both spouses the best possible chance to find out whether restoration is possible, while protecting the one who has been harmed.
Churches have a part to play here, and too often they play it badly. In many congregations a separated wife quietly stops coming to the women’s fellowship because she cannot bear the questions. A separated husband is removed from the ushering rota and nobody tells him why. People take sides on the basis of rumour. Separated believers need something very different. They need someone who will sit with them and listen, practical help with accommodation, transport or school runs, prayer that does not come with a lecture, and leaders who will speak truthfully to both spouses. Where one spouse has caused serious harm, the church should hold that person accountable and offer real help to change. Where both have contributed to the breakdown, as is often the case in marriages without abuse, the church can help each one face their own part without turning the separation into a trial.
When the one who caused the break comes to himself
Eyo did not like what I said that first morning. He left angry. He came back two weeks later, and this time he left his keys in his pocket.
Jesus told a story about a young man who wrecked his life far from home. The turning point came in a pigsty:
And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father’s have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, And am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants. And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.
“When he came to himself.” Something in Eyo was beginning to wake up. He had come to me the first time wanting me to send his wife home. The second time he asked a different question. “What do I need to do?”
That is the question every spouse whose behaviour has caused a separation needs to ask. Not “How do I get her back?” but “What must change in me?” The prodigal did not go home demanding his room back. He went home ready to be a servant. He rehearsed a confession that named his sin: “I have sinned against heaven, and before thee.” He did not blame his father, his brother or the famine.
For Eyo, coming to himself meant admitting that he had a drinking problem and getting treatment. It meant writing to his wife to acknowledge what he had done without excuses. It meant accepting that she would decide when, and whether, he could see her, and arranging to see his daughters at his sister’s house in the meantime. It meant joining a men’s accountability group at the church and telling them the truth.
Notice also how the father in the story responds. He “saw him, and had compassion, and ran.” Grace was waiting. God’s grace is always waiting for the person who comes to himself. But in a marriage, the restoration of trust between two people is something that grows as repentance is shown over time, and the injured spouse is not obliged to run toward someone who may still be dangerous. The father’s running is a picture of God’s welcome. Human reconciliation is built more slowly, and it should be.
When separation moves toward divorce
Sometimes, despite everyone’s prayers, a separation does not end in reconciliation. A spouse may refuse to change. There may be continuing violence, adultery or abandonment. One spouse may file for divorce, or may already have remarried.
The implications at that point are serious, and they deserve careful thought. There are legal questions: the process the courts require, the custody and maintenance of children, the division of property. There are pastoral questions: what your church teaches, what your own conscience before God allows, whether remarriage will ever be possible for you. And there are personal questions: grief, anger, loneliness and the long work of healing.
Here are a few pieces of counsel:
Do not decide in the first weeks. In the immediate aftermath of a crisis, emotions are raw and judgement is clouded. Unless there is danger that requires legal protection now, give yourself time before taking a step that cannot easily be undone.
Get proper counsel. Speak with a mature pastor who knows the Scriptures and knows you. Speak with a lawyer who can explain your rights and obligations. Speak with a counsellor who can help you process what has happened.
Remember the three views. Christians differ on when divorce and remarriage may be permitted. Your pastor’s view may differ from your mother’s, and both may differ from what you read online. Study the passages yourself, pray, and seek wise counsel, and be gentle with others who reach different conclusions.
Protect the children. Whatever happens between their parents, children need both safety and stability. Do not use them as messengers or weapons. Where it is safe, help them keep a relationship with both parents.
Do not carry false guilt. If your spouse ended the marriage against your will, or if you left because you were being harmed, you are not the one who broke the covenant. Bring your own failures to God, because we all have some. But do not take on the weight of sins that were not yours.
It took Eyo eleven months to stop drinking for good. There were two relapses in the first three months, and each time he called his accountability partner before he called anyone else. He went offshore again, came back, and went to his meetings. He wrote Tamunotonye a long letter in which he named the windscreen, the door and fourteen years of shouting, and did not once use the word but.
When I last saw them, they were not yet living together. Tamunotonye had allowed him to join her and the girls for lunch after church on Sundays, at her mother’s house, with her mother present. He told me that the first lunch had been the most nervous meal of his life. The girls had been wary. By the fourth Sunday, the younger one had started sitting beside him.
“Pastor,” he said, “you remember the first time I came? I asked if it was finished.”
I remembered.
Punchline“It was not finished,” he said. “But I was the one who nearly finished it. I am learning to wait.”
He did not know whether the marriage would be fully restored. Neither did I. But they had not walked through the second door. A separation had given Tamunotonye and the children safety, and it had given Eyo the space to come to himself. Whatever happened next, it would happen with the truth told, and with nobody forced back into danger.
Teaching Companion
For Reflection
- Before reading this, had you thought of separation and divorce as different? What difference does the distinction make?
- What does Paul’s instruction in 1 Corinthians 7:11 suggest about how churches should treat separated believers?
- Why must safety be considered before any other question when a marriage is in crisis?
- What would it look like for a separated person to “seek peace, and pursue it” without putting themselves in danger?
- If you have caused harm in a relationship, what would “coming to yourself” require of you?
This Week
If you are separated, write down this week what the purpose of your separation is and what you believe needs to change, and share it with one trusted, mature person who can walk with you. If your marriage is intact, take time to pray for one separated or divorced person you know, and find one practical way to support them. If you are in danger, use this week to make a safety plan and speak to a trusted person or a domestic violence service.
A Prayer
Lord, You see every marriage that is strained or broken, and You know every heart. Give wisdom to those who are separated, so that they do not rush into decisions they cannot undo. Protect those who have had to leave for safety, and keep their children from harm. Where I have caused hurt, help me to come to myself, to confess honestly and to change, without demanding the trust I have not earned. Where I have been hurt, heal me and guide my steps. Teach me to seek peace and pursue it as far as it lies with me, and leave the rest in Your hands. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Truth received brings freedom. Truth believed establishes the heart.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version. · Illustrations using first names only are composites unless stated otherwise.