Meaning of Separation

 May 9 AD 2020

What does Separation mean in Paul’s teaching?  I was helped initially by reading Jay Adams looking at  I Cor 7. I had not even thought about this until this year and I don't expect most Christians in the West  to have ever thought this through either. 

 Here’s what the Apostle Paul said in I Cor. 7:10 & 11 To the married I give this charge (not I, but the Lord): the wife should not separate from her husband (but if she does, she should remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband), and the husband should not divorce his wife.

Jay Adams talking of the culture of the Jews and Corinthians says

“There was nothing of our modern view of separating (legal or otherwise) as we know it--[that is] a leaving one's marriage partner without divorce. All such separation is strictly forbidden in I Cor. 7:5 which reads, 

 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.”

This thought led me to look into other commentaries about what Paul may have meant by Separation. These following comments indicate that the Apostle saw the separation contemplated here as breaking the marriage and therefore the separated ones were to “remain unmarried”.

Gordon Fee on I Cor. 7:10

Paul addresses the wives first, “A wife must not separate from her husband.” Much has been made of the use of the verb “to separate oneself from,” in distinction from the verb used later (vv. 12–13), “to divorce.” But that probably reflects our own urgencies for greater precision. Divorce in Greco-Roman culture could be legalized by means of documents, but more often it simply happened. In this culture divorce was divorce, whether established by a document or not. Either the man sent his wife away (= “divorce” in the  sense of v. 12), or else either of them “left” the other (= “to separate”). But the evidence is ambiguous as far as the verbs are concerned. Ordinarily when the wife “divorces,” she simply leaves her husband (“is separated” from him); the same verb is used a bit later (v. 15) of an unbelieving partner of either sex who leaves, and it occurs regularly in the papyri for mutual divorce (agreeing to “separate from each other”). On the other hand, a man ordinarily “divorced” his wife (“sent her away”)...

... if she does separate, she must continue to follow the dictum “Stay as you are,” meaning now “Remain unmarried.”

.......

Matthew Henry on I Cor 7: 11

"...the apostle advises that if any woman had been separated, either by a voluntary act of her own or by an act of her husband, she should continue unmarried, and seek reconciliation with her husband, that they might cohabit again."

John Gill:

“The wife therefore should not depart from her husband upon every slight occasion; not on account of any quarrel, or disagreement that may arise between them; or for every instance of moroseness and inhumanity; or because of diseases and infirmities; nor even on the score of difference in religion which, by what follows, seems to be greatly the case in view. The apostle observes this, in opposition to some rules and customs which obtained among Jews and Gentiles, divorcing and separating from one another upon various accounts; not only husbands put away their wives, but wives also left their husbands….

“But and if she depart,.... This is said, not as allowing of such a departure, which only in case of fornication is lawful; but supposing it a fact, that a woman cannot be prevailed upon to stay with her husband, but actually forsakes him upon some difference arising between them, let her remain unmarried: she ought not to marry another man….”

John Calvin:

“But as to his commanding the wife, who is separated from her husband, to remain unmarried, he does not mean by this that separation is allowable, nor does he give permission to the wife to live apart from her husband…. He does not therefore give permission here to wives to withdraw, of their own accord, from their husbands, or to live away from their husband's establishment, as if they were in a state of widowhood; but declares, that even those who are not received by their husbands, continue to be bound, so that they cannot take other husbands.

“... For if a wife should fall into a protracted illness, the husband would, nevertheless, not be justified in going to seek another wife. In like manner, if a husband should, after marriage, begin to labor under some distemper, it would not be allowable for his wife to change her condition of life. The sum is this--God having prescribed lawful marriage as a remedy for our incontinency, let us make use of it, that we may not, by tempting him, pay the penalty of our rashness. Having discharged this duty, let us hope that he will give us aid should matters go contrary to our expectations.”

Thinking through this passage and the commentaries on it has been a real help to me in understanding Separation in New Testament times and now in our post-Christian culture looking at marriage. We are essentially at the same place that Paul’s hearers were at.  Marriages ended then and now with one spouse just walking away.